Darren Moore has to bite his tongue on shocking refereeing decision that cost Sheffield Wednesday

And as Darren Moore chose to keep his counsel and avoid the risk of retrospective action from the powers that be on a second half penalty decision that allowed Oxford United to stretch Sheffield Wednesday’s stumbling winless run to six, anybody in the vicinity knew what he thought about it.

Akin Famewo was the man adjudged to have brought down Marcus Browne and when Cameron Brannagan slotted home the penalty, the world fell out of Wednesday pursuit of the points.

“I just want to talk about the game,” said Moore, taking a moment to carefully choose his words. “As a manager I want to stay in my lane in terms of the decision. I will leave that down for all to see.

“It wasn’t a penalty from where I was standing, if anything it was Akin that was impinged. That’s all I can say on it. The decision went against us.”

On the performance itself, Moore admitted his side ran out of puff in the second half and alluded to the late loss of Michael Smith as a driver in a decision to substitute livewire Mallik Wilks on 70 minutes.

For all their bluster and lack of killer quality, the footballing gods seem to be against Wednesday at current.

“I think we did enough to win the game,” Moore said. “The two saves their keeper made at the start of the second half from Mallik and Dennis, had one of those gone in it would have been too much for Oxford to come back into the game.

“At 1-0 they feel that they’re always in the game and you’re sceptical because it only takes a second to score a goal. The decision went against us and lead to their equaliser.

“We lost a few of our offensive-minded players. We had to manage the squad, we picked up knocks and had to manage the squad in the best possible way. In the last half an hour we lost a little bit of impetus in terms of the creativity that was on the pitch but I have to give credit to the players for the battling performance.

“It was the couple of chances after half-time. If we could have capitalised on that it would have been too much for Oxford to get back in.”