Sheffield Wednesday are set to be led into Saturday’s game by caretaker manager Sean McAuley as the Owls look to put an end to a shocking run of 4 successive defeats and 9 games without a win.
After a steady start to the season the team have struggled since October with clean sheets and goals proving equally hard to come by and it seemed to matter little who Brian Laws selected or what formation was utilised towards the end of his reign as the team continued to under perform.
McAuley will no doubt have is own ideas on how he wants the team to play and will have been putting this across to the players in training this week. Whilst he has the fortune of a virtually fully fit squad to pick from with plenty of options in most positions he is hampered by the fact that as individuals and collectively the vast majority have underperformed badly when given the opportunity in recent weeks.
Lee Grant is perhaps the only first team regular that has shown a good level of consistency throughout the season so far.
At the back none of the players have covered themselves in glory thus far to say the least. McAuley has to choose from Simek, Spurr, Buxton, Beevers, Purse, Hinds and possibly Gray although given his experience with the academy he could even consider youngsters Wragg and Wood if he wanted to really shake things up.
In the midfield the most common partnership of O’Connor and Potter has come in for criticism with the back four getting little defensive support whilst the goal scoring opportunities provided have been few and far between of late. Sean McAllister has been given an opportunity out wide recently and his displays have been encouraging but his abilities may be better utilised in the centre of the park. With Tommy Miller struggling with injury the options in this area are perhaps not as varied as others in the team but Tom Soares was brought in on loan to freshen things up and should either be given the chance to show what he can do or sent back to his parent club if he is not going to be involved as it is simply a waste of resources.
Out wide the two out and out wingers, Jermaine Johnson and Etienne Esajas have been so inconsistent and as a result have failed to hold down a regular place. The two have rarely been utilised together and this would certainly be a risk given the lack of defensive support they are likely to offer the full-backs but could potentially create more opportunities for the Owls to bring an end to their goal drought. Michael Gray offers more stability as another option.
Up front none of the strikers have produced for weeks but they would perhaps argue that they have been feeding off scraps due to a lack of creativity. Marcus Tudgay has looked out of sorts, Leon Clarke has failed to build on some positive signs from last season and Luke Varney has struggled to find any consistency. In fact the only Wednesday striker that has been able to find the net of late, Akpo Sodje, has had his loan spell at Charlton extended whilst as with Tom Soares, the loan signing of Warren Feeney appears a puzzling one given that he has barely been given a run out in the four matches since joining the club.
Whatever side McAuley chooses to go with, if his last tenure is anything to go by then the odds are on the team putting an end to the five match goal drought sooner rather than later. In October 2006 Paul Sturrock departed following a run of just one win in nine attempts. In the next four matches McAuley guided the Owls to three wins and a draw with the team bagging ten goals in the process.