Sheffield Wednesday defender Tom Lees happy to talk about new contract once Christmas schedule is over

The centre-back was delighted to be one of three players – along with Barry Bannan and Adam Reach – to be offered new deals since Tony Pulis became manager in November, and pleasantly surprised the offer came relatively early in the season.

The captaincy was taken off Lees at the start of the campaign and handed to Bannan but the 30-year-old remained a regular pick for then-manager Garry Monk and his successor.

“I only got my offer last week, the general outline of what they're offering me,” said Lees when asked about a new deal. “I two games last week and all this madness going on but as I've said I'd be happy to stay at the club.

“It's a case of finding out from the club what they're offering me in a bit more detail and just going through the process every contract renewal goes through. I'm definitely happy to sit down and go through that with them.

“I'm grateful to the manager and the club for offering me a new deal and I will try and sit down with them as soon as we can once we get this busy Christmas schedule out of the way and get it ironed out.

“It's just in the normal process of how these things work and it's only just begun.

“It's probably something you don't talk to each other about and I can't speak for Baz and Reachy but from my point of view it's come a bit earlier than we thought because over the last few years it's not been sorted until later in the season.”

Lees made his 250th appearance for the Owls against Coventry City at the weekend, marking it with the only goal of the game, since joining from Leeds United in 2014.

If the show of confidence is a filip to Lees, so their first win in nine attempts under Pulis has been to the team as a whole. They travel to Blackburn Rovers on Boxing Day having moved off the bottom of the Championship on goal difference courtesy of beating the Sky Blues.

“I wouldn't say there was an increase in pressure (as the team went winless) because we've been bottom of the league since the get-go, so we've always been chasing, it was more just the form, the (four) consecutive defeats, we wanted to ge that behind us.. We were aware every time there's an opportunity to pick up three points at the moment it's massive.

“We don't want to be in this position as the season goes on, we want to get out of the bottom three as quickly as we can and get climbing so it was important.

“Like we said at the start of the season, we haven't got time to waste opportunities to win games so every game is vital and unfortunately in the last couple of weeks we've let slip a lot of points so it's important we take every opportunity now.”

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