Darren Moore slams dire Sheffield Wednesday and hands out dressing-down in 'unacceptable and calamity' Sunderland thrashing

Moore he said he simply could not accept the ‘terrible’ performance level shown by an Owls side that handed over a 12-match unbeaten league run to allow their hosts to go 12 points clear of them at the top of the division. Wednesday stay eighth, five from the playoff spots.

It was Wednesday’s first match back after a near three-week break brought about by postponements due to a Covid-19 breakout.

The 47-year-old was visibly angry throughout the performance and revealed he had had strong words with his players after the match.

“I’ve had a go at them tonight,” he said. “I’ve let it be known the standards were simply not good enough.

“Obviously I can’t relay exactly what was said in there, but rest assured I’ve had a go at them.

“The fact is, once that second goal went in we seemed to give up the chase with the game.

“I never saw that coming, in the last few months we’ve seen that resilience from the team. It was such a disappointing night.

“There’s another game in a couple of days to work towards. Tonight was a terrible performance and one I don’t expect to see from a Sheffield Wednesday side.

In-form Black Cats top scorer Ross Stewart was the destroyer-in-chief of lacklustre Owls defending and swaggered his way to a hat-trick within an hour of play. In truth, the Black Cats could have scored more.

Moore expressed disappointment with what he thought was a marginal offside call for Sunderland’s first but refused to use it as an excuse for what followed.

He said: “There seemed to be a like of brightness to us in terms of the team and sniffing danger out. That was the most disappointing thing.

“I’m really disappointed today. We came today wanting to get into the top six and to do the double on Sunderland, we spoke about that, started OK.

“But you can’t have the basic, elementary switching off that we had to today and it cost us goals.

“We’ve got to take the medicine today and move on. It wasn’t good enough, it was unacceptable. The players know that and I certainly know that.”