Oldham Athletic rally in extra time to knock Sheffield Wednesday out of the FA Cup

Will Sutton popped up in the 109th minute to head home a loose ball from close range after a free kick, handing Oldham Athletic a 2-1 win over Sheffield Wednesday that was settled in extra time. In this FA Cup tie, the home side had to grind it out to the finish in a match that had slipped from their grasp twice.

Oldham saw little of the ball, just 29.3 percent possession, but struck first after the break. In the 65th minute, Calum Kavanagh finished with his left foot from the center of the box, assisted by Mike Fondop, to make it 1-0. Sheffield Wednesday, who controlled the ball for nearly the entire match, responded ten minutes later: Davis Keillor-Dunn leveled things with a left-footed strike from the center of the area, set up by Sean Fusire, making it 1-1, a scoreline that held through the end of regulation.

With the score tied, the match went to extra time, and that's when Oldham struck again. In the 109th minute, from a free kick, Will Sutton headed home from close range to make it 2-1, which proved to be the final score. The rest of the extra period turned into a Sheffield Wednesday siege, with shots from Callum Slattery, Di'Shon Bernard and Will Grainger all missing the target, until referee Martin Woods blew the final whistle.

Dominance that didn't show on the scoreboard

The numbers make clear who controlled most of the match. Sheffield Wednesday racked up 775 passes to Oldham's 326, and won twice as many corners. Still, the home side was sharper in the final third when it mattered most.

In post-match xG figures calculated from the match's shots, Oldham Athletic generated 1.462 to Sheffield Wednesday's 1.099, a gap that backs up the result even though both sides had one big chance apiece.

What the preview said

Before kickoff, our projection gave Oldham Athletic a 52 percent chance of winning, against 29 percent for a draw and 19 percent for a visiting win, with expected goals of 1.53 for the home side and 0.85 for the away side. The final result, a 2-1 win for Oldham that needed extra time, lined up with that favoritism, though the path there was rockier than those numbers suggested, with a deadlock that held for more than 40 minutes between Kavanagh's goal and Sutton's winner.

The match also produced yellow cards for Di'Shon Bernard, Yan Valery, Callum Slattery, Sean Fusire, Gus Scott-Morriss and Manny Monthe, along with a forced first-half substitution when Connal Trueman came on for injured goalkeeper Ashley Maynard-Brewer at Sheffield Wednesday. With Sutton's goal in the 109th minute, Oldham Athletic walked away with a win that had a bit of everything: an opponent's dominance that wasn't enough, two tactical strikes, and a finish deep in extra time.