Louise Taylor's match report:
And with that, I’m off. It’s been, well, not as good as I hoped. Still, it has been encouraging for Wednesday, who as their captain said made an in-form top-flight side appear pretty ordinary and defended with intelligence and commitment. Bye!
Adam Reach talks
We’re still alive. I thought we did outstanding against a Premier League team in a good run of form. We had chances, unfortunately couldn’t take them, but we’re still in the Cup – for now.
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Final score: Sheffield Wednesday 0-0 Swansea City
90+3 mins: It’s over. It wasn’t very good.
90+2 mins: Wednesday’s best chance of the game! There’s suddenly space inside Swansea’s half. Nuhiu and Joao exchange passes and then work the ball to Reach on the right. He burst into the box. Will he shoot? Will he cross? He tries the latter, but Joao is just offside, and anyway can’t finish.
90+1 mins: There will be three minutes of stoppage time. I’m not sure why – there have been no injuries, or memorable incidents of any sort.
88 mins: Dyer shoots low from the corner of the area, and the ball trundles across goal and wide. Both sides have genuinely attempted to score here, but they’ve both just not been very good at it. Swansea’s back three have been very impressive, mind.
85 mins: Ki runs into the area and falls over, Clucas picks up the loose ball but runs into a defender, Routledge takes control and tries a cross, Wednesday head clear.
73 mins: Reach trips Ki as he tries to stop a Swansea break, and is booked.
82 mins: Swansea are, by all accounts, not at all keen on the idea of a replay. With any luck, this might prompt them to take unwise risks in search of a winning goal, and get rewarded or punished for it.
80 mins: Wednesday take Wallace off, and bring on Lucas João.
80 mins: Swansea eventually take the free-kick from the incident that saw Wallace booked. It’s a lovely one, curled and dipped into the area, but nobody can quite get onto it, and it bounces to Dawson.
79 mins: Swansea’s final change sees Clucas come on for Olsson.
78 mins: Now Wallace is booked, for tripping Noughton.
77 mins: Nuhiu goes all Cruyff again, spinning into the area, cutting inside and then shooting low but not very hard towards the near post. Very fine work in the build-up, but another poor shot at the end of it.
76 mins: Roberts and Wallace tussle for the ball on the touchline. Wallace falls over and it goes out of play for a Swansea throw-in, but as Roberts tries to take it Wallace grabs him round the ankles, and then Roberts stands on his stomach. This is all more comic than it is mean.
75 mins: Swansea are doing some concerted pushing now, camped around Wednesday’s penalty area, but just can’t come up with a decent cross or final pass.
73 mins: Both teams have now had eight shots, of which three have been on target.
72 mins: That’s a nice move from Swansea, which ends with Dyer passing to Ayew, who cuts onto his right foot but then misses the target with his shot.
71 mins: Ayew’s nice pass inside takes out four defenders and gives Routledge a chance to shoot from the edge of the area. Instead he carries it on a bit and prods it into a defender.
70 mins: This game is not, it must be said, terrifically exciting.
70 mins: Wednesday make their first change, bringing on Pelupessy for Butterfield.
68 mins: Ayew has a shot, latching onto the ball after Carroll robs Jones in midfield and having a go from 25 yards, but it rolls straight to Dawson.
67 mins: Another Swansea substitution: Jordan Ayew is on, and Abraham goes off.
65 mins: The day’s first booking is collected by Van der Hoorn, who wafts a leg towards Hunt and ends up landing his studs on his opponent’s foot.
64 mins: Swansea’s substitution sees Narsingh go off, and Dyer come on.
64 mins: Abraham has the ball on the edge of the area, lingers on it, can’t decide what to do, so nudges a pass to Ki. He lingers on it, can’t decide what to do, and loses it.
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62 mins: Save! Well, kind of! Boyd crosses from the left, Nuhiu heads, and the ball loops gently into Nordfeldt’s arms. Still, the statisticians will put that down as a shot on target.
60 mins: Nathan Dyer is going to come on soon.
57 mins: Swansea have spent the last few minutes camped in the final third, sending in an array of crosses and failing to win a single header.
54 mins: A long ball from defence sets Nuhiu lumbering forward, and he then executes a surprisingly deft 360-degree spinning turn to get away from the defender. He then immediately hits his pass into a Swansea player, but still.
51 mins: Noughton clears Boyd’s cross from the left. There was only really Hunt to pick out, and the cross was going nowhere near him.
47 mins: Abraham passes the ball into the area. Narsingh and Fox chase after it, and the Swansea player gets there first and then flings himself to the ground. It’s not a penalty, and is surely a deliberate attempt to win one. The referee waves play on.
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46 mins: Peeeep! They’re off! Again!
The players are back out. More football imminent.
Not a bad half, despite the lack of goals and scarcity of chances, but ominously for Wednesday for all their excellent start and composed play, they haven’t really threatened Kristoffer Nordfeldt’s goal and meanwhile Swansea have very nearly scored and should have had a penalty.
Half time: Sheffield Wednesday 0-0 Swansea City
45+2 mins: Peeeep! We have had half of the time, and none of the goals.
45+1 mins: Into stoppage time, of which there’ll be just one minute. Wednesday win a corner, from which Reach flicks a header over the bar.
44 mins: The difference between Wednesday’s approach at the start of the game and now is made clear when Boyd gets the ball on the left wing: this time there’s only one man in the penalty area, and even he – Nuhiu – is just standing about, entirely static.
42 mins: Ki’s 30-yarder flies across goal and wide. Swansea, having taken half an hour to get going, are now keeping dawson very busy.
39 mins: The header was directed too close to the keeper, of course, but from that range, and at that pace, Dawson did just brilliantly to react to it at all.
