John Deehan acknowledged Troy Deeney’s quick-fire double at the start of the second half effectively ended Sheffield Wednesday’s hopes of salvaging anything from their 4-1 defeat at the hands of Watford this afternoon.

The Hornets were leading 2-0 at the interval thanks to goals from Gabriele Angella and Lewis McGugan but the Owls coach said his side still had hopes of turning the game around after the break. But any prospect of a comeback was soon dashed as Deeney made the most of some poor defending by the home side to score twice in as many minutes.

Deehan said: “We changed shape at half-time to try and become a more attacking-minded team. We went to 4-4-2 and we went out with the best intentions of trying to score the next goal which would have given us the opportunity to possibly even win the game. But as soon as it went three, four so quickly it put us really on the back foot.

“But there is some credit to be given to the players. They managed to respond, they managed to score a goal in front of their own supporters and towards the end, although again there were times when we did look vulnerable to that space in behind our defence, we made the efforts to try and go and score goals. We’ve hit the bar but we’ve just got to take our medicine today and say this is one of the games that went against us, we’ll dust ourselves down during the course of the week and be ready to go next Friday.”

Deehan and assistant boss Lee Bullen were in charge of Wednesday today as manager Stuart Gray had a long-standing commitment at his son's wedding.

Asked if this affected the team, Deehan replied: “They’re professionals and can get on with it. We had a chat in the dressing room between all of us and we’ve had some very strong opinions. Football players don’t like getting beat in a game, that’s for certain, and they don’t like getting beat in the manner they did today by Watford.

“To be fair to Watford, they’ve got some very good technical players. I think probably four or five of them came out of Serie A and Troy Deeney’s probably one of the best centre forwards in the division.”

  • Click here to read how Watford picked up their first away win for five months.
  • For the thoughts of Beppe Sannino following the Hornets' victory, click here.