Sheffield Wednesday hoping for Barry Bannan Boxing Day boost as midfielder trains ahead of Fleetwood Town trip

It is far from disastrous at Hillsborough, where the Owls are third in League One, two points outside the automatic promotion places, after 22 games. The team is unbeaten in 14 games in all competitions.

But the last three have been drawn and performances have been below expectation.

Bannan missed the 0-0 draw with oxford United with a hamstring injury suffered at Exeter City the previous week, but has been back in training with George Byers and Dennis Adeniran, so manager Moore should have options to pep up his midfield for the Boxing Day game at Fleetwood Town.

"I usually like to speak to you the day before (a match) when I'm more specific on numbers but at the moment all of them are training – George, Baz, Dennis are all training," revealed Moore, who will take charge of his 100th game as Wednesday manager at Highbury.

"But there's a couple more training sessions to go before that.

"As I speak here now hopefully all three of those players will be available, along with the rest of the group."

Moore admits the team's current form is puzzling him.

"Sometimes you scratch your head because I'm all about performance," he said. "That's a real big factor for me.

"Certainly the last couple of performances haven't been us for whatever reasons.

"There's lots of contributing factors but I try to just look at us. There's a million and ones things that can happen so it's really just maintaining our focus.

"We pride ourselves on performances because we believe that with good performances we get results. Certainly the last couple of performances have been a little bit of a concern but we've identified areas where we need to be better and making sure we're not slipping up with potential parts of our game that could have led to us losing.

"That's the bit we've really been focused on.

"Whether we win a game, lose a game or draw a game we always do a post-match analysis and look to where we can be better. That's always been the same from day one.

"We never pat ourselves on the back after a convincing win or get too down after a loss, we're always looking at areas where we need to improve."