Why Sheffield Wednesday spent twice as much time in the classroom as they did on the pitches in Bristol Rovers prep

With limited time between Saturday’s fiercely disappointing defeat at Burton Albion and their trip to Gloucestershire, Wednesday staff had to be creative in their curation of their programme before the trip south on Monday.

Numbers have been limited thanks in no small part to injuries and a manic late-season fixture list. Wednesday have been tested mentally in recent weeks by a downturn in fortune that has seen them pass the power balance in the race for automatic promotion over to Ipswich Town and Plymouth Argyle.

With all that in mind, Darren Moore and his staff chose to bring their players inside and away from any great physical exertion – with two of the three pre-match sessions taking place away from the training pitches and rather in the ‘classroom’ at Middlewood Road.

Moore said: “Rather than do extra work on the training ground where you’re taking a bit of energy out of them physically, we might do a bit or work and then do some work on the mindset, changing behavioural patterns and getting the level of understanding in. We did all that this week.

“We can solidify all that in the classroom. We did two sessions in there this week and those were probably just as vital as anything else we did on the pitch.

“The work we did do on the pitch as designed around a) to get them moving better and b) to aid their recovery. It was a recovery session but we also did work based around messages from me and my staff.”

Moore was speaking in the minutes after their win at the Memorial Stadium and presented a far cooler image than he did at Burton Albion, where he spoke of huge frustration at the performance shown and faced questions over the body language and togetherness of his side.

Revealing a theme of what the staff and players had spoken about in the days leading into their Rovers win, Moore said: “We spoke about tonight and how it had to be ‘Not me as an individual but we as a collective group’ and that’s the message we came here with. The boys showed that tonight.

“There was a real togetherness and that’s such a pleasing thing from tonight. The workload that was asked of them tonight they got through together as a bunch.

“That set the platform to be strong and resolute tonight. We didn’t do much work on the ball. I felt when we did have the ball we could have maybe done a lot more than we did, but I take full responsibility for that. In the short time we had to work, we decided to put a lot of work into time off the ball.

“There are things we could have done better in possession, but it goes to show when you do your work off the ball how effective it can be in winning football matches.”

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