The head coach saw his players fight for every ball at Brentford last week, and play with more aggression, which is an element of the game he’s been calling for over the last month. Davis will be without the suspended Diego Costa for the visit of Brighton & Hove Albion, so has been working on solutions this week, and believes he has the group well placed to take on an “organised” Seagulls side.
On showing fight at Brentford
“I thought that was very apparent in our approach. We have to play with more aggression, we’ve got to compete better, particularly away from home, but also at home. It’s got to become a habit, we’ve been very inconsistent with that, we recognise it as a group of players and staff, and we’re trying to improve it.
“We’ve tried to set that sort of culture, empower the players with taking responsibility and coming up with the solutions, rather than it always coming from the coaches. They’re the ones that are doing it, are out there every day for each game, so it’s much more powerful coming from them and through the leadership group they can implement that and get their points across.
“We’ve seen that togetherness and in the last week they are in a good place in that respect. I know that doesn’t guarantee results, but certainly you’re getting positivity around the place. I think we’ve impacted the environment, myself and James have worked hard to change the mentality, but ultimately if we could get more points, that would be the best thing for us.”
On addressing lack of goals
“We’ve got to try and look at something different, with different players. We’ve tried to work on something different this week and slightly tweaked things. With Diego missing, we don’t have the focal point, but we can get that from a different area, so that’s what we’ve tried to do.
“Get some penetration, some thrust, some intelligence in different areas with different players. That’s the road we’ve tried to go down and hopefully we might get some success from that tomorrow. We have options. We don’t have an out and out Diego type to replace him, but we’ve got to be bright and creative, and try to find a different way.”
Building up to Brighton.
— Wolves (@Wolves) November 4, 2022
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On assessing his time in charge
“All I can say is, everybody from outside will know how hard we’ve tried to work and do things properly. It’s all you can do. If you do things professionally, you do things right, it gets recognised. The best of doing it is maybe asking the staff here, to see what they think has changed and how it’s impacted the players. They’re probably the best judges of that, rather than us.”
On Brighton’s managerial change
“He [Graham Potter] obviously set some high standards before he left and the new coach has just carried that on, because it was successful. I have no doubt, from what I’ve seen of them, that there’s a slight stamp of what he’s changed. You can see it.
“That structure you put in place from any coach takes time and you can see the foundations have been built very strong at Brighton and they’ve been able to carry on. It’s flowed and continued successfully for them at the moment.
“They’re very organised, which they were before. I think they almost have a bit of freedom to show real intent and be decisive in forward areas. That’s been the slight change, the speed in which they attack, and numbers which they attack with. I wouldn’t want to be disrespectful to what was built there because it was working and superb anyway. That structure has been very strong and built over a period of time, so they’ve been able to carry that on seamlessly.”
On Jimenez’s return
“I’ve watched him training. Doing one to ones. I spoke to him, and he said he’s progressing well. It’s been good to see him moving around well and he looks good at the moment. I think it would be unfair to set timescales.
“From a mental aspect, he’ll be ready when he’s ready. We don’t want to push him, we want to make sure he’s right and feels right, before he returns. He seems to be in a good place and progressing well. It’s important he’s back and fit and ready for us.”
