“I don’t want to take anything away from Barnsley, but..” Sheffield Wednesday boss gives frank view on ‘self-inflicted’ defeat

Wednesday left themselves plenty to do at the outset of what was the Tykes’ sixth home win on the spin, sloppy in their application as Devante Cole and James Norwood fired past Cameron Dawson to give the home side a an early 2-0 lead.

A Lee Gregory double set the game up for a thrilling finish, one that Barnsley won out with two sucker-punch goals.

An angry Moore seemed to take some solace in the manner of the performance between the second and third Reds goals but made no secret his disappointment in their opening efforts.

“I don’t want to take anything from Barnsley,” he said. “Well done Michael Duff and his team tonight, to beat us on the run of games we’ve been on has been good, so credit to them.

From our point of view, though, it’s self-inflicted the goals we’ve given away today. That’s what we feel.

“We look back and we kick ourselves because that is uncharacteristic of us in terms of the goals. We’ve been mean defensively and at the top of the pitch we feel we can score goals and we’ve shown that this season.

“Tonight for whatever reason, we’ve given that away really.”

The loss did mean Wednesday ceded top spot in the League One table to Plymouth Argyle, who beat Accrington Stanley. It remains firmly in Owls hands courtesy of two games in hand.

Moore continued: What I’m harbouring on is that apart from the first 20 minutes, we were really well in the game and came back to get momentum. I didn’t see the third goal coming, I’ll be honest But it did.

“Even then, throughout the game, we felt confident that we were going to get something out of the game. To not do so is disappointing.

“If you’d told me that we were going to score three goals tonight, I would have told you it must mean three points to Wednesday, but it’s not.

“We’ve got to dust ourselves down. There is a lot of football to be played and we have to get ready for Sunday.”