Sheffield Wednesday: own mistakes to blame for Carabao Cup exit to Everton, says Garry Monk
The Owls crashed out to two goals inside 10 minutes by boyhood Blade Dominic Calvert-Lewin that Monk himself described as ‘avoidable’.
The result gave Monk, who made no fewer than eight changes to the side that drew with Fulham on Saturday, his first taste of defeat in a Wednesday dugout on a night that saw a host of chances wasted.
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Hide AdThe 40-year-old also took time to praise the spirit of his side who refused to give up after that nightmare start.
“A lot of our performance offensively and defensively were very good,” he said.
“The only times we really got hurt were through our own mistakes where a cheap ball that we gave away or a loose pass or not quite holding the ball when we need to hold it, they broke on us.
“I thought we recovered well and offensively we created enough opportunities to score a couple of goals and had we taken them we’d have been alright.
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Hide Ad“It’s about creating that mentality that we’re going to push and fight and show that commitment. You saw that against Fulham and I think you saw that tonight. That’s what you need.”
Sam Winnall forced a good save from England stopper Jordan Pickford with the score at 0-0 and Dominic Iorfa missed a free header at the back post later on in the first half. Chances came and went for the hosts on a night that saw them have the better of the run of play for much of the match.
Monk said: “Against a quality side like that it’s going to be difficult but I think we stuck to it manfully, we put in a huge amount of effort and we had our chances.
“We know we have the quality to create chances and we know defensively we can be very good.
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Hide Ad“No one likes losing and we need to react to that now at the weekend but there were a lot of good things for us.
“Maybe on another night if we’d been clinical with a couple of the earlier chances we would’ve made it a different game.”