BLACKBURN Rovers boss Owen Coyle was left to rue the ‘bizarre’ and ‘incredible’ decision which cost his side the point he felt they deserved in their 1-0 home loss to Sheffield Wednesday.

Rovers thought they had equalised 11 minutes from the end of normal time when Marvin Emnes blasted the ball into the net after Darragh Lenihan’s cross dropped into his path.

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However substitute Danny Graham was adjudged to have been offside and Coyle said: “It was bizarre. The cross was slid across the box and I didn’t see anybody offside. It came out and Emnes smashed it home.

“I spoke to the fourth official and the linesman has said that Danny Graham was offside but I’ve watched it back and, when the boy clears the ball into Marvin Emnes’ path, Danny Graham is easily four yards behind to his left-hand side. He hasn’t made an attempt to get on the ball.

“If the ball comes to Danny and he knocks it in then I’d understand that, he’d be offside, but he was four or five yards away from it.

“It was an incredible decision and when all is said and done it has cost us.”

Former Burnley striker Steven Fletcher scored the only goal of the game to end Rovers’ two-match winning run in the Championship.

And Coyle, who tried to sign Fletcher in the summer before he joined Wednesday, said: “We dominated the game in terms of the possession but I’ve got to be honest I don’t think we were incisive in terms of our quick passing.

“But we certainly controlled the game and we had a couple of half-chances to get in front before Fletcher scored. There were three or four headers I felt we should have had some sort of impact on before the ball finally arrived to him.

“But we picked ourselves up and Marvin Emnes had a wonderful, gilt-edged chance to get the equaliser.

“Sheffield Wednesday paid us huge respect by coming to sit behind the ball, with all the wonderful players they’ve got, because they recognised we’ve been in decent form.

“I can’t fault the effort and the application, I just felt we didn’t have that sharpness in the final third which we’ve had in the last couple of games. If we’d had that I truly believe we would have won that game.”

It was Wednesday's first away win of the league campaign.

And Carlos Carvalhal, manager of last season’s beaten play-off finalists, said: “It was one of our more consistent games this season, more tactical and compact.

“Why we did this is because we understand the way that Blackburn play, we respect them a lot.

“They did very well in the home game and won their very last game.

“We decided to create a good block to protect our goal but at the same time using some strategy to try to create chances and score.

“In the first half we did really well. We scored one fantastic goal from Fletcher but had two or three clear chances also to score.

“In the second half we closed the doors and windows and stayed back to let Blackburn play. It was very difficult but we blocked them very well.”