VIDEO: Sheffield Wednesday boss Carlos Carvalhal backs Owls to rediscover their goalscoring touch

Wednesday are averaging just over a goal a match in the Championship and have found the back of the net only three times in their last four outings.

All of the five teams above Carvalhal’s side in the second-tier have scored more than the Owls’ 28 goals in 25 matches this term.

But Carvalhal is keen to stress that he has been deprived of the services of some of his major attacking threats in recent weeks, including Kieran Lee, Gary Hooper and Fernando Forestieri.

“The last month was very hard to my staff and I to manage a lot of games with important players out,” he conceded. “We tried to do our best to push the players and achieve points.

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“In the process, we haven’t had Gary Hooper, who has five goals in the team, we didn’t play with Kieran Lee at 100 per cent, who has four goals.

“Fernando, with six goals, didn’t play in four and came directly to play in the last game so we are talking about more than 50 per cent of our goals out from our team in this period.

“If you take out the source of 50 per cent of goals from any team in the world, it will affect the team for sure.

“Can you imagine Chelsea being without Diego Costa or Eden Hazard? Or if Manchester United were without three players?

“I think we are doing very, very well under these circumstances. We have had three players out who have scored 50 per cent of our goals and we are still running and fighting and winning points.”

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Wednesday have suffered just one defeat in their last nine matches and Carvalhal is sure his team will only get even stronger over the coming months.

Carvalhal, who completed the signing of Charlton Athletic left-back Morgan Fox yesterday, said: “The future will be more bright. Barry Bannan is better. Gary Hooper will be back soon.

“We have some expectations that Marco [Matias] will be back soon but we are still waiting for him. He is just doing physical training so far.

“Nando [Forestieri] will be better. He played in very difficult circumstances also against Wolves because he didn’t train much. He didn’t perform so well but we know the value of the player and he will perform better in the future.

“Callum did very well in the first 45 minutes but then in the second half he had some problems as he hadn’t played in a long time.

“We expect in the future, even though we don’t have Kieran, that we will have more power in the attack and everybody more fit and ready. We believe in the future we will be better.”

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