Wednesday head to Derby this weekend looking to further cement their place in the top six and maintain their strong run of form.
Last season, it was a close-fought battle between the two sides, as they matched each other almost stride for stride into the play-offs.
With expectation high at both clubs, Carlos Carvalhal is keen to keep his focus on what he calls the fundamentals and he told swfc.co.uk in the build-up:
“I don’t look too much into the house of my neighbours, I prefer to look to my house and arrange everything there and make sure everything is in a good way.
“We don’t want to lose the focus of what we must do.
“When you manage a big club like Sheffield Wednesday there are a lot of things that can disturb you but the best thing to do is focus on the fundamentals.
“The fundamentals to me are my players, the way that we play, the process and what we can do to improve the team.”
Incidentally, the Owls will be out to arrest a winless run against the Rams that dates back to the 2005/06 campaign – some 16 meetings ago.
But for Carlos, the most important thing is to see further improvement in his team after a good run of recent form in the Championship.
He continued: “We can’t be happy at any time, we must be all the time thinking that we can improve things and we can do better and better. This is my focus all the time because this is a very hard competition.”