What a difference a year makes!
Twelve months ago, us London Owls had just staged a protest demonstration outside the Thai embassy over the then owner Dejphon Chansiri.
It wasn’t too long before Chansiri, under growing pressure from all corners of football, finally relinquished his ownership and we eventually ‘got our Wednesday back’.
Now, under the new regime led by David Storch, we sit at the top of League One after four wins from our first five games and, while it’s still very early days, such a good start is a breath of fresh autumnal air for us long-suffering Wednesdayites!
It was a hard-fought 2-1 win at Peterborough yesterday that took us to the top.
With previous leaders Huddersfield only drawing, we now lead the table on 12 points, one clear of the Terriers.
We went ahead against Posh eight minutes before half time when Kieran Morrison chipped over home keeper Alex Bass, defender David Okagbue’s attempted clearance off the line hit teammate Josh Feeney and ended up in the net.
Morrison had already gone close earlier with a 20-yarder saved by Bass but Peterborough had their moments going forward and were close to an equaliser when Harry Leonard’s low effort hit the inside of the post before rolling across goal to safety.
Peterborough came out stronger in the second half and were level two minutes after the break, Ben Woods being given the freedom of the penalty area to head home unmarked.
Buoyed by the equaliser, the home side began to cause further problems for our defence for a period before Wednesday went ahead again 11 minutes from time.
Yan Valery met Morrison’s near post corner with what looked like his shoulder to beat keeper Bass and send the 4,000 Wednesday fans into raptures.
Peterborough again came back in the closing stages but we survived a couple of goalmouth scrambles to make it three out of three wins on the road and earn that place at the head of the division.
Manager Henrik Pedersen said afterwards: “Second half, we were much more compact. In the first half, we didn’t have the dynamic on the ball. The second half was also much better after we changed. We increased the intensity a lot on the ball.
“But now we have to be really, really proud of this week with three wins. We can see we have a strong, strong culture and we have some boys who will burn for Sheffield Wednesday.
“They love to be here and they’ll do everything they can. We also see that we have so many things that we have to do better, and for this we need training time, and it’s starting on Tuesday again.”
Lumley, Valery, Otegbayo, Cooper (Weaver 46), James, Heskey (Mitchell 57), Bannan, Slattery, J. Lowe (Burstow 58), Keillor-Dunn (Al-Hamadi 58). Unused subs: Trueman, Grainger.
