Alan Biggs: I get it, but this is why I disagreed with Sheffield Wednesday manager Darren Moore

You don’t have to agree with everything a manager says to understand why he’s saying it.

Unusually, I disagreed, at face value, with quite a bit of what Darren Moore said after Sheffield Wednesday’s fifth game without a win.

But, at a nervy stage ahead of a potentially pivotal Easter, there were obviously reasons for his insistently upbeat tone, contrasting sharply with some of his recent criticism of his team.

Whether it was good psychology or bad, we’ll know soon enough.

But this was surely a calculatedly positive stance. Moore is no fool and is sensitive to the mood around a big club playing below its station when expectations are high.

He realised all too well there was a pall of depression around Hillsborough at 5pm last Saturday. If anyone was going to lift that, it was his hand on the thermostat.

Moore could either turn up the heat on his players, and stoke the crowd’s frustration, or he could remind everybody that Wednesday were back on top of League One despite the disappointing 1-1 draw with Lincoln City.

He chose the latter and, most tellingly of all, made uninvited references to a league table he normally refuses to address.

That, for me, was the giveaway - the reason why the Owls boss complimented his side’s “drive” to win, credited draw specialists Lincoln (this was their 19th) and claimed “missed chances” that should have won the game.

Here he stretched a point for most of us who watched it. My main worry was that they created very few clear ones and certainly none that were unmissable.

Here was a side labouring without Josh Windass and George Byers and, with no sign of either returning, Moore must have felt there was no point turning the screw on those trying to make up the shortfall.

Also, Lincoln were so set into a defensive shape that Wednesday’s dominance of the ball in the second half was automatic and a minimum requirement.

The stat highlighted here last week is growing. It’s now just four wins in 18 matches when the Owls have not kept one of their famed clean sheets.

But the reality check at the end of all this is that, despite everything, Wednesday are still in a position to strike out for automatic promotion.

Let’s hope Moore’s bid to ensure there are no hang-ups from his players pays off at Oxford on Friday and at home to Accrington on Monday.

Things could all look very different after that.

And at a time when you’d imagine there must be internal pressures as well as external, with Moore and his players under demands to deliver from a high wage budget, I think the big man is deliberately shifting most of it onto himself.