The Portuguese laid a delightfully lofted ball into the path of the defender, who directed a right-footed volley into the bottom corner of the net for the only goal of the contest, and although Neves was delighted to have helped his side earn a ‘massive’ three points, as well as another clean sheet – meaning Wolves have conceded just two goals in their last six matches – he believes there is still plenty of improvement to be made ahead of the visit of Chelsea to Molineux on Sunday.
On three points at Brighton
“It’s a massive win for us, to be honest. We knew it would be a hard game, Brighton playing at home, they’re a really good team who play good football, and they have a lot of good quality as a team. But we also knew that we needed to get three points today.
“We have a massive month against really hard teams, so today, it was really important to win. We try to win every single game, but we knew today was massive and fortunately, we got the three points.
“But what a game from the team. We should score more goals, and we need to improve on that, because at the beginning of the second-half, the first 10 or 15 minutes, we had two or three big, big chances to finish the game and score. But that’s football.
“It would have given us a lot of confidence, because when you’re winning 1-0 in the Premier League, you know the other team will come with everything at the end, like they tried to do.
“We need to improve, but it was very good, a massive win for us, and we’ll go again on Sunday.”
On the match-winning goal
“What a super finish from Saiss! He has a lot of quality and when he’s got a chance, he normally scores or creates dangers to the other team. In the second-half he had another one and hit the post.
“But it’s all about the teamwork. Fortunately, when the ball came outside of the box, they thought I would shoot on goal, so they stopped, and I saw Romain in a good position.
“Fortunately, the ball went where I wanted it to go to him, and what a finish as well. Right foot, like a striker.
“When we do games in the training sessions when you can choose your positions, he always wants to play up front. He’s a good finisher as well.”
On a sixth clean sheet of the season
“We don’t want to concede goals. We were solid, compact, and everyone was helping each other. We didn’t concede many chances, but they are very dangerous on set-pieces, but we did that well.
“We think we’re doing well this season, we’re defending well as a team, because everyone defends and everyone attacks.
“We need to improve as a team to score more goals, because the way we are playing, we deserve to score more goals.
“Today, especially at the beginning of the second-half, we played really well, we had big chances to score, but then it’s all about the team. We have our strikers defending as well, we have our wingers running a lot to help the team at both ends of the pitch.
“But it’s all about the team. It’s all about the work we do every single day. We like to think game by game and get as many points as we can.”
𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 ➕ 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 @rubendsneves_ making it look easy. pic.twitter.com/1ZYHq8VfcF
— Wolves (@Wolves) December 15, 2021
On fresh injuries to Ait-Nouri and Hwang
“We have the players to cope. We don’t have the biggest squad, but we have players with a lot of quality and players who want to help the team.
“Everyone is ready to play when the boss calls them to play. It’s all about the teamwork and the guys are ready to go.”
On issues with the referee’s equipment
“We need to deal with that. Of course, it’s not easy because you look to the screen and see 90 minutes, but then there’s still 15 minutes left to play.
“It’s really hard, but that’s football. It sometimes happens with injuries, but today was not an injury, it was a technical problem, but we need to be ready to deal with those situations.”
