Sheffield Wednesday availability latest – and Xisco apologises for Owls’ start

Wednesday were beaten 3-0 last time out as Swansea City picked up their first win of the season on Saturday, but back on home soil the manager is hoping that they can finally succeed in picking up three points of their own.

It’s been a rough start to life at Hillsborough for the Spaniard, but there was good news this week after it was confirmed that they had sustained no new knocks over the past few days, leaving just Momo Diaby out injured for the Black Cats tie.

He explained that ‘everybody is ready’ for the game at S6, with the likes of Michael Ihiekwe, Reece James, Will Vaulks and Djeidi Gassama being left out in South Wales due to selection choices rather than unavailability.

Mallik Wilks was seen training with the first team on Tuesday and could be closing in on his return to action, while Barry Bannan is fine after struggling with a knock earlier in the month.

Xisco, meanwhile, had apologised to fans for the start to the season that his side have had, though insists that they are working hard to turnaround their fortunes.

"We can change nothing in the past,” he told the media. “But we can learn from our mistakes and right now, our big focus is towards Friday night… We have made some big mistakes sometimes. We need to find the balance, one of the key things in the Championship is to try and find the clean sheets and arrive in more dangerous situations for our strikers.

"We are looking at these situations where we need to improve and can only say we are so sorry for our start. It’s not the start what we want and what the fans want - and we need to say sorry for that.

"But we can’t change the past and can only look at the positive things to try and give all the best in 90 minutes on Friday. We are working very hard for this.”

Wednesday and Sunderland lock horns at 8pm on Friday evening.