Owls of despair over controversial spot kick

SHEFFIELD Wednesday boss Alan Irvine thought his side were hard done by following their 2-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest.

He was particularly unhappy at the penalty given for the Reds' opening goal.

"I thought we deserved to get something out of the game," said Irvine.

"There was only one person in the ground who thought it was a penalty because the shot clearly struck Darren Purse on the back. It knocked us out of our stride for 10 or 15 minutes.

"But we talked about a few things at half-time and were in the ascendancy for the second half. I thought we might actually go on and win it because we were on the front foot when we scored the equaliser.

"But when you put into context how good a side Forest are, we can take a lot of heart from the performance. If we perform like that in our other games, we will win more than we lose."

Forest boss Billy Davies had sympathy for his opposite number over the penalty. He said: "It was a soft one and if I was their manager I would have been very disappointed by it.

"I was just pleased that we showed the character to win what was a very difficult game against a team who had won four out of their last five matches and were clearly working very hard for a new manager.

"It was a good test for us, having lost our first game in 20 last weekend. But it was important to dig in and show the mettle we needed to come off the pitch with three points."