Sheffield Wednesday supporters have spent long enough looking for reasons to keep turning up, so telling them to calm down now they have something to enjoy seems rather miserable.

Four wins from five, second in League One and a club beginning to feel like it belongs to its supporters again is a fairly decent antidote to what came before. There will always be somebody ready to point out that nothing is won in September. They are right, obviously, but what exactly are supporters supposed to do with that information? Sit on their hands until April, just in case enjoying a winner at Peterborough proves a little premature?

After a season in which getting back to zero points became something to celebrate, Wednesday fans are entitled to get carried away. That does not mean booking the promotion party or assuming every opponent will roll over. It means enjoying the prospect of a Saturday afternoon again, which ought to be a fairly basic part of supporting a football club.

There are also reasons to take this start seriously beyond the release of all that pent-up frustration. The obvious result to point towards is the 7-2 demolition of Bromley, and understandably so. Seven goals at Hillsborough, with different players joining in, is exactly the sort of afternoon that makes a summer rebuild feel convincing.

However, the wins against Wycombe and Peterborough offer a stronger argument for Wednesday being genuine promotion contenders. Putting an opponent to the sword tells us they have attacking quality, which we could reasonably have suspected from their recruitment. Winning when the game is awkward, when control has slipped away and when the opposition fancy their chances tells us rather more.

At Wycombe, Wednesday had to recover from going behind. Against Peterborough, they were pegged back and faced a game that could easily have escaped them. Those are the afternoons when a newly assembled side can start to look exactly like one, with individuals waiting for somebody else to take responsibility.

Instead, Henrik Pedersen was able to change the direction of both games from the bench. That is encouraging for two reasons: the squad has options capable of affecting a contest, and the manager is identifying when those options are needed. Having substitutes with impressive names is one thing, using them to wrestle back a match is another.

At Peterborough, introducing Ali Al-Hamadi offered a different problem for the defence, with balls into the channels giving Wednesday a way to stretch the game. The move that brought the winning corner came from that approach. It was a practical adjustment to what was unfolding, and those decisions can be the difference between a promising season and a successful one.

This is still some way from being a complete team. The injuries in central defence are an obvious concern, and conceding goals becomes rather less entertaining when the forwards have an off day. Al-Hamadi might now be sidelined also, which would be a major blow, and Wednesday cannot expect to keep compensating for uncertainty at the back simply by having enough quality to score again.

Equally, the fact that they are winning while those issues remain unresolved gives them somewhere to go. There is a difference between a side squeezing everything out of a settled group and one collecting points while its manager is still establishing combinations. Wednesday look much closer to the latter, which should worry their rivals.

The rebuild cannot remain an excuse for modest ambitions regardless of what happens on the pitch. It was perfectly reasonable to talk about patience when the takeover happened. Once the recruitment improved the squad and the results followed, it became equally reasonable to raise expectations.

Supporters can appreciate the work being done around the club and still expect a promotion challenge. Those positions are entirely compatible, provided a couple of poor results do not turn every encouraging development into a supposed disaster. A difficult afternoon is inevitable; another season defined by resignation should not be. There will be weeks when the football disappoints, but that should not automatically erase the progress made over the summer months.

Wednesday have already shown enough to be taken seriously, even with plenty still to improve. The Bromley result gave their supporters a wonderful afternoon, but the less comfortable victories suggest this could become something more substantial. After everything those fans have endured, they should be enjoying that possibility without feeling any obligation to apologise for it.