With 11 members of Nuno Espirito Santo’s squad due back to training later this week after representing their countries, the Wolves captain says the players who have remained in Wolverhampton have been working on maintain the team’s impressive recent form.
On having a weekend off
“It’s always welcome. It was welcome after the Man City game last time and it’s welcome again. It’s always nice to have a week where you can spend a bit of time with the family, while in training, we can make sure we work on things that we need to work on – because there’s always things that we need to work on.
“Although it’s always welcome, we want to keep on going. We’ve not lost in a long time and we want to make sure we keep that going for as long as possible. It’s important that we use this week to improve and get better.”
On improving league form
“It was something we wanted to do. We knew we had to improve in certain areas and we spoke about improving at the start of the game because we wanted to come out on the front foot and I thought we did that in the last two weeks.
“I think it’s important that we’re ruthless in front of goal as well and give ourselves something to hold on to.”
On Adama Traore’s performances
“When you’ve got someone like Adama who can run – and I thought he was outstanding yet again last weekend – it always makes it easier to close a game out.
“He’s improving game on game and he’s a brilliant person, but he trains so hard every single day to improve and get better.
“He tracks people down and helps everybody out with his work rate, so when you’ve got players like him in your team, you have always got a way out on the counter-attack.
“He’s improving every single day in training, he works so hard on his game and is a brilliant person and professional, but it’s not just in the big games that he’s doing that, he’s doing it in all the games and is a pleasure to have him at this club.”
On performing in both Premier League and Europa League
“A lot of people wanted to use playing Sunday/Thursday/Sunday as an excuse at the start of the season, but we never thought that way.
“We love playing in Europe, it’s a fantastic competition to play in, and a lot of the lads would all tell you the same; we want to be there, we want to impose ourselves and play the way we want to and give a good account of ourselves – and now we’re doing that.
“It’s important we focus on the Premier League games after important games in Europe, but this is what we do every week, this is everything to us and we want to make sure we win.
“We’ve got fantastic staff here who recover us ever so well. I’ve mentioned before about our recovery on the planes and changing rooms after the games we have in mid-week, as we’ve got fantastic staff here who help us out no end, but it’s a credit to everyone in that changing room.
“We make sure that we’re ready come Sunday, Monday or whenever we play – we make sure we’re ready to impose our way of playing.”
