Gary O’Neil says Wolves lost too many individual battles in the second half, which meant their hunt for a Premier League win this season continued.
Wolves led at the break at Villa Park on Saturday through Matheus Cunha’s well-taken goal, but a 73rd minute equaliser for the hosts changed the momentum and the Old Gold couldn’t recover their control. Villa finished strongly to win the game, but O’Neil says the defeat could have been avoided, had Wolves stood up to pressure better.
On differing performances first and second
“We just failed to cope when we came under some pressure, which is obviously going to come away from home at Aston Villa, when you’re 1-0 up. The pressure was always going to arrive and there are some key moments in that second half around winning tackles and dealing with crosses that end up costing us, and the game goes away. It felt like it got away from the boys fairly quickly, when there wasn't an onslaught on the goal, and Sam wasn't having to make saves.
“We knew that at some point we would have to withstand some pressure, but it wasn't like they were banging the door down. There were a couple of situations where if we want to compete with Aston Villa, we have to do better with. The first goal comes from a tackle. Second goal comes second phase set play. We lose somebody around the back, and then that's it.
“The game's 2-1, and you can push and you can fight. We obviously leave ourselves a bit open for the third. The lads are finding out the hard way at the moment that you can't just play well for a bit, fight and scrap and do well in duels for most of it, because the little ones that we're not doing well in at this moment are costing us.”
On the momentum of the equaliser
“There's nothing in the game. There's no problem. Structurally, everyone's in shape, the team's good. Sometimes it takes more than that. You have to find a way to, when there is a duel and you're 1-0, and the ball's bouncing around, we have to come out with enough of those. There was probably a few in the second half, man for man battles it felt like we lost.
“We lost too many in the second half, which wasn't the case in the first half. The lads knew that there would be pressure second half. They knew it would be tough, and you're not going to come here and win at a canter. You're going to have to dig in and you're going to have to scrap, and we came up a bit short in a tough test second half.”
On Mosquera’s injury
“It doesn't look good, but obviously no real info on it. The stuff doesn't look good at this moment, which is will obviously be a huge blow for us. We’re already slightly short in that area to pitch. So, to lose Yerson for a while will be a big blow.”
On the group’s emotions
“The group are disappointed, as they rightly should be. We knew it was a tough start, but the group understands that we can play well in bits, but then when the game does start to get difficult, which it will, we're not going to outplay everybody for the whole game, and the shape of the team is not going to protect us from everything, there needs to be some grit.
“They do show that, they're a group that does give everything, but then they're finding it hard way at the moment. Not too much in the game, but again, we have accept that we didn't do enough to take anything from it.
“We're down the bottom of the league now. So, we need to fight, we need to scrap. Playing good football and being the team that we maybe want to be is all well and good, but we're not going to dominate games for the whole thing against Aston Villa and Liverpool.
“There's going to be moments in there where we need to act and behave like a team that scrapping for everything, and that’s what we need to instil between now and the next game, a way to still keep the good bits, because there are obviously a lot of them going on. We make sure that we're better when it gets tough.”
