Sheffield Wednesday’s defeat to Nottingham Forest on Wednesday evening was an obvious disappointment given our latest results, performances and run of form but all fans would’ve known there would be a hiccup somewhere.
The problem was, it was such a hiccup and such a bad day at the office that the result was always going to gain a serious response from some fans on social media.
With Forest taking a 2-0 lead before Steven Fletcher gave us hope in the 88th minute, that probably tempered reactions somewhat, but not a lot.
IMO I do not know what the Jos see’s in Matias and Nuhiu, wouldn’t even pick them for my U18’s Sunday league team. Sat Fletcher and Fessi have to start. If Jos doesn’t start picking his strongest squad against better teams, we are going to slowly start going towards relegation.
— Gary Evans (@gaz78swfc) September 20, 2018
Too many poor performances tonight. Reach, nuhiu and matias where the culprits. Dawson dodgy again. Need to compete more and stop dropping off teams. #swfc
— Barx (@Barx_SB) September 19, 2018
After seeing matias and nuhiu tonight I cannot wait for hooper to come back and smash one in on front of Leeds fans #SWFC
— Liam????????♂️ (@liamward_6) September 19, 2018
Awful all over tonight. Reach for some reason is undroppable but hasn’t got above 5/10 all season. Palmer has his critics but better than Baker. Fox is, well Fox. Matias ain’t good enough and neither is Nuhiu #Swfc
— Nicholas Purdy (@purdynicholas) September 19, 2018
Little praise for #SWFC. Very busy, worked hard but aside from 1 chance for Nuhiu, offered little going forward. Disallowed goal was from a set piece, actual goal took a massive deflection. Fans, as always, travelled magnificently, looking as though they sold out the away end.
— Michael Redford (@mredford17) September 19, 2018
Reach, Matias, Nuhiu all garbage. Crying out for Forestieri. Start Fletcher on Saturday. Need to up the tempo from the start too. And maybe start passing it 5 yards AND finding a #swfc player. Made Forest look like Madrid.
— 190892O_F_R (@OFR_190892) September 19, 2018
Not at the races today. Forest weren’t brilliant but they had that little bit more quality. Nuhiu was anonymous and Reach had his worst game in a Wednesday shirt IMO #swfc
— Billy Seamus Fenelon (@BillyFensterFen) September 19, 2018
The above fans certainly rounded on Atdhe Nuhiu at the fulltime whistle, which is a little unfair in my eyes. From a purely statistical point of view WhoScored actually had the 29-year-old as our sixth best player on the day – which in fairness isn’t saying a lot, so I think perceptions have probably been shaped here given the fact he failed to get a single shot off during the game, and his passing accuracy was below 45%.
There were worse on show than him though, and although Fletcher, Josh Onomah and Tom Lees were our better players on the day (and the only ones to get a rating of 7 or above), Fletcher’s score of 7.20 as best shows that everyone in the squad was off the pace.
With fans naturally split on him anyway, he’s almost the quintessential ‘Marmite’ player, with only one goal in his last eight appearances in total, it is understandable why some think it’s time for someone else to get a shot.