A tale of two headers: Connor Wickham continues to spearhead Sheffield Wednesday's revival
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He’s different from before, as if the three-month break from football was a detox from the bad place. The Connor Wickham we’ve seeing in a Sheffield Wednesday shirt is leaner, more mobile and far, far more confident in his ability to affect football matches than before. And that he is doing, picking the ball up in awkward areas, bouncing defenders like a school bully.
That’s not to say he’s been unplayable. Far from it. The exciting thing is that Wickham has a way to go in this bucking bronco of a last month of the season. There were periods where he drifted out of the game’s narrative, he tired in the end and he missed a fine chance to put the game beyond all doubt on the hour.
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Hide AdBut for the first time this season, Sheffield Wednesday did not miss the departing Steven Fletcher as Wickham scored in consecutive games for the first time since November 2016.
Much of that is down to the much-maligned Garry Monk, of course, who appears to have made the most out of his first opportunity to properly work with his players.
The 3-5-2 system the Owls have switched to will be better tested in the weeks to come, but considering the lost, dazed and confused look of the side prior to the break, the change it has brought about has been remarkable.
No Championship team went into this round of matches with more headed goals than Bristol City and they could have made it 20 for the season had it not been for Joe Wildsmith’s save for the ages from Nathan Baker after just five minutes, directing the ball over the bar where he had no right. They later did through Nakhi Wells.
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Hide AdIt is quality such as that that makes all the difference in Championship football and that Wickham’s classy, unchallenged effort from Jacob Murphy’s corner just eight minutes later puts that Wildsmith claw into season-changing territory.
Luongo’s instinctive finish, from another poorly defended corner, made it 2-0 in Wednesday’s most fluent period of the match and by the time that Wells effort had gone in from another grand Wildsmith save it could have been more.
The goal piled the pressure on the visitors and you felt this was where the mettle of Garry Monk’s new Sheffield Wednesday would be truly tested.
And they stepped up. As Bristol City attempted to press the accelerator, Wednesday rode the clutch and but for a moment or two controlled the final stages.
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Hide AdBarry Bannan was close to his busy best in midfield and the defence played with a renewed confidence akin to that of Wickham. News on Julian Borner’s injury to come.
By now their new target man had been replaced after a fine shift.
It remains unlikely that Connor Wickham will be a Sheffield Wednesday player beyond the next seven matches. But regardless of the potential points deduction hanging over them, if he can spearhead many more away performances as he has done today, it’ll be his most important of his three Owls spells.