The captain has led Wolves to the last 32 of the Europa League with a game to spare, with Thursday’s draw in Braga ensuring qualification. Although frustrated to not win the game, Coady insists the club should be proud of how far its come, and he’s already looking forward to the next phase of the European adventure.
On securing qualification
“It’s huge. That was the goal when we set out in this competition, that’s what we wanted to do, and we’ve done that. We can look back on it, an absolutely amazing achievement, and where this club’s come from, it’s absolute night and day.
“So, it’s a massive achievement, but it’s a little bit of a mad feeling because we felt we should have won the game and we need to look at it because it’s disappointing, it feels something like a defeat, but I think we need to look at the achievement and look at where we’ve come from, and that we’ve actually got out of the Europa League group stages.
“It’s an amazing competition, we want to play in it every year. Every game you come into, every stadium you come into, you take every game as it comes and it’s amazing competition, and one that we’re learning from every single game.”
On different halves
“People were saying at the start of the season we weren’t performing in the first-half and now we are and conceding goals in the second-half. So, it’s something we need to improve on because it’s disappointing tonight.
“We’ll look at the achievement and look back on it at the end of the season – it’s a serious achievement what we’ve done and where this club’s come from, but we need to manage the game better, but I think all in all we’ll look at the achievement we’ve made, it’s absolutely amazing.”
On the tough conditions
“To be honest, it’s one of the hardest I’ve ever played on. It was tough yesterday when we were training, so we knew it was going to be a tough game, but I felt like we dealt with it well, especially first-half.
“We managed the game, we had the ball, we managed the ball, we scored some fantastic goals as well and we kept their chances at bay, so it’s something we want to look at, as the night wore on, listen, it got worse, but it was the exact same for them as well.”
On learning for the future
“We learn every game. We’ll look back on the game, we’ve got another game coming up in quick succession now on Sunday, which we’re really looking forward to. We wanted to come here and try to get top of the group. We’ve not done that, but we’ve achieved what we need to achieve, so we’ll look at it moving forward, learn and hopefully get better.”
