Vitor Pereira feels he saw the ‘true spirit’ of his team as Wolves produced a battling performance, peppered with quality, to claim all three points on the road against 10-man AFC Bournemouth.
Playing an hour with a man advantage after a red card was shown to Illia Zabarnyi, Wolves took the lead shortly after thorough Matheus Cunha’s 14th of the season, but the head coach thought – regardless of the sending off – that his team more than deserved their sixth win of the Premier League season.
On winning at the Vitality
“I'm very happy because I saw in the pitch the true spirit of a team. It's not easy to play here because they have a good team, and the way they play creates a lot of problems.
“From the first minutes, we have some problems, but after this, we start to be compact, to control the game, to create opportunities, and in the end, I think we deserved the result.”
Winning on the road 😍 pic.twitter.com/qtM9xNBh5i
— Wolves (@Wolves) February 22, 2025
On playing against 10 men
“It happens with a lot of teams, that sometimes we think that with one more player, we can lose positions, we can lose the balance, and this is very dangerous situation.
“But we kept the balance, we felt that in the moment we'll score, and in the second half, we stayed compact, but not with the ball like I like every time, but with a position of balance on the pitch, and we had three or four situations to score the second goal.
“In the end, I think it is a result that we deserved, because the team ran and worked together, showed true spirit as a team, trying to play, and it is a good result.”
On Zabarnyi’s sending off
“To be honest, I didn't see it very well. It’s very difficult for me because every time I'm trying to analyse what will happen after the situation.
“It means that my eyes were in the balance, making sure our line is balanced or not. It means that when I looked at the situation, it was on the ground, and I cannot speak about things that I don’t see.”
— Wolves (@Wolves) February 22, 2025
On Munetsi’s all-action display
“What I'm asking him is to help the team as a midfielder and to appear from the back into the box. And he has again a situation to score, and it was not today, but every time he appears there he has a chance to score.
“But what I like in this player is the guy is the player that can miss a goal in the opponent’s box and then after 30 seconds, he is defending in our box.
“This is what we wanted when we look for him. We wanted to find a physical midfielder who can support the other two midfielders.”
On Cunha scoring once again
“We need players to work a lot, to fight, to run, and we also need players inside the pitch that in a situation, technically, can decide a game.
“Cunha is this special player that can give us this moment of magic.”
