Sheffield Wednesday's Jekyll and Hyde persona rears its head once more in forlorn defeat to Derby County

The momentum of their dramatic midweek win over Charlton was sapped by a lacklustre display that saw Wednesday run out second-best in every race.

Sheffield Wednesday arrived having won just two of their previous 21 league games against Derby, who themselves had won out in just three of their last 27 away games. Something, as they say, had to give and the home side were seemingly only too happy to oblige.

It didn’t take long for the match to open up – seven minutes in fact – when Tom Lawrence’s unthreatening effort took a deflection off Kieran Lee to wrong-foot Cameron Dawson in the Wednesday goal.

“How bang average must you be, we’re winning away” strained the visiting supporters. Or something to that effect.

The Owls could count themselves unlucky with how the opener came about and it should have sprung them into life. It didn’t.

In Jacob Murphy they at least had an outlet. In recent weeks the winger has started to show glimpses of the player parent club Newcastle United parted with £10 million for and in the first half particularly he hit the by-line time and again, Rams left-back Craig Forsyth unable to lay hands on him.

But the list of positives ends at one and Derby took complete control within quarter of an hour, Wednesday misplacing passes and chasing shadows stretching across a sun-kissed Hillsborough turf.

Dawson made a fine save on 16 minutes, racing from his line to snuff out Lawrence from Martyn Waghorn’s nifty through-ball. But the midfielder didn’t have long to wait to double his tally for the afternoon, slotting a similar chance past Dawson’s left hand eight minutes later to make it 2-0.

The Rams are a team in transition and a club with its issues, with off-field disgraces, the controversial signing of Wayne Rooney and FFP wranglings not dissimilar to those of Wednesday having arm-wrestled focus away from action on the field.

But good players they have, Lawrence – a name at the centre of those off-field misdemeanours – well and truly among them. Scotland international Chris Martin claimed three assists and Martyn Waghorn was a threat.

The fact is though that they’re merely support acts in the Derby County roadshow. In Rooney they have a bona fide football legend and although his legs might not allow him to crash around as he did at his very best all those years ago, his presence was felt throughout, operating as a pace-setting quarter-back from sweeper and left-back, from here, there and everywhere.

And by the time Jason Knight had blitzed past Morgan Fox to slam the ball past Dawson to make it 3-0 on the half-hour mark, the former England captain was at the epicentre of the Rams’ unchallenged control of the occasion.

That Garry Monk elected to make a 38th minute substitution tells its own tale. A shrunken Kadeem Harris made way for Connor Wickham, with Fernando Forestieri pushed out to the left and at half-time Josh Windass and Dominic Iorfa replaced Steven Fletcher and an out of sorts Tom Lees respectively.

Monk will take heart from the contributions of his changes. Windass poked home Murphy’s classy cross on 74 minutes – though any congratulations for the fact their second half performance was more incisive than their first would be like handing gold stars out for attendance – the damage was done.

Unfair perhaps to single them out, the senior men failed to step up. Fletcher was making his first start since sustaining his knee injury on January 4 but was unable to recapture the glories of midweek in his 45 minutes, unusually subdued on an afternoon that required his bullishness. Barry Bannan, so often his partner in crime, failed to grapple much of a hand in proceedings.

And as time dwindled, the shadows stretched further still and the empty spaces in the stands grew, the feeling in the ground went from frustration to something much worse – apathy.

Inconsistency and individual errors have hounded them all season and the fact is that those supporters have now seen 5-0, 3-0 and 3-1 losses in just over a month, not one of them to opposition you would describe as anything more than competent.

A sea change is coming, in terms of personnel and state of mind, Monk hopes. An optimist would point out that Connor Wickham played well, Windass looked OK and that Murphy’s personal momentum continued. But it was another powderpuff display from the Owls at home. Their Jekyll and Hyde persona lives on.

Congratulations to the happy couple. It was the highlight of the afternoon.