Sheffield Wednesday: Atdhe Nuhiu ready to lead the line for Owls in training match

Atdhe Nuhiu will spearhead Sheffield Wednesday's attack in their training match with Portimonense today, head coach Carlos Carvalhal has confirmed.
Carlos Carvalhal signs autographsCarlos Carvalhal signs autographs
Carlos Carvalhal signs autographs

The big striker played no part in the Owls' 4-0 friendly success over CD Nacional in the Algarve sunshine yesterday.

But Nuhiu, new signing Jake Kean and Jeremy Helan will all feature against Portimonense, kick-off 7pm.

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The training exercise rounds off Wednesday's five-day warm weather training camp. The team fly back to England tomorrow.

"Atdhe will play and get more game time," Carvalhal told The Star. "It is important we give all the players minutes.

"We will try to do the best that we can with the players we have."

Jack Hunt and Sam Hutchinson will not be risked after picking up hamstring and quad injuries respectively last night.

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Carvalhal said: "They won't play tomorrow. We must be careful with them as we are near the competition. We don't have many options so we must be careful."

However, youngsters Sean Clare, George Hirst, Jack Lee, Connor O’Grady and Jack Stobbs are all in line to play.

Carvalhal was pleased with the shift his forwards put in versus top-tier Portuguese outfit Nacional. Fernando Forestieri broke the deadlock, claiming his third goal in as many matches just before half-time, and Gary Hooper (2) and new arrival Steven Fletcher completed the scoring.

He said: "I'm happy as they did a lot of good team work. I appreciate that a lot.

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"It was because they worked hard that they had chances to score.

"It doesn't matter who scores the goals. The most important is the team won."

There are still areas where Carvalhal believes the team can do better.

"We just need to improve the offensive dynamic," he said. "We didn't start very well and Nacional were good in the centre of the pitch.

"We must understand that if they close the centre of the pitch we must go more to the sides. We corrected these things in the second half and did better."