The Owls have another attacking option available for this weekend

Henrik Pedersen has praised the qualities of the returning Ali Al-Hamadi, describing him as a ‘pressing monster’ and a ‘specialist.’

It has been a stop-start beginning to life at Hillsborough for the Iraq international, who is on a season-long loan from Ipswich Town. The 24-year-old suffered an ankle injury and had to pull out of representing his country recently. He has made just four appearances so far, all off the bench.

But the forward, whom Pedersen is adamant is a ‘number nine’, has trained all week with ‘full power’ and looks set to be involved this weekend against AFC Wimbledon.

“He has speed,” Pedersen said. “He is a pressing monster. He likes to run from deep. He likes to be in the box. So he has some really good qualities. He's a top team player. I don't say this about him because the others are not. What I just said for him, he's a specialist. He's a natural deep runner, he's a natural person player, and then he likes to be in the box. I don't see him wide. I see him as a number nine. He's a top person and he's a leader also. He's a strong personality, so of course it's a strong player to start to have in the squad.”

With Al-Hamadi only just returning from injury, Pedersen explained they will still need to be careful with him but that he should start to ‘grow’ with more match minutes. The Owls boss spoke in glowing terms about him, which suggests he might be thinking about handing him a start.

He told The Star: “I think it would be unfair to expect that we see the best from him now after just seven or eight days training, after four or five sessions. We have to think how long he has been out over the last month. So give him a chance to grow into his role as a nine and be a part of the team, and then I'm sure we will see him growing from game to game over the next week. He worked so hard for it, and I'm really pleased that he's back in the group again.”

Wednesday return to action on Saturday hoping to extend their unbeaten run to nine matches but also get back to winning ways after going three without a victory in the league.