They aren't alone but two Sheffield Wednesday players need to step up to bridge gap

When Danny Rohl says “we are so close”, I think first of the only two players who posed any real threat in the Bramall Lane derby.

If Sheffield Wednesday are to bridge the gap - the slight margins between the top six and bottom six in the Championship - then Djeidi Gassama and Anthony Musaba have to do likewise. Not that it is by any means all on them in a team whose occasional shortcomings at either end of the field are holding them back.

For instance, Ike Ugbo has yet to break his duck for the season and Michael Smith has a strong case for displacing the much-trumpeted summer signing. But Gassama and Musaba are the two most explosive players in the team, both capable of making a big difference in tight games.

That they don’t yet do it often enough is the reason why both are well acquainted with the bench. There’s an erratic element besides the pace and skill that both have in abundance.

Neither started the Bramall Lane derby. Both menaced fleetingly straight after coming on, Gassama with a shot just wide and Musaba with a jet-heeled run that saw him blocked out at the last moment. It wasn’t a sustained threat in either case. Nearly sums them up at the moment. Often it seems to be about decision-making as much as execution. But the potential is there given more composure and better choices near goal.

Gassama (21) has been the more involved, with just a couple of goals to show for it. Musaba (23 and needing to kick on from eight goals last season) has only the winner against West Brom to his name. It goes without saying, I think, that you can be unbalanced fielding both at the same time unless chasing the game, as in the derby. Rohl has tried it with limited success.

But it could prove vital for Wednesday’s fortunes to have one or the other holding down a regular starting spot.

The team needs their athleticism and skill, especially if Josh Windass, the player most likely to make things happen upfield, is subdued, as he was in the derby. That’s a big and important challenge for the Wednesday management team at a time when they don’t have too many other options.

Certainly it’s an area of the side that will, along with tighter defending, occupy Rohl’s mind in January.