Birmingham City 3-1 Sheffield Wednesday: Blues score twice in the final ten minutes
- Published
Lukas Jutkiewicz has now scored seven times in four home games for upwardly mobile Birmingham City
Lukas Jutkiewicz continued his fantastic scoring form at St Andrew's as Birmingham City earned a fourth straight Championship win at the expense of Sheffield Wednesday.
Steven Fletcher had already rattled the post with a venomous 20-yard strike but made no mistake when converting Morgan Fox's header back across the six-yard box for his third goal of the campaign.
However, Blues were back on level terms just before half-time when Bournemouth loanee Connor Mahoney cut in from the left flank to send a fierce effort arrowing beyond Owls keeper Cameron Dawson.
With 10 minutes to play Jutkiewicz pounced to head in Jota's cross, bringing up his seventh goal in four home games, before Che Adams sealed victory late on.
Wednesday arrived in the West Midlands on the back of successive defeats against Middlesbrough and QPR, but were much the better of the two teams in the first period.
Jos Luhukay's side are the only team in the Championship yet to register a clean sheet and their defensive Achilles' heel came back to haunt them once more.
Blues, boosted by their equaliser on the stroke of the interval, piled on the pressure in the second half.
Lutkiewicz and Adams both saw goal-bound efforts deflected wide before each found the net in the final 10 minutes to extend Blues' unbeaten run to 11 games.
Birmingham's latest win moved them to within two points of the play-off pack, four points ahead of the Owls, who are down in 15th.
Birmingham City manager Garry Monk told BBC WM 95.6:
"To get nine points in three matches this week shows the hard work we have been on. It's not an easy thing to do, so I am very, very pleased with the run of form we are on.
"In the first 25 minutes we were as poor as we have been this season, and we got lucky, [to get the equalising goal] to be honest, it came against the run of play.
"The second half was more like us, we were aggressive, compact, and not making the mistakes we made in the first half.
"Sheffield Wednesday could have been out of sight in the first half, that's how poor we were. But we showed character, belief and a good attitude to come back."
Sheffield Wednesday manager Jos Luhukay told BBC Radio Sheffield:
"You have periods where you must control the game and that's only possible when you keep the ball.
"When you're losing the ball too much, it gives your opponent spirit and also chances and that's what happened.
"We must defend better. It's not only today - when you look at last Tuesday (3-0 loss versus QPR) and last Friday (2-1 defeat against Middlesbrough), we have now given goals away in the past three games.
"You cannot do that at this level - every team has strikers who profit from that.
"It's not a question of confidence, it's more the question of making the best decision to clear dangerous moments and we did not.
"When we have 100% focus on making the best decision, then we can win the next game against Norwich City."