Battle For Places

Lonergan on strength in depth and Tuesday's cup tie

Andy Lonergan believes the strength of Wolves squad is now going to keep everyone at Molineux on their toes.

The experienced keeper made his third appearance of the season – all in the EFL Cup – at St James’ Park on Tuesday night as a pivotal two minute spell saw Newcastle notch twice on their way to running out 2-0 winners.

Head Coach Walter Zenga made numerous changes after the efforts expended in winning at Newcastle in the league on Saturday, and Lonergan believes the club now has plenty of strength in depth.

He said:  “I think the players knew that if you didn’t play on Saturday you were likely to play on Tuesday.

“We’ve got a good squad and it’s never nice to lose but the most important thing was the three points on Saturday.

“The gaffer and Andrea (Butti) stressed that we wanted to go through and for me and a few others this is probably our best chance of playing.

“We are disappointed but I think we gave a good account of ourselves against a strong team.

“On a Sunday now if the 11 that have played are doing a cool down there are another 13 or 14 quality players training.

“Everyone is putting in a shift and pushing each other.

“And when you get a result like Saturday everyone just has to say ‘well done’ and keep getting behind the team.

“We have had some fantastic results this season.

“We have got a really tough game now.

“Brentford are very capable on the day of putting in a performance.

“Hopefully the crowd will get behind us and we need to get the victory for them.

“Away from home we have been fantastic, even at Huddersfield when we lost and didn’t really deserve to.”

On the game itself Lonergan felt Wolves were once again a match for one of the Sky Bet Championship favourites, but that they were undone by those two quickfire goals.

“I thought for 89 minutes we were really good particularly as we rotated our squad,” he said.

“Apart from the mad minute when we conceded two goals, I thought we gave a great account of ourselves and there were some positives.

“It might have been different had we gone in front.

“As soon as they scored you could feel the relief from their crowd and the tempo and everything lifted and then they got the second straightaway.

“At that stage we needed to go in and regroup.

“We felt we needed to stay in it then and try and come back and we did have chances but just couldn’t take them.

“They were good goals Newcastle scored.

“But I thought Dominic and Kortney were outstanding and deserved a clean sheet.

“The goals were bits of magic really.”