Spunky Xisco again shows scrap in white-knuckle Sheffield Wednesday press conference

Xisco is a man who is passionate about football coaching, determined in his vision for where he wants to take Sheffield Wednesday. He is a man willing to fight for where he wants the club to go. That much is clear.

He is also a man charged with keeping Wednesday in the Championship - perhaps more. The request for patience has been steadfast and understandable; his was an unenviable task handed over deep into the summer and a late start has had the opening weeks of the season starting from the back tee.

On that basis, patience Wednesday have received and patience Wednesday will continue to receive. An encouraging first half in Saturday’s defeat to Preston Noth End was the first public display of green shoots of progress, as has been detailed on these pages and by other outlets in the days that followed.

Patience on some sections of the terraces will wear thin without continued shows of progress, you’d think - there were a smattering of boos at the final whistle of Saturday’s narrow loss - but despite a start of three defeats from three there will be no grand proclamations on the wider scene at Sheffield Wednesday here. Not yet.

He’s known to be a charming chap with an infectious grin, but what has been interesting over the last couple of weeks has been Xisco’s occasional spikiness in conversations with the media. It’s scrappy and spunky with no false platitudes.

It would be remiss not to mention of course that English is not the Wednesday manager’s first language and that his passionate European delivery is a little at-odds with what we’ve been used to in Owls press calls in recent years.

Questions over his football philosophy, while his team have been losing, have seen him go on the offensive. In an unusual moment during his pre-Cardiff City press conference he fired back at BBC Sheffield reporter Rob Staton to question what his preferred football style was. He was told the preferred football philosophy of a radio presenter didn’t really matter.

He’s spoken with scorn on Preston’s ‘rugby-like’ style of play and has passionately questioned the relevance of queries about senior players not currently at the forefront of his thinking. He’s suggested journalists are looking for problems when asked whether younger players would be moved out for experience before the EFL loan deadline.

Posed with a innocently-intended question about where he sees the versatile Liam Palmer playing most of his football this season, he smiled playfully before going changing direction to surmise: “Maybe I play him as a six and he not play good, then you say ‘Why he put him number six, he not play here..’”

What he made crystal clear in his near hour-long pre-Bluebirds presser was that results were not the be-all and end-all of his methods at this stage and seems to have grown frustrated at any nervousness around when it will be that Wednesday register their first point of the season.

Xisco has seen enough progress on the training ground to believes those first points will come in Wales this weekend. He said he is trying to build a tangible on-field football philosophy he feels the club haven’t truly had in previous seasons. Few would argue. That takes time.

He scraps. He fights. He shows traits you want in a football manager. On reflection, it’s a little different to what we’re used to, but it’s no bad thing. After all, press conferences shouldn’t be comfortable love-ins.

Perhaps he’s trying to garner a ‘backs against the wall’ mentality. Perhaps he just believes some of the media’s questioning is unduly negative.

Perhaps it’s simply high-time us clueless mob sat pontificating from behind our keyboards were given a bit back.