Doherty proud of Europa qualification

Although proud of qualifying for the knockout stages of the Europa League at the first time of asking, Matt Doherty was not pleased with Wolves’ second-half submission in Braga to take a point in their Group K contest.

Doherty netted after 34 minutes to put his side ahead, before Adama Traore netted to make the scoreline 3-1. But Braga’s second-half comeback to seal a 3-3 draw was still enough to see Wolves into the last 32 of major European competition for the first time since 1973/74, with the Irish wing-back excited to see who Wolves will face in the next round.

On reaching the Europa League knockouts

“I’m proud that we’re qualified, and we obviously started the game well in the first-half; but in the second-half, I don’t really know what happened, we weren't at the races. So, we’re proud of qualification, but not proud of really the result in the end.

“When looking at other teams playing in European competitions in previous seasons, you always wish it was you. It’s our turn this year and we’re making a pretty good fist of it to qualify for the next round.”

On goals coming from the right-hand side

“I make a lot of runs inside and we obviously have the players that have the vision and are able to pick me out. The first-half was pretty good, there was a lot of good play, and for my run Raul obviously has great vision and managed to put it on a plate for me.

“Everybody is playing with confidence. We’re playing really good stuff and if we can play like we did in the first-half of both Saturday and today for 90 minutes, we’ll be a top side and hard to beat.”

On being in the draw for the last 32

“I’m really looking forwards to it. It will be really interesting to see who we get. It would be nice if we could beat Besiktas and somehow finish top of the group, but we’ll see.

“It doesn’t really matter, we’ll take what we can get and whoever that team is we’ll be confident we can beat them.”

On maintaining unbeaten European away run

“We’re playing against quality teams away from home and we’re getting the results that we want. I know we didn’t hang on to the lead tonight, but we still didn’t lose the game.

“We’re still unbeaten, and obviously we’ll be pretty confident heading into Sunday.”

On visit of Sheffield United

“The league is the bread and butter and we need to get back in tomorrow and recover well and be ready for Sunday.

“They’re in pretty good form at the moment, but so are we, so it should be a great game.”

#BRAWOL