What Reading boss Mark Bowen said about Garry Monk's ongoing 'difficult period' at Sheffield Wednesday

The Royals, who had not won in their previous six, ran out 3-0 winners against a hapless Owls outfit in free fall since finding themselves in third place at Christmas.

There were noticeably large holes in the Hillsborough crowd and thousands of Wednesdayites poured from the stadium well ahead of the final whistle as an Osaze Urhoghide red card and a Cameron Dawson mistake contributed to a horror afternoon.

Bowen, who said in the week how confident his side were of coming away from Hillsborough with a result, said that he was keen to use unrest in the crowd to their advantage and backed Owls boss Garry Monk, who admitted his job is under pressure.

“It’s always the same,” he said. These clubs have a rich tradition and they’re big clubs. The expectancy is high.

“Garry has done a great job here, they had a very good spell at the start of the season, they’re going through a difficult patch at the moment.

“But if a team is going through a difficult patch we’ve got to basically try and build and feed off that. That was the situation, so we needed to start the game quite fast.

“I didn’t think we were as I wanted us to be but as the game went on we took control of it and I was delighted with how we finished.”