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Owls boss Henrik Pedersen explained his thinking behind leaving Kieran Morrison out of the starting line-up against Stockport County.

The Liverpool loanee, who has been called-up by Northern Ireland, has made an exciting start to his time at Sheffield Wednesday but was left on the bench on Saturday as the hosts were held to a goalless draw by Stockport County in front of more than 32,000 at Hillsborough.

The Hatters were the better side and should have led at half-time while Wednesday failed to create much of note throughout. Morrison’s omission was a surprise as Pedersen opted to go with Jamal Lowe and Davis Keillor-Dunn on the wings instead.

When asked why Morrison did not start, Pedersen told The Star: “I look every week for how are we training and from the game before. We have a strong squad right now and so it's a normal part of this.”

Lowe and Keillor-Dunn are not natural wingers and Wednesday lacked width in the game until Morrison and Harry Gray came on in the second-half. Pedersen continued: “I think we open better up when we get width in the second half and and yeah it helped us. I think Harry did it really well when he came in and Kieran was also a good step.

“I think Harry came in and did it really, really well. We knew it would be a pressing game where we should put a strong team into press them really well. And when we were on the ball, we wanted to have Jamal further in, we wanted to have Keillor further in. So we had four in the midfield to match them. We did that well, but it was too few times. In the second-half, when we put Harry in, when we put Kieran in, we had two clear wingers. It was a step up for us, and it was a good step in the right direction to get more dynamic and to get more width when we had the ball. Harry did a good impact when he came in today. He is a player who can speed up the game. And we saw more situations when he came in, and yeah, it's very positive.”

In terms of the other team news, Ali Al-Hamadi was left out of the squad completely because of a foot problem but Pedersen did not seem too concerned. The Iraq international is due to play for his country in the next couple of weeks. He said: “He could not be a part of the squad today. He had easy training today, and I hope he'll be fit in the next two three days, so he can start to train normally again. I hope he'll be fit to go (on international break). I hope he can play and I hope he can come strong back again.”

Keillor-Dunn and Ricardo Santos both came off the in the second-half but again Pedersen has no major concerns about the pair. On Keillor-Dunn, he said: “What he said to me is cramp, but no injury,” adding on Santos: “I think 10 minutes before he had cramp in his calf so we needed to take him off.”

Wednesday go into the international break second in the League One table after the first seven games.