Darren Moore was very honest in his assessment of Sheffield Wednesday’s performance as they were beaten 1-0 by Sunderland in the play-off semi-final first leg. The singular goal – provided by Ross Stewart – didn’t fully reflect the dominance of the Black Cats in front of a record crowd.
It leaves the tie perfectly poised going into Monday night’s second leg at Hillsborough where the Owls will be confident of using their home advantage to turn it on its head. Moore, as ever, was very magnanimous in his immediate reflection of the match with praise for the opponents as well as some criticism of his own players.
“We knew it was going to be a difficult game today, it lived up to the expectation,” the Wednesday boss told Sky Sports. “They put us under a lot of pressure but credit the boys, it was difficult for us to get a foothold in the game because they kept us under relentless pressure.
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“I thought after about the hour mark, with the energy that they’d put into the game, the pendulum then swung into our favour and we got more of a grip of it second half. But the first half was a ferocious pace, they played ever so well Sunderland, credit to my boys they stayed at it and we just had to make sure that we stayed in the game, that’s what they’ve done tonight.”
The visitors hardly created a chance all evening and can certainly count themselves fortunate to only be a goal behind heading into the second leg. While unhappy with his side’s lack of creativity, Moore had plenty of praise for the opposition defence.
“I just thought it was an overall good performance by them but, for us, it was about staying in the game,” he added. “It didn’t go in our way tonight in what we wanted to do on the ball but Sunderland didn’t allow us to do that tonight. We regroup and then we go again on Monday.
“We’re going to have to try and get back in the game. If we want to wrestle it back then we’re going to have to play better than we did tonight.
“We’ll have a look at the game tonight and look at areas where we could’ve been better and then we’ll look to apply ourselves right on Monday.”
Both managers will already be preparing for the second leg with the tie finely poised at the halfway stage. A place at Wembley awaits the team that is able to come out on top at Hillsborough on Monday.
