Performances Are Key

Nuno Espírito Santo says Wolves must continue to focus on playing good football as they launch the Sky Sports Championship programme of fixtures with tonight’s trip to face Sheffield Wednesday (7.45pm).

A run of six successive Wolves wins came to an end on Saturday thanks to a stoical defensive display from Sunderland, but Nuno is well aware that results like that goalless draw are always going to come along in such a competitive league.

Instead he is calling on his players to carry on aiming to play good football, and continue to build on the momentum which they have engineered over the first half of the season.

"It makes things easier when you have good momentum because it gives you confidence,” said the Head Coach.

"But you know this cannot last forever. What we want is to go on and go on and proceed and play good football.

"I’m not so worried about the result – I’m more focused on how we perform.

"As long as we perform well everything will be easier and good for us.

"It’s about the way you bounce back, even from a draw, we have to bounce back.

"Bouncing back is finding new solutions, performing better and playing good football."

On Sunderland, Nuno continues: "It shows a lot of respect for what we’ve been doing this season, a team coming to Molineux and looks for one point.

"It says a lot about us. We will find solutions in the right moments.

"We trained very day to do it. Let’s not look too much ahead – first of all let’s focus on Sheffield. It’s not going to be the same.

"Everybody wants to make our life difficult and hard. It’s up to us to be persistent but never change what we’ve been building. And from day one we wanted to build something."

Despite the Owls recent dip in form, and the fact that his compatriot Carlos Carvahal will not be on the bench tonight due to a one game suspension, Nuno is expecting another typically tough Championship test under the lights at Hillsborough.

"We cannot forget that in the last two seasons they were involved in the play-offs,” he says.

"They have a good manager, someone I know very well.

"Two seasons in a row in the play-offs says a lot about Carlos’ work.

"(But) we don’t look at the table, it doesn’t mean anything.

"We look at our opponent, we analyse the things they do and put in the pitch the things that we want."

Barry Douglas misses out with injury tonight but apart from that Nuno will be selecting from his usual squad.

And he has also paid tribute to the Wolves staff who have ensured training could continue as planned despite this week’s snow and icy weather.

"We tried to adapt, with the conditions there was a lot of hard work of people in the facility, cleaning the pitches, taking care of security and the parking, which allowed us to come and work,” he said.

"Thank you to all these gentleman, they worked two or three hours in the cold cleaning the pitch for us to train.

"We managed to adapt and work under tough conditions.

"I truly believe the engine of the club is a football team. We have to do whatever we can to put this engine to work well.

"I thank all these people that were this week here in -5C putting the pitch together to make us have our training session."

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