Vitor Pereira says Monday night it would have been a different game had Wolves found an equaliser at 1-1 but couldn’t fault the efforts of his players.
Captain Nelson Semedo and leading scorer Matheus Cunha were amongst the absentees when Wolves hosted Nottingham Forest, but during the first half Pereira will have been pleased with how his group applied themselves. Forest managed the game to see out the win in the second period, but despite the reverse, the head coach was picking out the positives.
On the positives to take
“I cannot say they didn't run or they didn't try. We tried everything to have a different result. But, with a short squad, with the problems that we faced during the week, it's very difficult to be more competitive than today.
“To play against a team like them, a strong team, physically strong, we felt this on the pitch. They’re very fast and we conceded the first goal, and after we conceded the second goal at the end of the first half, we tried everything.
“We had the chance to score the next goal at 1-1, and it would have been different. With this team [Forest], every time that we don't have the balance to stop the counter attack, they create problems. We tried to play our game, we tried to have this balance, but with the mistakes we committed, they scored.”
On impressing in the first half
“Before the second goal, we created a great chance to equalise the game. It’s a short squad, and this week we’ve got a lot of problems. We tried and I’m proud of my players, but it was not possible. We need at least two [new] players to balance the squad.
“They tried everything to take something from this game, but this is something that we are expecting. We cannot lose our balance in the moment that we lose ball, when we lose ball, if we are not balanced, they are strong in the moment, in the counter attack, very fast players. We prepared this in training, but in the end, a lot of players out in a short squad, and we tried our best.”
On the finer details in front of goal
“We created chances but were missing the details to score. We need to give the merit to the goalkeeper, because the goalkeeper of Nottingham today made some fantastic saves.
“Nottingham is a team that when they score, it’s a problem, because they will wait for the mistakes, and when he made a mistake, they scored. This is the way that they play, and they are a strong team with this style of play.”
On his progress after two weeks
“I'm very happy with my players. If we had everybody in the condition to play, it’s a different game. With a short squad and with the problems that we faced this week, we tried our best. The players worked a lot. They fought, they tried, sometimes with quality to create the chance to score, and we created, but in the end they scored three goals and we didn't score.”
