Maximilian Kilman felt Wolves gave themselves a mountain to climb by falling two goals behind early on to Newcastle United on Saturday afternoon.
However, the captain felt his side were worth more than the final result which he believed didn’t show a fair reflection of the game, as the Old Gold – who were badly affected by injury – spurned several chances to get something from the tie.
On defeat at St James’ Park
“It’s a tough result to take. We started the game really badly and when you come to St James’ Park and find yourself two goals down, it’s really hard to get yourself back into it.
“But I felt in the second half we stopped them getting on the ball and we played better. We did have some chances and we started to dominate possession, however, we didn’t take our chances, so it was a difficult day.”
On conceding early
“That’s what really killed us because coming here and conceding two goals inside the first 30 minutes makes it really tough. They didn’t surprise us by counter-attacking, but there were moments where we weren’t brave enough on the ball.
“They didn’t steal possession, but when you make mistakes, Newcastle have got some really good players so they’re obviously going to punish you if you leave gaps in behind.”
On spurning chances
“If we would have scored one of our early chances, that definitely would have given us a chance. In the second half, we had some good spells of possession and created some good chances, but we needed a bit more quality. If we do get a goal back and have a bit more quality in front of goal, then it would have been a much tighter game and anything could have happened.
“The result wasn’t the fairest reflection on the game, but it just wasn’t our day. We need to just focus on the next one, go back into training and look to bounce back next weekend.”
On focusing on the positives
“We’ve got a lot of positives, especially in that second half, with the way we dominated the ball. It’s not easy to do that against Newcastle, so we did some good things, but on another day we might have defended a bit better and maybe scored a goal or two.
“We just need to start the game better, because if we’d have done that, it would have been much tighter going into the latter stages of the game and would have given us a chance to take something from it, so that’s definitely something we need to look at and try to improve ready for the next game.”
On looking ahead to Fulham
“One bad result doesn’t change how we do things. We can’t dwell on this game, we need to move on because we’ve had some good games recently.
“We lost today, but we need to get back on the training pitch because we’ve got two massive games coming up before the international break, so we need to make sure we’re on it.”
