Head coach Gary O’Neil’s resounding emotion was one of pride at Old Trafford on Monday evening, despite suffering defeat on his debut in the Wolves dugout.
Wolves enjoyed the lion’s share of the chances against Manchester United, and felt they should have had a late penalty, but were out of luck throughout the evening and left narrowly beaten after Raphael Varane’s header.
The new head coach took heart from the energy and connection the players had with the fans, but also is focused on ensuring Wolves start finding the back of the net, pointing to bodies in dangerous areas as the way to start finishing chances.
On the defeat being tough to take
“We deserved something from the game, probably looking at the numbers and chances created, deserved to win. A couple of emotions – really proud of the group, to respond to the change, to the four days work, and to give a performance like that takes a lot of guts, a lot of work and a lot of effort. Obviously, a huge chunk of disappointment attached because I’m struggling to figure out how we left with nothing. Lots of positives and lots of things I’d like to improve.”
On turning chances into goals
“I think we keep doing more like today. My initial thoughts around them not scoring enough goals last year was we need to arrive in good areas, with good numbers more. We have enough talent in the group so if we arrive in good numbers, the boys will score goals, no doubt.
“I don’t think today was a reoccurrence of the pattern you saw last year, I think if the lads play that game 100 times, they score in 99 of them. Keep arriving in those areas, keep working with the players to improve understanding and how many times we arrive, and the lads will score some goals.”
On the VAR incident
“I thought it was penalty. As it does, your phone goes quite busy after a game and most people who I’ve spoken to, and in other interviews I’ve done, it’s fairly unanimous that it looked like a foul. I feel if you go for the ball and miss it, and clatter into an opposing player that hard, I just don’t see how it’s not a foul. They were fortunate to get away with that one probably and I’m disappointed it didn’t go our way because it would have been the least we deserved, to score a last minute equaliser and leave at 1-1.
“The guidelines have changed around behaviour in the technical area, so no problem with that [the booking], I was asking for a penalty, wasn’t rude and didn’t offend anyone, just asking for a penalty maybe with too much energy, and a little emotional, but surprised when he came over it was me who ended up with the yellow card in that situation and not their goalkeeper, but I’ll try to behave better in the future.”
On an energy to the performance
“It’s always the players, I didn’t go on the pitch, I told them what I thought it took to get a result at Manchester United, and the players out there are the ones who deserve full credit. As you saw at the end, the fans were incredible and stayed behind after a 1-0 defeat, giving a standing ovation for what the lads gave them today. That connection between the players and fans is really important.
“Pleased for the players that they managed to put in a real, good performance, disappointed that they don’t leave with anything, but proud of the fans, the numbers we brought, how loud they were through and stuck around at the end. That connection between me, the players and supporters, staff and everyone involved is going to be big this year. The Premier League’s a tough league so we’re going to need everybody pushing in the same direction and the supporters were right with us today.”
On the season ahead
“If you watched today, you’d hope for us to have some really good games this year and win enough games to have a successful season, but taking a snapshot of one game and presuming that’s what it’s going to be like for 38 would be naive.
“A lot of work went into today and there’ll be a lot of work which needs to go in again next week to make it look how we want it to look. Not really looking at what it might be for us this year, where we might finish, what would be successful, let’s push the group and see what we can get out of them and if that means we finish top fantastic, as high as we can fantastic, just the boys fully committing to everything we ask and they’ll be absolutely fine.”
On the end of a manic week
“I’ve loved working with the group of players, I loved trying to understand where they were and what they needed to get to this point this evening. An awful lot of hours. I didn’t get much sleep this week, trying to cram a pre-season in my brain into four days, and figure out how much the group needed and could take in without overloading them.
“I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the game, we’re disappointed at the moment but I’m sure when I reflect, start to recover and look to the next one, I’ll be even more proud of what the players produced, but huge focus now on Brighton.”
