Nahki Wells and his Bristol City team-mates will be looking to get back to winning ways when they host bottom side Wycombe Wanderers in the Sky Bet Championship at Ashton Gate on Boxing Day.

Three successive league defeats have resulted in City losing precious ground in the promotion race.

However, City striker Wells is confident his team can turn around their flagging fortunes and get the promotion bid back on track.

“It’s no hiding away from the fact that our performances have dipped,” the Bermuda striker told The Royal Gazette. “I think all of the key areas in a football match we’ve kind of dropped off.

“First and foremost, we’ve been hit by an enormous amount of injuries.

“I think we have ten players that you have to consider as real genuine first-team contenders injured, but that’s just something we have to deal with because it does happen in football. You kind of have to deal with what happens and get on with it.”

City have also struggled to score, having gone goalless each of their three straight defeats.

“We have not been scoring regularly like we were at the beginning of the season when we were averaging two goals a game whilst keeping plenty of clean sheets and not conceding a lot,” Wells added.

“But now we are also conceding, so we kind of have to snap out of it and get back to what we know brought us success.

“It has been difficult but we are very confident that the work we have been putting in this week will come to fruition on Saturday.

“We are totally looking forward to the weekend fixture on Boxing Day against Wycombe and very confident that what we have been working on we’ll try our best to take into the fixture to hopefully get back to winning ways.”

City suffered a 1-0 defeat away to Preston North End in their previous league outing last Friday while Wycombe played to a 1-1 draw against Wells’s former club, Queens Park Rangers, the next day.

On a personal note, Wells hopes to sharpen his own game in the attacking third of the pitch.

“I’m not happy with my output,” said Wells, who has found the net five times in 21 appearances this season. “I’m under no illusion that I feel as if I should have more goals, of course. But equally I understand why I’m not in and around the double figures where I would like to be at this stage.

“I’ve played in various positions, which I would consider as abnormal to me but feel from a performance perspective I’ve done all I can.

“I’ve played off the right, played off the left, so it’s a few contributing factors along with us having not really performed as an attacking side — and equally no other team-mates have been scoring as well.

“There’s obviously an underlying issue that we aren’t performing as a good as an attacking unit, and that makes it a lot more difficult to score goals because we aren’t playing fluid, attacking football like we were.

“But always keep the faith and I’ve been through various patches of not scoring before.

“Last season I had a good season, scored 20, and I had period around this time actually where I went 11 games without a goal, so that just shows you that it could be tough and you can still have a good season.”

The Wycombe match was originally supposed to be attended by a limited amount of spectators for the first time since March.

However, home matches will continue to be played behind closed doors after the recent reclassification of Bristol into Covid-19 restriction Tier 3.

“Obviously disappointed to hear that we are going into Tier 3 after lots of mental preparation that we’d be expecting some fans back on Saturday, considering I haven’t played in front of fans since March,” Wells said. “Very disappointing for myself, the fans and club as well.

“But we just have to deal with what we have to deal with, and can only hope and pray that things change sooner rather than later and that we can get fans back into our football stadium to give us a little bit of an edge.

“We just have to wait and see how things transpire.”