Sheffield Wednesday: Carlos Carvalhal shrugs off Sam Winnall questions as the Owls set sights on first positions

The hard-working striker bagged a double in Derby County’s impressive win at Leeds United on Tuesday night, taking his tally to four in seven Rams appearances.

Winnall joined Derby on loan from Sheffield Wednesday on deadline day in a deal which saw Jacob Butterfield move in the opposite direction. The 26-year-old will remain at Pride Park until the end of the season.

When asked to comment on Winnall’s eye-catching form yesterday, Owls chief Carlos Carvalhal straight-batted the question.

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He told The Star: “It is not polite to talk about this. He’s not our player at the moment.

“He is doing his job. He is doing well but we are here with the players that we have and are doing our job also. We are concentrating on Sheffield Wednesday.”

A topic which Carvalhal discussed at length in his pre-match press conference was refereeing standards. He feels a number of officiating decisions have gone against his Wednesday side in their last three away matches. Carvalhal felt Gary Hooper had a goal wrongly chalked off for offside at Birmingham City and that they had strong penalty claims turned down versus Bolton Wanderers and Derby.

Carvalhal said: “There was a clear penalty on Kieran Lee against Bolton. We would, in the minimum, (have) achieved one point.

“Gary Hooper was onside at Birmingham. It was clear. There is no doubt about that.

“And there was a clear penalty on Fletch [Steven Fletcher] at Derby.

“What we need is better decisions. With better decisions, we will achieve more points absolutely sure.”

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Carvalhal believes “bad” refereeing decisions have cost the Owls at least five points this season.

Speaking after their narrow win over Millwall, he said: “We have had some bad decisions in games which have cost us a minimum of five points. My assistant says seven but it is a minimum of five.

“Also the committee of the refereeing decisions confirmed they were really bad decisions. We are probably talking about five or six points and we would be talking about a team with more confidence.”

But Carvalhal refuses to blame officials for the Owls lying in the bottom half of the division. He accepts Wednesday lacked efficiency in both boxes.

He said: “I don’t want to put all the responsibility on the referees. Some of the things are our responsibility.

“We gave a good step in Derby, we grew up against Barnsley and I think we performed well against Millwall and won.

“We are giving signs that we are back to a good position if the circumstances that we can control are normal.

“But even with all these circumstances, we are there and not far away from the first positions.”

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