Despite going two goals behind to the Hornets, Wolves had plenty of opportunities to score more than the one goal which was put into the net by Pedro Neto with half-an-hour remaining in the match, and the head coach admits not taking the chances that fell his side’s way made a large difference to the outcome of the contest, especially after Watford went down to ten-men following the dismissal of Christian Kabasele.
On under-par performance against Watford
“The performance was not the best, it was not the way we wanted to do things; we started slow and allowed Watford to get into the game. We had a couple of chances but not more than that.
“It was tough to break their lines, which were very tight. In the second-half they got the second goal from a deflection, but then we reacted.
“Then we are with one player more and we boxed in Watford, but we didn’t create enough to really come to the draw and get what we wanted – a good performance, a team with character – we didn’t have that today. But we should improve and we should perform better.”
On conceding goals via mistakes
“It happens. When you have the ball and you want to have possession, these things happen. We have to reflect, but that’s one of our identities – we want to play, we want to unbalance our opponent and sometimes this happens.”
On pushing for an equaliser
“The spaces were not so clear and we had a lot of situations from wide areas but we didn’t finish in the box. We put a lot of balls into the box that they had to defend, but they’re strong defensively.
“We had clear chances, and we should improve. It makes a lot of difference when you have the chances that you take because you can manage the game, especially when you have such a tight schedule, but let’s work on finishing and try to improve for the next one.”
On Kabasele’s red card
“I didn’t see the image clearly, but all the players said that Diogo [Jota] was going for a clear chance on goal, but VAR is this. When you are on the other side you cannot change.
“VAR must work and we must adapt, and we must get used to VAR, especially the fans – they don’t like it. When a crowd is singing something like that it’s really, really disappointing for everybody.
“Premier League football is known by good referees, good decisions in the game which allow a rhythm to the game, and we all want this to continue.
“I think the referees are very good and one of the things I believe is that they should make the decisions on the pitch, stick to their decisions, because they see it without VAR out there to change their decisions.”
