Sheffield Wednesday: Joe Wildsmith relishing prolonged run in Owls side

The 22-year-old, a graduate of Wednesday’s youth system, has started the Championship club’s last 20 league fixtures.

Wildsmith said: “It is nice to be playing every week. It is the first time I have had a stretch of games in my career. I feel like I’m improving every week and getting better.”

Wildsmith produced a string of superb saves in the weekend defeat to promotion-chasing Fulham.

“It is always nice to make saves but, at the end of the day, if you don’t get the win, it puts a dampener on things,” he said. “If I don’t make those saves, I’m hard on myself.

“It is nice to have made those saves but crucially I didn’t make that one more save. That’s how things go.

“It wasn’t a bad performance from the lads but the result was disappointing.”

Wednesday’s mini-revival came to end on Saturday as Fulham claimed a hard-fought 1-0 win following Alexsandar Mitrovic’s 78th minute strike.

Wildsmith said: “It was always going to be a tough game. Fulham hadn’t lost since Christmas. They had gone 18 games unbeaten so we knew it was going to be a tough match. I think we held our own and had chances to score.

“We were disappointed with the goal we gave away but I felt we definitely deserved something from the game. A draw would probably have been the right result.”