“Isn’t nice for me to say..” Michael Ihiekwe speaks with brutal honesty on Sheffield Wednesday performance

The Owls were second best at Hillsborough on Saturday as goals either side of the break prevented them from going top of the table, keeping them in fourth place.

And new boy Ihiekwe held his hands up that the team performance wasn’t good enough.

“The coaching can only do so much,” he said. “We have to do it on the pitch.

“We had all the information and we watched them over the last few days. It just wasn’t executed well enough today, we got in certain positions to do certain things and we didn’t execute them to the best of our ability.

“When things like that are adding up and we keep doing it, the outcome is going to be the same.”

Barnsley set up deep, switching their formation to add more players to their backline to frustrate Wednesday’s attack. Though two big chances fell to Lee Gregory, it worked as the Owls were largely blunted going forward.

“Teams are going to come here at time to frustrate us like Barnsley did today,” Ihiekwe continued. “We have to find a way round it.

“I think as a collective we were a little bit off it for whatever reason, they frustrated us and it worked.

“They’re a good team, they’ve come down from the Championship. Nobody has any given right to just go out and win games.

“They were a little bit more competitive which isn’t nice for me to say, but it’s true, winning second balls and stuff.

“We need to look back at it and improve.”

Though the pain of a South Yorkshire derby defeat has hurt both the players and the club’s supporters, it’s clear the focus will quickly turn to the next challenge; a trip to Plymouth Argyle.

Ihiekwe said: “Look, it’s a long season isn’t it? You’re not going to go through a season unbeaten, so it’s about how we react now. We’ve got another tough game next week and we have to learn from this one.

“The fans came here today wanting a win. It’s frustrating but these things happen in football. We need to use it as a lesson.”