Vitor Pereira says he won’t allow his players to rest on their league position and will demand even more from them against Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.
Wolves are now 12 points clear of the drop zone, but the head coach knows there’s still work to be done, and is constantly pushing the players to evolve, allowing him to take the team in a fresh direction.
Pereira will welcome Matheus Cunha back from suspension, and while he’s been unavailable, he’s still been absorbing the head coach’s ideas and is ready to help the team once more, albeit likely off the bench.
On keeping the intensity
“If you relax, it’s a big mistake. It's my responsibility to not allow them to relax, because the next game will be very tough for us.
“We need to focus ourselves on the three points because we'll face a very good team, a strong team. I watched them yesterday and they are with fire, of course they are playing the Europa League, but I believe even if the coach does some changes, they are still strong, because they have very good squad, and we need to be ready for this kind of team. We cannot relax, because we are still in the fight.
“I’ve known the manager for a long time, since the Japanese team, and he's a fantastic coach with ideas, but he’s in a difficult season. Yesterday, I saw a team with hunger, and we need to keep our level, our ambition, committed, mentally prepared to face this team.”
On his connection with the fans
“If we win, it’s very easy. If we lose, it's difficult, but we have a good connection. I like to be with the supporters after a win, because we need to connect the energy, we need to feel the energy of the supporters, and we need to make them feel proud of our work and now I feel this energy, this connection. We are happy. Of course, we haven’t finished yet, but we are together, and together we are stronger.
“If you go there and you play with your soul, you play with everything, this is the energy that you send to them and the energy that they send to you is the same. They feel proud. If we go there relaxed, not playing with courage, not playing our football, if we don't press them, if we are just waiting for them, this is not the spirit that I like. I like a team that has confidence and fight until the last minute for the result.”
On rebuilding confidence in defence
“Tactically and mentally we are in a good shape, because when we arrived, we arrived with the tactical idea to sell, and to convince them we needed to prove that we were going in the right way with results. Correcting the things on the pitch, on the video, trying to focus the team, and to give them the confidence to play in our way, to create identity and to believe in our identity. This is nothing magic, but with small things, we can connect the people tactically, we can connect the people in relationships, we can connect the people by doing things together.
“The most important connection is when we feel that the team is suffering together. It’s not when the team is celebrating together, it’s when the team is suffering together. If you see the team trying to help each other, if I commit a mistake and I have someone close to me to help, this is the true spirit of a team.”
On Cunha’s return
“He’s committed, working and preparing himself to help the team. But we won the last three games playing consistently, tactically and mentally, it’s fair to keep going with the same team. This is my opinion. This is football. This is commitment. This is leadership. And Matheus will come to help us. He's committed, he understands, I had a conversation with him, but I will play with the same team.”
🗣️ "People think that to be a manager is the top of the world, but we have a lot of moments suffering alone, fighting inside."
— Wolves (@Wolves) April 9, 2025
Vitor Pereira on the sacrifices needed to reach the Premier League. Full interview 👇
On the team evolving during Cunha’s ban
“I think so. Tactically, when we are attacking, we are doing different movements, different things. I'm asking for different things, because a team is not closed. A tactical system cannot close on individual qualities, and when you put more things in the system, the system will show that we can do a lot of things, different movements, and we are trying to improve our style of play, especially with the ball. But Cunha is in training, he knows what we are demanding in this moment.
“Sometimes we try some new things and the test is the game, and in the game sometimes we need to push a little bit more, but if you feel that the players are not comfortable doing it, it's better to come back and go again to the simple things.
“We are in the moment of the season where we can create different things. Every season we are trying to create a new piece for the masterpiece, this is our work.”
On always learning as a manager
“I had some experiences in my career where the players are playing in a different role now, because we started to ask the player to do it. We have the system, and now I'm trying to make the system more the diverse.
“Imagine that I start to ask Rayan not to play every time outside, but to come to play inside. But the team must understand that when he comes inside, someone must go outside. This is what you can create to surprise the opponent, and this is the moment of the season that I'm demanding different things, and now they feel the confidence to do it. I'm a teacher, and I started managing youth teams, and this is very important, because in youth teams you need to teach, but you can teach a player who is 35 years old because we can learn every day.”
