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Wednesday delight at half-term report: MATCH REPORT AND SLIDESHOW
OWLS 0 v BRISTOL CITY 0: WEDNESDAY are halfway to notching up a decent season despite having dropped two points in a lively dust-up with Bristol City.
It was by no means a dull goal-less draw and while the Owls failed to win they can also look back on the progress they have made.
At the half-way mark in the Championship - doesn't time fly? - they stand 10th in the table with 33 points and are 11 places and eight points better off than at the same 23-game stage last year.
Moreover, last season it took them until February to achieved a points total comparable to today's.
Throw in an unbeaten run of five games, a second consecutive clean sheet, and the mitigating circumstance of the latest crop of injuries, and it all makes a 0-0 home draw a bit more bearable.
Brian Laws counted nine missing players: Richard Hinds, Peter Gilbert, Etienne Esajas, Frankie Simek, Jermaine Johnson, Wade Small, Liam McMenamin, Akpo Sodje and Luke Boden.
The manager joked: "I hate talking to the physio Mark Palmer. It's not that I don't like him: I just don't like listening to him because he's always giving negatives.
"I even said to him: 'Don't talk to me for a few days; let me think I've got fit players!"
McMenamin and Boden are youngsters who probably would not have started had they been fit but they might well have been on the bench, where it was the 17-year-old Nathan Modest - pronounced Mow-dest - who became the seventh player in the 16 to have come through the youth ranks.
"The conveyor belt of talent is there to see," said Laws, pinpointing another reason for cheerfulness. "That's something we need to keep working at and building on. It's a positive.
"I'd like to have put Nathan on to give him a taste. I think the game was just a bit too wide open. He's certainly got potential. The physical side doesn't faze him and he's got the right mentality."
The only thing missing from the list of positives was a win.
Wednesday had their chances; so did City. Robins manager Gary Johnson fumed quietly about a goal being disallowed in the first half for a foul on an Owls defender - an incident that left the ball in the net and Lee Grant and Richard Wood on the deck after a collision.
Johnson said: "I'm practising anger management, because I'm a bit disappointed with a few of the decisions that went against us. For me, that's a goal, and I thought we had a couple of penalties."
He was referring to an incident in the last few minutes when Marcus Tudgay and Lee Trundle both went down inside he box - I thought it was just an accidental tangle of legs.
Laws had sympathy with his opposite number over the disallowed goal: "I've got to be honest, I didn't see a lot wrong with it. If I was Gary, I'd feel the same way as him. It looked a nothing free kick. I think Grant actually collided with one of our players."
"We've had a bit of luck. The ref has obviously seen something that we didn't see."
But a draw was a fair reflection of the 90 minutes.
Wednesday produced some bursts of entertaining football in the first half, when Leon Clarke was a real threat with his touch and bustling work-rate, and forced a good save from Adriano Basso after Francis Jeffers created the chance.
I can imagine Laws telling his team at half time that if they kept playing on broadly similar lines they would put one away and go on to win this. But City had their moments, overall, always looking to knock balls in behind the Wednesday defence and utilising the pace of 2.25m former Crewe forward Nicky Maynard and Ivan Sproule, the duo who with Stern John formed a three-pronged attack.
It was a real howler by Maynard only 20 seconds in the second half when he was clean through but missed the target. This sparked a little purple patch for the visitors, in which Grant beat away a Maynard shot.
But Wednesday always kept going: Clarke had two further strikes at goal and in the last few minutes brought another vital stop from Basso.
As part of efforts to find an extra spark, Laws tried a midfield reshuffle for the last 20 minutes, bringing on Jimmy Smith and Steve Watson, taking off Francis Jeffers and left-side midfield Bartosz Slusarski, and pushing Tudgay up front.
It was the first time in five games that the Owls had been unable to score.
But in many ways they have a platform on which they can build.
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Weather for Sheffield
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Fog
Temperature: -6 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South east
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Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to -1 C
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