Where did it all go wrong? Review part 1 of Sheffield Wednesday's shocking season

Last updated : 05 May 2010 By C. Morris

Sheffield Wednesday came into the 2009/10 season in fairly optimistic mood. On the back of a reasonable 12th place finish the previous season the Owls had managed to retain the key members of the squad amidst fervent speculation over the summer and had also acquired what appeared to be some useful new squad members.

As the season kicked off on a sunny August afternoon at Hillsborough against local rivals Barnsley it appeared that the new hope for the season ahead seemed justified as Wednesday sauntered into a 2-0 half-time lead, playing some scintillating football along the way. By full-time however the majority of the 30,000+ crowd were going home disappointed as the Owls failed to come out for the second half and ended up with only a point.

A total of 1 point from two decent away performances at Peterborough and Newcastle followed before the Owls picked up their first win with a 4-0 home hammering of Scunthorpe. Wednesday were dumped out of the League Cup at Port Vale with Francis Jeffers again doing little to endear himself to the Owls faithful, getting sent-off for a needless head butt.

Despite this setback Wednesday continued to do reasonably well in the league with a win at Plymouth and a point at home to Forest and they continued to play flowing football for good spells of their games.

Back-to-back defeats to Middlesbrough and fierce rivals Sheffield United followed but the worrying defensive issues that were evident at Bramall lane were seemingly put behind them with a 3-1 win against promotion hopefuls Cardiff at Hillsborough.

Dismal away performances at Derby and Watford soon followed however and Wednesday picked up just five points from eight matches in October and November.

Despite dominating the first half of a home game with Preston in mid-October the Owls lost the match 2-1 and this seemed to completely knock the stuffing out of the team. Confidence was clearly ebbing away and as the passing style of football had not brought with it the desired results this too disappeared as matters got worse still.

To this stage although the Owls were clearly struggling for results Brian Laws had bought himself some time due to the position achieved in the previous season and the fact that in home games at least, Wednesday were playing well at times without picking up the points.

A shocking display at home to WBA was symptomatic of the problems Laws had in getting his team to perform away from Hillsborough throughout his tenure at the club and from then on barring a big upturn in results the writing appeared to be on the wall. The loan signings of Tom Soares and Warren Feeney did little to help his cause as initially Soares looked way off the pace, struggling to complete even 45 minutes against the Baggies while striker Feeney played a total of around 15 minutes in his month at the club despite the fact the Owls were in the midst of a run of six games without a goal.

There was some consolation following the West Brom that the Owls were at least outclassed by a side destined for promotion but a similar display in a 2-0 home loss to Reading the following week was utterly demoralising and left Wednesday level on points with the bottom three in the table having played more games than some of those around them.

Wednesday showed little quality but did at least have some fight in a 1-0 midweek defeat at Doncaster but this had evaporated by the weekend as Leicester beat the Owls 3-0 with the game more or less over by half-time.

That result brought an end to Brian Laws reign at S6 with the club three points adrift in the Championship relegation zone but they still had over half a season to put things right……………