- Little between the teams says Gray
- Newcastle edge friendly contest 1-0
- Injury update from Owls' head coach
Stuart Gray reflected how small margins win games, which was exactly the case when Newcastle visited Hillsborough on Wednesday.
The Magpies emerged 1-0 winners from the friendly encounter, with Ayoze Perez slotting home midway through the second half to secure victory.
But the boot could easily have been on the other foot, with Wednesday coming close on at least three occasions to making the breakthrough.
Gray said: “The margins are very fine. We see it time and again in the Championship and tonight we played a Premiership side and saw it once more.
“We were on the attack and might have scored, Newcastle broke upfield and the ball is in the back of the net.
“That was the only disappointment really because overall we played very well and come out of that game with a lot of credit.
“I made quite a few substitutions and you could tell by the look of the players who came off that they wanted to stay on the field.
“That’s an indication of how well we played but at the end of the day we lost the game to a very good team with very good players.”
Gray went on to issue an update from the injury room, with problems mounting for the Owls’ head coach.
He revealed: “The news is not great for Caolan Lavery. He has a cruciate injury that will require a brace for a month and then he will need about two months of rehab after that.
“Keiren Westwood has tweaked a cartilage but the good news there is the surgeon doesn’t want to operate and Keiren, being the character he is, just wants to crack on and get back out there as soon as possible.
“With Jeremy Helan, he has an abductor strain and that will be four to six weeks, which is a real blow because Jeremy is rarely injured.
“Lewis Buxton, though, has his boots back on and is running, although Saturday at Barnsley will probably come a bit too soon for him.”