Sheffield Wednesday slumped to a 3rd successive home defeat on Tuesday evening as Peterborough capitalised on some woeful Wednesday defending to take a 3-0 1st half lead, eventually running out 4-1 winners.
Following Saturday’s 1-0 home setback against Notts County, Gary Megson reverted back to a 4-5-1 formation with a number of changes in personnel.
The Owls started encouragingly enough without really threatening the Peterborough goal but were dealt a blow when Mark Beevers was forced out of action following a clash of heads. Daniel Jones came on to take the left-back slot with Mark Reynolds reverting to centre-back.
Both sides went close after around 20 minutes, Lee glancing a header narrowly wide and then Teale’s deflected cross forcing Posh keeper Joe Lewis to tip over his crossbar.
The breakthrough for the visitors came on 25 minutes through top scorer Mackail-Smith. Some indecisive defending from Morrison and Reynolds allowed the striker to race through the middle and he made no mistake in slotting past the advancing Weaver.
Morrison went close to making amends when he headed wide at the other end but with ten minutes of the 1st half remaining Peterborough doubled their lead thanks to some more lamentable defending. The visitors broke from an Owls corner and as Jones followed the ball rather than the man Tomlin was left in acres of space to score with a nicely taken chip. To describe the defending as schoolboy stuff would be a harsh comment on that level of football.
Five minutes before the break Peterborough left Wednesday with another mountain to climb as Mackail -Smith broke down the Owls left and his cross was only half cleared by Reynolds and Boyd fired it back with interest into the bottom corner of the goal in front of the Kop.
Megson replaced the ineffective Jermaine Johnson with Paul Heffernan at half-time, moving to a 4-4-2 formation and the change had the desired effect 6 minutes in as Madine’s low centre was well finished by the former Doncaster striker. Wednesday had already gone close when Miller’s low drive was blocked prior to getting that goal back and they were clearly in the ascendency at this stage of the game.
Heffernan had a second goal chalked off when Giles Coke was adjudged to be offside when he put the ball across goal and Peterborough then saw one disallowed for the same reason when Bennett latched onto a free-kick in an advanced position.
Jones the provided a perfect cross from the left that Teale somehow managed to miss completely when it seemed easier to score from close range.
Having weathered the storm that the Owls had created during the 2nd half the visitors sealed the result with 10 minutes to go when Boyd’s shot inexplicably squired through the grasp of Weaver and into the net.