Riis double steers Preston past Sheff Wed

A brace from Emil Riis helped Preston to a 3-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday in the Sky Bet Championship.

The Dane poached a 29th-minute opener and sealed the points late on after an exquisite equaliser from Josh Windass just before the hour, earning his team back-to-back league wins for the first time under manager Paul Heckingbottom.

Sam Greenwood scored Preston’s second goal from the penalty spot in the 64th minute.

Danny Rohl’s men started strongly and had two chances within the first four minutes as Michael Smith almost beat goalkeeper Freddie Woodman with an audacious long-range lob before Windass saw his low strike fly narrowly wide via a deflection off Andrew Hughes.

A bizarre injury to one of the refereeing assistants created a delay of almost five minutes, halting the early pressure of the visitors, and that inadvertently allowed Preston to regain composure before eventually taking the lead with their first shot of the match.

Ali McCann’s driven ball to the back post was headed back across the six-yard box by Jack Whatmough and Riis got just enough of a touch to guide it away from keeper James Beadle and into the corner.

Preston had restricted the Owls to very little after a shaky start and they should have taken a stranglehold on proceedings early in the second half.

McCann had most of the goal gaping but fired straight into Max Lowe after latching onto a fantastic cutback from Greenwood and the Leeds loanee soon went from provider to goal chaser, engineering himself some space before crashing a venomous 25-yard effort off the crossbar in the 57th minute.

A minute later, the visitors broke and Windass received the ball from Djeidi Gassama and, from a similar position to Greenwood just moments before, curled a delightful finish into the far corner.

The game was swinging from end to end as Greenwood stung the palms of Beadle from just outside the box less than a minute before Dominic Iorfa clumsily brought down Josh Bowler in the penalty area for a penalty.

Greenwood had been North End’s stand-out performer in attack and he sent Beadle the wrong way from 12 yards to score a deserved fifth goal of the season.

Rohl’s team were far from out of it, though, and ought to have equalised once again shortly afterwards when substitute Ike Ugbo bundled the ball through to Windass but, with just Woodman to beat, he lacked composure and fired straight at the onrushing keeper.

It proved a costly miss as Riis squeezed in a decisive third goal in the 79th minute, his seventh of the league campaign, after Beadle had saved his initial effort and the shot before that from Greenwood.

The managers

Preston’s Paul Heckingbottom:

“That’s my favourite win since I’ve been here. I really enjoyed it. Moments of good football but I really enjoyed our heart and the spirit and the fight that we showed as well.

“When we had moments in the game when we got on top, (Sheffield Wednesday) changed how they played out and we got it wrong because we weren’t listening. We didn’t have the same fire and spirit, getting things wrong, and we weren’t aggressive enough in certain areas of the pitch.

“At half-time, that masked my message to the players. I didn’t talk about all the good stuff we’d done. We had to be better with those things because then, whatever change we make, we show the will to then deal with it and that’s why it’s my favourite win.”

Sheffield Wednesday’s Danny Rohl:

“We have to defend better and we have to ease our mistakes. This is an opponent that is not scoring too much at the moment and we gifted them goals.

“It’s always the same players that make the mistakes. They have to step up. This is about man-marking without the ball, keeping your opponent in view, and then you can defend as a group.

“You have the feeling that you are controlling the game in midfield but to take something you have to be better.”