Vitor Pereira was pleased to see his Wolves side’s sprit come to the fore when it was required to inspire a fifth successive Premier League victory on Sunday.
The head coach believes his group didn’t hit the heights of recent weeks at Old Trafford on Sunday afternoon, but a moment of quality from Pablo Sarabia off the bench guided them to a 1-0 win on the road.
Wolves played with a spirt instilled by the Portuguese, who was once again celebrating with the away end come full-time, and after Premier League safety was ensured, seeing smiles on faces was the biggest satisfaction for Pereira.
On getting the victory
“In our job, the most important thing is to see the happiness in the players, in the supporters, and the people of the club. This is my satisfaction. We came here to compete for the three points and to win, not to draw. If I look at game, it was not our best game. But in the end, the spirit was there, the happiness in the supporters, and the support of them every time was there. And I'm very happy because in the end, when I look at the smile on players and the faces of our supporters, this is everything for me.
“What we do here, they speak about it everywhere, because this is the best league in the world, but honestly, I'm not thinking about records. I'm thinking to create identity, to create the confidence to play, if we play here or if we play home, to play with identity and with confidence, with quality and with the spirit that we have in this moment.”
On finding a way to win the game
“We were a bit reactive. Today we were missing a bit of aggressiveness, in my opinion. But each time that we wanted to be aggressive, we had a free kick against us. Today was not the best game that we played, but it was a game with the true spirit, again. The players inside the pitch, outside the pitch, players that came from the bench came to up the team. When we are not on our day, at our level, we must be with our hearts, with our souls, with our spirit, and that's what happened today, and we won.”
The winning moment, courtesy of @Pablosarabia92 🎯 pic.twitter.com/ayvWzG6EcC
— Wolves (@Wolves) April 20, 2025
On Sarabia and Bentley stepping up
“Fantastic player with technical quality. More important than the technical quality is he is a team player. He has the personality to help, to be professional every time. Even if he goes inside for five minutes, he will try to do his best. The other players from the bench have the same spirit.
“Bentley, I didn't see a goalkeeper with nerves, because he works every day very hard to be ready to help the team. This is what I ask from the players that they are working without playing to be ready, because they must come with the spirit to help the team. Congrats for him, because he played very well. I really trust the players because I know the work they are doing in training, and I know that they will be ready for this game. It's not a surprise for me.”
On not letting up
“I'm thinking about the next game, trying to win the three points, because we have quality to win the next game and to compete for the three points. I'm not looking at the relegation zone, I want my players to look for the position that we can reach with the next three points. This is the spirit that I want to team.
“We need to create the energy and the tactical plan to face the next opponent. In this moment we feel that we create this positive spirit, we believe that we can win the next game.”
On how the collective has improved
“The most important, in my opinion, is to create the connection between the people. It was my first target to bring the good energy, the confidence. When I look at my side, I know that I have players to help. When a player looks to his side on the pitch, he knows that the player beside him will help him. We started to spend more time together to speak about not only about football, but about our lives, to create connection, trying since the first day to create a connection with the supporters, to make them believe and to make them proud.
“The tactical idea with the principles, since the first day, until the last training session we are working, and the players, they know that I like good football, like a team playing with the ball, but sometimes it's not possible because the opponent is strong, because we are not on our day, and we need to know what to defend. We had maybe the record of free-kicks and corners against us, but in the end they didn't score any goals because even at set pieces we improved a lot our organisation.”
