Don't fall in love with loanees? Amorous Sheffield Wednesday are on the charge and ready for romance

But Sheffield Wednesday fans returning home from their important win over Bristol City on Saturday have butterflies in their belly. They're texting their mates excitedly and they're setting the table for a romantic meal. Barry White is on the sound system, there are supermarket flowers in a vase and the lights are dimmed. They're hopelessly devoted and falling head over heels.

They should know better after romances past. Mark McGuinness was stolen away by some Welshmen only last season. But what is life without love? And what is Wednesday's survival charge without Ike Ugbo and Ian Poveda? As footballing ménage à trois might go, the one burning between that loan pair and the Owls terraces is set to candlelight and growing in passion with every passing matchday.

In Ugbo they have uncovered a source of goals, the chances spurned in months gone by now taken. Football is a fast-moving beast and things can change in a couple of barren matches, but reservations expressed by onlookers over his ability to 'be that guy' are looking more foolish by the minute. They were reasonable reservations to have at the time of his signing, a tally of four goals in half a season of selection hokey-cokey at Cardiff City hardly ringing the Haaland Klaxon, their willingness to tear up the deal held with parent club Troyes a cause for concern.

In four appearances for the Owls he has jumped past that tally of four already, double-dips in vital clashes against Citys Birmingham and now Bristol presenting a man on fire. It's another long-forgotten love affair of Hillsborough past, the deal Paul Sturrock did to bring Kenwyne Jones to South Yorkshire at the end of the 2004/05 season inspired a middle-period of a campaign that ultimately ended with promotion. There'll be high hopes Ugbo can fulfil a similar role at the business end of this campaign; early days they may be, his goals ratio is even better than Jones' whirlwind effort of seven in seven.

Poveda slinks about with the feel of a belly dancer, all winks and jinks and moments so saucy they're barely suitable for work. When Danny Röhl puffed his cheeks and cried out for the sort of player that could open up matches and offer some x-factor back in January, the subtext was that they might not get their man. A deadline day deal to race the Colombian international down the M1 from Leeds has proven inspired. He gets the Owls up the pitch and out of positions they were seemingly stuck in not long ago.

While the duo have undoubtedly changed the game for Sheffield Wednesday, their combination is not the only hugely impressive factor at play. Had a time machine sprouted at S6 during the first weeks of the season and planted its passengers in front of this Owls side, you'd witness plenty of questions. Danny Röhl and his coaches have been the architects of an improvement scarcely believable, Wednesday playing with a tangible style of play for the first time in this correspondent's five-year stint covering the club. In possession they're inventive, pacey and daring. Out of possession they're rambunctious and tireless. To imagine where the side could be had Röhl been brought in to replace Darren Moore is an act of sadomasochism.

And what of - perhaps most of all - the rest of the Wednesday side?

The likes of Ugbo and Poveda will grab the openings to conversations at the bar of course as Wednesday fans drink to their third win in four matches and an impressive resurgence in the relegation scrap. But it is those around them that are perhaps the most impressive given the scars of those opening weeks and a defeat at Huddersfield that gave them a choice; fight or flight?

Liam Palmer, Marvin Johnson, Michael Ihiekwe and Will Vaulks are playing important roles having had their very involvements at the club threatened this season, Barry Bannan is a man renewed at 34. Anthony Musaba has jumped out of a form funk to produce match-turning moments of brilliance and Pol Valentin might have delivered the finest improvement to a footballer seen at the club in many years. Heading back to the well yet again after the John Smiths smashing has been hugely impressive. When Bannan quickly bit back at the strains of resignation to warn those on the outside not to write them off, he wasn't kidding.

Sheffield Wednesday remain in the bottom three and the task remains a tall one. The results elsewhere serve as a reminder that the side can do all it can and still won't have everything their own way.

But with romance in the air at S6 and those who had said 'never again' now willing to love again, they've given themselves every chance. Whatever happens, that in itself is an achievement to be commended.