37 mins: What a save! What a save! Noughton crosses, Van der Hoorn heads from six yards out, and Dawson flings up a hand to somehow turn the ball over the bar! And then by way of encore he comes out well to claim the corner.
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36 mins: Abraham’s flicked pass finds Routledge bursting into the penalty area, but his cross is headed behind by Pudil.
33 mins: Now Abraham’s low cross from the right finds Routledge, who miskicks when he might have scored.
30 mins: Nothing comes of the corner, although it might have had Pudil been punished for shoving Abraham in the back to allow Dawson to collect the ball unmolested.
29 mins: Swansea have a throw in, which is sent to Naughton inside Wednesday’s penalty area. He chests it down excellently, creating a shooting chance. His next touch is crucially less impressive, but the shot deflects off a defender on its way wide so at least they have a corner.
28 mins: Swansea’s best attack of the game. Narsingh fools a couple of defenders with a drop of the shoulder, cuts onto his left foot and passes to Abraham, who either terribly miscontrols (more likely) or deliberately attempts a clever return pass (possibly), and a defender intervenes at the crucial moment.
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26 mins: Wednesday spring a counter, and Wallace gets into the area but takes a poor touch, allowing a Van der Hoorn to get across and poke the ball into touch.
23 mins: Swansea are showing signs of perhaps having settled into this match a little. They are even exerting a measure of control. Routledge crosses from the right, but it’s overhit and Dawson catches.
20 mins: Swansea keep the ball for a while, come forward, turn around and go back again, and them pick out Routledge, on the edge of the area, who gives it away.
16 mins: Hunt crosses from the right, and Noughton flings a leg at the ball to stop Nuhiu from reaching it first. Good defending, but yet more encouragement for the home side.
14 mins: Swansea do an attack! Abraham swings in a cross from the right, which is headed out. Ki picks up the loose ball, but then loses it. That’s it.
11 mins: Now Hunt crosses from the right, but Noughton somehow manages to beat the massive Nuhiu to the header.
10 mins: Swansea have barely been out of their own half, and have had just 27% of possession in these first 10 minutes.
6 mins: Wednesday continue to push. Boyd crosses from the left, with three team-mates in the penalty area and two more just outside it. Butterfield wins the header, but it flicks off his forehead and goes wide.
3 mins: That was excellent running from midfield by Reach, which went worryingly untracked. Promising, very promising.
2 mins: And a chance! Reach runs into the right side of the penalty area. He has two team-mates to his left but goes for goal – and Nordfeldt pushes wide!
1 min: They’re off! The home side get the game started, and immediately hoist the ball forward.
And out they come! Excellent musical accompaniment, as well. At the risk of being a little hipster, I’ve always liked the extended 12” mix – from back in the day when “remix” meant “absurdly extended intro”, but all the better for it.
The teams are in the tunnel. Kick off is less than two minutes away.
Here’s some pictorial evidence of Mawson looking sore:
Carlos Carvalhal has another chat with BT Sport:
We have a game to play, it will be a tough game absolutely sure. We move I think six players comparing with last game, but still with a competitive team. It’s not our main competition but we want to respect the competition, we want to respect the opposition. Our priority is absolutely the Premier League. In this competition we are playing like underdogs, but not because we’re worse or better than the opponents. If we go to the next stage, fantastic. If we don’t go to the next round it’s not the end of the world.
Team change alert! Alfie Mawson has limped out of the warm-up, and out of the match. Kyle Naughton comes into the starting XI for Swansea.
The Sheffield Wednesday manager, Jos Luhukay, has a chat, firstly about the added confidence gained from their midweek win over Derby:
It must be good for a lot of condience and also the trust that we can play a good game today. The injuries have a long time that the players come back but we must handle the situation as we do it the last weeks, we are thinking positive and we trust the players who we now have. We must have good defending, try a good balance and also in the transition we must try to come very fast from defending to offensive and also in the other direction. I hope we have a good strategy today.
[And finally, on Carvalhal’s return] My colleague was two and a half years here, so he knows the club, he knows the team, the fans. For him I think it is a special game today.
BT Sport have dedicated an enormous chunk of preview time to an extended interview with Carlos Carvalhal. He is very watchable, says he enjoys spin classes and has “no doubt” that he would have got Sheffield Wednesday promoted this season had his squad not suffered so many injuries.
Buying players is like buying a melon 🍉
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) February 17, 2018
A transfer analogy by the brilliant Carlos Carvalhal 👏 pic.twitter.com/ANkTBiLyhA
So far, it looks like a score draw: it’s 6-6 on the all-important team-change metric.
He’s back!
Hello world!
No hanging about, let’s rip straight into the teams:
Sheff Wed: Dawson, Frederico Venancio, Jones, Pudil, Hunt, Boyd, Butterfield, Reach, Fox, Wallace, Nuhiu. Subs: Loovens, Lucas Joao, Baker, Wildsmith, Kirby, Pelupessy, Nielsen.
Swansea: Nordfeldt, Bartley, Roberts, Mawson, Van der Hoorn, Olsson, Routledge, Ki, Carroll, Narsingh, Abraham. Subs: Dyer, Clucas, Jordan Ayew, Mulder, Naughton, Fernandez, James.
Referee: Paul Tierney.
Here is our team news today v @SwansOfficial, in association with @Ladbrokes #swfcLIVE pic.twitter.com/GykzKFmLIa
— Sheffield Wednesday (@swfc) February 17, 2018
Here's how we line up against @swfc this afternoon...#SHESWA pic.twitter.com/BbHGdajyPv
— Swansea City AFC (@SwansOfficial) February 17, 2018
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Simon will be here shortly. In the meantime you can read how much Carlos Carvalhal has been looking forward to this tie. “I am an Owl forever,” he said after the replay rout of Notts County set up his dream return …
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