What Jos Luhukay hopes his Sheffield Wednesday players learned from defeat to Fulham

Aleksandar Mitrovic bagged his ninth goal in his last nine Championship matches to sentence Wednesday to their first loss in five matches.

Victory helped Fulham close the gap on second-placed to Cardiff City to two points and stretched their club-record unbeaten league run to 19 matches.

Luhukay had no complaints over the result, claiming the Owls were beaten by the “better side”.

The Dutchman, who made one change to his starting line-up, bringing in Daniel Pudil for the injured Morgan Fox, told The Star: “I think our players learned from this game and that is important.

“Fulham are very strong and have quick players on the side. They gave us a lot of work. They are as a team very good.

“We tried everything we could to stay the game. Fulham closed the areas in the transition for us. It was very hard.”

He admits the Owls struggled to cope without Barry Bannan in midfield. The 28-year-old was forced off early on after suffering a recurrence of his groin injury.

“We have seen in the last few games how important Barry is for us,” said Luhukay. “Barry is a very important player for us and we lost 20 or 30 per cent of our football when he went off.

“We lost one of our best players and we couldn’t compensate for that in the second half. It was difficult. Fulham were too strong for us.

“It is the story of our season that we seem to lose one player every game. It is not easy.

“It is very difficult but we must handle it and we have done that for the last three months.

He expects an instant response when the Owls go to Queens Park Rangers tomorrow night.

Luhukay said: “Tuesday is a new game. We must be positive and react very fast.

“I know my team and my players. They have done well in the last three to four weeks and had good results.

“We must fight and try to get a good result in London. Hopefully we can do well.”