Sheffield Wednesday suffered their 3rd defeat in 4 matches on Friday evening, going down 2-1 at Championship title winners elect Leicester City.
Despite the defeat the Owls can take plenty of heart from their performance, it was certainly a much better display than was evident in the 4-1 home defeat to Watford last weekend.
Stuart Gray elected to field a fairly attacking line up against a side that have not yet lost a league match this year and in the early stages it looked like that bold move would backfire.
Leicester are on the verge of sealing promotion to the Premier League and started with the confidence you would expect to see from a side in their position.
Foxes striker Chris Wood played a pass inside Owls left-back Mattock and Riyad Mahrez produced a pinpoint finish, sliding the ball past Kirkland and in off the post to give the home side the lead inside 10 minutes.
Despite the early setback Wednesday came into the game as the half progressed with Palmer and Antonio testing Schmeichel from distance.
With less than 10 minutes to go in the first half it was Antonio, making his first appearance after a lengthy injury lay off, who fired the visitors level, beating Schmeichel with a powerful low strike from the edge of the area.
The Owls suffered a set back at half time when centre-back Onyewu was ubable to continue and was replaced by Llera. Wednesday's injury woes got worse early on in the second half with Loovens also picking up an injury. Coke came on for the former Celtic centre-back, resulting in a reshuffle which saw Lewis Buxton revert to centre-back.
The ultimately decisive moment in the match came with half an hour to go. The Owls conceded a free-kick on the edge of their own area and Knockaert duly fired the set piece into the top corner of the goal. It was a fine free-kick but Kirkland will have been disappointed with his positioning.
Wednesday threw on Nuhiu in place of Lavery and in the closing stages they caused Leicester a few problems with a number of shots from inside the penalty area being blocked by Foxes defenders. Had the referee been more alert then the Owls could also have had a few set piece opportunities of their own from promising positions but it wasn't to be.
If Wednesday can take this performance into their final few games then a top half finish may still be a possibility though much may depend on how serious the injuries to the centre-back pairing of Loovens and Onyewu prove to be.