Sheffield Wednesday beat Sunderland’s under-21 side 2-0 on Tuesday evening.

A Jersey Mike’s Trophy outing against Sunderland’s under-21 side allowed Henrik Pedersen to offer a run-out to senior players after a Derby County had to cancel a mid-international break friendly with the Owls.

An extended break left Pedersen and some other EFL coaches frustrated at the three-week pause in league football, which saw matches against Stevenage and Cambridge United rearranged to Tuesday night dates due to the number of players called up to international duty.

That elongated break left the Owls seeking a behind-closed-doors run-out against alternative opposition in order to keep miles in the legs of their players, though as reported by The Star last week, that friendly exercise was cancelled by their opposition owing to their squad management plans. The Owls instead staged a match between themselves.

Speaking after a breezy 2-0 win over Sunderland under-21s to make it two Trophy wins in two, Henrik Pedersen confirmed that the side that reneged on their planned break run-out was Derby County and suggested some senior players were selected to play in the Sunderland game to keep up some match sharpness ahead of the weekend’s trip to Huddersfield Town.

Pedersen said post-match: “A lot of the young guys got new game minutes and the eight, nine, 10 senior players also got a bit of it which was important because our game against Derby, they cancelled this last week. It is a long time since we had game practice... We had hope that we would have the friendly game last week but it was cancelled so that is why the game was important for a lot of players to get some game practice again, so I am happy with the games.”

Denny Oliver made his Wednesday debut and the likes of Joel Akpobi, Samuel Duruh also featured, with young full-back Sean Fusire featuring for the first time since the opening day of the season.

“We want to win games and have success with the first team,” Pedersen continued. “But the other thing is that we want to develop our next Sheffield Wednesday player from the academy and of course these games are important to bring the academy players in and give them game practice with our best players in the club.”