Carvalhal says '˜storm has gone' at Wednesday

A solid if largely unspectacular campaign thus far has seen the Owls fail to win too many style marks in contrast to last term’s thrilling joyride to the Championship play-off final, but head coach Carvalhal has been assuaged by his side’s current sixth-placed position and winning mentality.

And he fervently believes that there is plenty more to come as the season approaches the home straight.

Carvalhal, whose side can move five points clear of seventh-placed Norwich City with victory over visiting Birmingham City in front of the Sky cameras tomorrow evening, is making no apologies for some functional Wednesday performances in 2016-17, with disruption to his squad options playing its part.

A case in point arrived last Friday when Carvalhal’s side, minus the likes of Tom Lees, Sam Hutchinson and Gary Hooper, chiselled out a 1-0 win at Wigan when the Portuguese admitted that the be-all-and-end-all factor of winning was the only thing that interested him.

Hutchinson returns from suspension tomorrow, while Lees and Hooper may also be involved in a game which is likely to see deadline-day signing Jordan Rhodes make his home debut at Hillsborough following his move from Middlesbrough.

With improved selection options at his disposal and a kinder schedule with a run of six of their next nine matches coming on home soil, Carvalhal believes that his side can finally now inject some significant impetus into their season at a key juncture.

Confident that the Owls, at home in 10 of their remaining 17 league fixtures, are in a better position than this time last year, Carvalhal said: “I am absolutely sure. We have more points and are in a better position.

“We needed to pick up points when we felt the boat was in the storm. It is good that with the storm, we went in a good direction.

“Now I think the storm has gone. Wigan was the beginning of the rest of the season. It was very important to achieve three points and now we will try to put the boat faster at the end.”

He added: “My teams usually do better in the second half of the season than the first.

“I said last season that I had expectations that we would do better in the second part of the season than the first and we did. I have the same expectation this season.

“With the squad we have now, we can move players and I have a feeling that we will do good.

“Now we have more options and more dynamic and are more ready.”

While acknowledging that some of the Owls’ performances this season have been pragmatic as opposed to polished, Carvalhal believes that it is wrong for anyone to suggest that his side are defensively-minded, despite only today’s opponents Birmingham and Derby County having scored fewer goals from those sides currently in the top half of the Championship.

Of all those sides in the top 12, only the Rams have found the net less times at home, but Carvalhal is urging any doubters still left underwhelmed by the Owls’ season so far to focus on the wider perspective of the club’s healthy league position and the ‘long game’ mantra of peaking at the right time.

He added: “It is important that everybody believes and stays in the same boat and everybody goes in the same direction.

“We have 10 home matches left and seven away so we have a good chance to do something good, but we must all be in the same boat. It is important to achieve a good position.

Bridling at talk of the Owls being overly defensive, he added: “We never play in defence.

“We try to win all the games. If we did not play like that, how could we win at Newcastle and Huddersfield? How did we beat Newcastle and Arsenal last season? We go into all the games to win.

“Sometimes the difficulty of the games is completely different.

“We played Wigan and they are a team who don’t concede many goals. They are organised and don’t lose the balance and the pitch was not good. We understood how to play against them in those circumstances.”

Meanwhile, Carvalhal insists he is happy with his central defensive options behind his main pairing of Lees and Glenn Loovens and says that the cover provided by Vincent Sasso, Hutchinson and if necessary Daniel Pudil and even Jose Semedo is sufficient.

Explaining why he made no transfer moves in January, he said: “A centre-back is something we have tried to find since the beginning of the season, but all of the top centre-halves are very expensive.

“We decided we would just bring one player if this player could be better than the players we have.

“We did not find any players with the price that are better than we have, so we decided to stick with the players we have and give confidence to them.

“If we have any situations, we have three players who can play in the position. We don’t think that we really have a problem there.”