Barry Bannan: Sheffield Wednesday players stuck to their jobs on ‘tough night’ against Chelsea

A Willian brace and one from highly-rated Blues youngster Callum Hudson-Odoi put the game beyond Wednesday’s reach, but the cup clash was not without its talking points after the Owls had a first half penalty call overturned by VAR.

And Owls midfielder Barry Bannan believes the decision was a turning point in the momentum of the game, after Chelsea went one up courtesy of a spot kick decision in their favour just moments later. 

Bannan said: “It was tough. We knew it was going to be tough coming here. 

“A big changing point in the game was when we thought we had a penalty and we never got it and then they got up the pitch and scored from a penalty straight away so that kind of deflated us a bit. 

“I thought as a man we stuck to our job and they are a top class team so you’ve got to take your hat off.”

Wednesday had started well and could have taken the lead but for the intervention of VAR, which overturned Andre Marriner’s decision to award a penalty for an Ethan Ampadu foul on Joey Pelupessy.

No sooner had the decision been reversed, Chelsea broke away down to the other end of the pitch and earned their own spot kick after ex-Blues man Sam Hutchinson caught Cesar Azpilicueta in the box.

On the overturned decision, Bannan said: “It’s football, VAR is not going to lie I suppose. I’ll look at it when I go home but it wasn’t a penalty if VAR says it’s not. 

“We thought we had a penalty and then two minutes later they got a penalty and scored which killed us a bit.

“I think we’ll look over it, we’ll rest tomorrow and look over it through the week and take the positives and look at what we could have done better.

“Then we move into a big week next weekend with the game against Ipswich now and hopefully we can get the three points there.”

Wednesday travel to Championship strugglers Ipswich on Saturday, which will be Steve Bruce's first game as manager.