Sheffield Wednesday's preparations 'tough and frustrating' due to enforced break

Boss Darren Moore even said as much afterwards, having ripped into the team for the type of display that given the run the Owls were on, appeared to have banished to the bad old days.

However, Moore has offered an insight into what has been happening behind the scenes after Wednesday were hit by an outbreak of Covid in the camp which forced an 18-day gap between games.

Before heading to the North East the Owls had been on an unbeaten run that stretched back to early October – though the fact that many of those matches had been drawn meant that they remained on the periphery of the play-off places.

It was the lost momentum that Moore feared and that became apparent in the way Wednesday played against Sunderland.

They were disjointed, the passing was off, defensively they looked all over the place and they offered very little in attack, aside from a spell early in the game.

Moore has admitted, again while not looking for a way out of the criticism that arrived following the hammering at the Stadium of Light, that the past couple of weeks have made it difficult for him and his coaching staff to prepare the team in the way he would have liked.

MORE – Lee Johnson pinpoints how his side hammered Owls

"It has been tough and frustrating,” he said of the break in his side’s season. “We had momentum and then the Accrington and Burton games got called off.

"It is not just missing the games. It is missing training as well.

"We had to shut the training ground down.

"I don't want to make that as an excuse for Sunderland. We stepped into the arena and we didn't perform how we should have done.

"We have to take our medicine because we didn't perform.”

Moore went on to reveal that there had just been a handful of days in which the team were together.

"We have had the whole squad for three training sessions this week,” he said.

"The players were away and had (individual) programmes to get on with.”