Football: Carbone heals battered Owls

Sheffield Wednesday 1

Carbone 56

Leicester City 0

Attendance: 24,851

Whatever the best Italian idiom for an eventful week might be, Benito Carbone has certainly had one. Two goals and a sending off in the catastrophe at Blackburn on Monday were followed yesterday by the diminutive striker both winning and converting the debatable penalty that gave Wednesday their first win of the season.

Carbone had done little in the match until 10 minutes into the second half when the ball fell to him on the edge of the Leicester penalty area and his clever flick wrong-footed Matt Elliott, who was then adjudged to have bundled him over.

"From where I was, it looked as though he lost his balance," the Leicester manager, Martin O'Neill, said. "I may be proved completely wrong, but I thought it was a harsh decision."

If it was an arguable ruling, the kick itself was clear cut, Carbone blasting it past Kasey Keller for what turned out to be the only goal of the match.

It was a match which Wednesday, understandably after the seven-goal barrage at Ewood, had started by looking shell- shocked. Leicester, fresh from an altogether more positive experience in the shape of their late salvage operation against Arsenal, were by far the sharper and more constructive side.

With Elliott marshalling a solid defence, the midfield of Muzzy Izzet, Neil Lennon and Robbie Savage knocking the ball around well and Wednesday struggling to contain the muscular threat of Emile Heskey, it seemed a matter of time before the visitors made their superiority pay.

But that early dominance did not yield enough in the way of direct efforts at goal, with Kevin Pressman saving from Pontus Kamark and Elliott and seeing Heskey head just too high before Leicester's promise began to peter out.

As it did, Wednesday warned that they might yet seize their chance to rehabilitate themselves, Keller making the save of the half from David Hirst's header after Jon Newsome had flicked the ball on.

Hirst went close with a header from a corner before Carbone's penalty roused Leicester in defence of their unbeaten record.

"We reacted to the penalty when we should have stepped up the tempo earlier," said O'Neill, who tried every possible permutation in a search of an equaliser, finishing with four men up front and everyone else pouring forward in support.

For the Wednesday manager David Pleat, a hard-working win over in-form opposition amounted to a return to health. "We got off the hospital bed today," he said later - a reference both to the battering his side took at Blackburn and to the strained resources he had at his disposal yesterday.

With six players ruled out by illness and injury and another two forced off during the match, there was an abundance of guts in Wednesday's performance.