Revealing behind-the-scenes Sheffield Wednesday moment proved prophetic in massive Blackburn Rovers win

At Middlewood Road, Röhl had revealed his starting line-up to his players. And heading into the rest of the session, the Wednesday coaching staff were met not with half a changing room jaded with rejection, but firing and full of fight. There was an intensity to things, the German boss described to The Star after a 3-1 win that lifted them out of the relegation zone for the first time in his tenure.

Resisting the urge to pick out individuals for praise following the Ewood Park win, Röhl instead sought to push the focus on the wider group.

He said: “We should look to the whole picture, everybody was ready for this fight, everybody in the last training session especially. You give the starters the bibs and sometimes the other players are a little bit disappointed, but you could feel then that everybody on the pitch was ready, we had a great training which gives me a good feeling.”

The intensity, vigour and readiness shown by the players chosen to start out on the bench at Blackburn proved prophetic when Wednesday had to change their defence not once but twice through injury. In the first half, Michael Ihiekwe was forced off with what looked like a leg injury after 15 minutes. His replacement, Bambo Diaby, was taken off with a heavily bloodied shirt with Dominic Iorfa brought on in his place.

A Röhl mantra on players needing to be ready for action bore out as all three delivered effective performances and Wednesday saw out an impressive away win - their fourth in six matches on the road.

“You see we needed three different centre-halves,” Röhl said. “It is not easy, when you go into a game you have a strategy in mind about making your subs and who can make the impact. At first Bambo was there to come in, then Dom as well. This was helpful and it was a good team performance, you can have a match plan but the players are the drivers on the pitch. It was good to see how the drove it today.”