Jack Grealish and Erling Haaland found the back of the net inside the opening 20 minutes, before Kilman’s defensive partner Nathan Collins was dismissed with an hour of the match remaining. Despite keeping tight at the back with one less man on the pitch, Wolves were unable to turn the game in their favour and Kilman believes his teammates will be able to recover well and be ready to fight again against West Ham United following the international break.
On making a slow start
“It was very tough, especially when we conceded the two early goals and having a man sent off, it made it a very tough battle for us. It was very difficult for us to take today.
“It wasn’t great, but for both goals we should have done a lot better. But even when we had a man sent off we started to play a bit better, so maybe if we’d have started off playing like that earlier, then maybe we would have been a bit closer to them.
“We were playing against a top team and you’re going to get punished if you’re not on your game from the start.”
On defending with 10 men
“it’s obviously easier when you keep playing with the same person, when you play out from the back and you keep the ball, and we did that for the most parts. Obviously having a man down in the second-half it was tough, but we kept doing that and we tried to do our best, but it wasn’t our day today.
“To be honest, when we did get a man sent off, we started to play a bit better, we were better on the ball and we decided to start to take more risks and play with our personality.
“Getting the man sent off made us feel more relaxed although it’s not something that should be done, and we shouldn’t have conceded those two goals in the first place.”
On battling with Haaland
“He is a very good player, it was very tough, but of course I love the challenge of going up against the best players. It’s tough going up against every play at City, because they have many top players.
“You saw that today with the subs who are coming on, they make like for like substitutions, so they’ve obviously got world class players.”
On bouncing back at West Ham
“We need to keep positive and although we have to talk about the game now and review what we did, it’s important that we focus on the next game and push ourselves to go again.
“We’ve got a bit of time to reflect and some of the boys will be going away on international duty, but they will come back again and we’ll have to make sure we come back stronger.
“We’ve got big personalities in our group so we will be picking ourselves up over the break, ready for the next one.”
