Alan Biggs: Why Sheffield Wednesday boss should judge Darren on Moore than just promotion

This drafted, by the way, before the nervy win over Crewe that took Wednesday up to fourth with a sudden, sneaking chance of going up automatically.

Failure is not, or should not, be judged over one full season; certainly not one involving as much hurried and radical change as this.

Will Moore have “failed” on this one season if he and a quality squad fall short? Yes.

Will the Owls boss have failed - period - in his mission? No.

Not for me anyway. There is a huge difference between the two questions.

However it pans out, Moore has done too many progressive things for the longer term to be chucked into the waste tip of past Hillsborough managers.

Not that he wouldn’t have his work cut out again in the summer.

This squad, if kept largely together, would not fall short a second time in my opinion. But it would be fanciful to think such stability could be readily achieved. That’s not the way football works in 2022.

So it becomes a question of trust and Moore, crucially in a tight relationship with Dejphon Chansiri, has done enough to earn it.

The reason for that came through even on Tuesday night as the Owls made an anxiety-ridden drama of beating a team already relegated.

Early goals, rather than unbelievable misses, would have made a romp of it but players dug in for each other all over the field to earn the minimal reward for a side dominating by 17 shots to one against.

While some of Moore’s selections and substitutions continue to provoke debate, the fact is he has welded this group into a unit that conspicuously fights for each other with no cliques and divisions.

That alone is a refreshing change from previous seasons and, with momentum building, the biggest reason why he deserves to continue.

Any other argument judges Moore, from here, over a three-to-six match “season.”

Let’s rule out the knee-jerks right now. He stays.