Wednesday Hold Firm to Knock Out Southampton

"They came at us and we stood there and took it," said the man in the Wednesday goal, Emmanuele Ienco, hoarse and grinning in the tunnel. "You could hear the old ground. You could feel it." He had just spent ninety minutes watching Southampton pass the ball among themselves and still finding no way through.

It finished 2-0 to Sheffield Wednesday, a Championship side at home to a Premier Division one, in the Carabao Cup on a September night that belonged to the stands as much as to the eleven. Southampton had 63% of the ball and ten shots, four of them on target, and 571 completed passes to Wednesday's 332. The game does not ask who passed it best. It asks who put it in the net, and Wednesday did that twice.

Rhain Gadie got the first, and he had done the unglamorous work besides, five interceptions before he was replaced on 56 minutes. Sam Sweeting, on loan from Liverpool, spent his evening at right-back going the other way, five tackles won and twelve and a half kilometres of running, and it was his assist that set up the second. Emmanuel Chimezie, who came on at 56, supplied the other and was the liveliest thing on the pitch for the half hour that mattered. Ienco cleared six times in front of him.

Southampton's own night was made of absences. Six regulars were missing from the squad, among them the goalkeeper, the striker and both wingers, and their replacements had barely played together. Edson Pelicano, nineteen, led the line and had three shots, one on target, before he came off injured with five minutes left. Ben Stevenson ran 14.3 kilometres and made four key passes; Jorge Ávila, a £35.3m signing from Fortuna Sittard in August, made his second start and could not turn the passing into anything Ienco had to save.

There was an old boy in Wednesday's ranks too: Rob Davies, ten seasons at Southampton from 2047/48 to 2057/58, 37 games and seven goals, now a Wednesday striker. He did not score. He did not need to.

Wednesday changed shape as the night wore on, starting in a 4-4-2 and finishing in a 4-3-3 with Micky Cohen and Marcos Loureiro on, and the changes held the game where they wanted it. The crowd of 26,013 sang the last ten minutes out. Southampton, with their Premier Division money and their possession, go out. Wednesday wait for the next draw.