Despite the only Premier League fixture on Saturday being the first top-flight meeting between the sides at Villa Park for almost nine years, the Portuguese midfielder knows the importance of putting the history between the two local rivals to the back of their minds and just staying focused on the task in hand – getting the three points.
On a West Midlands derby with Aston Villa
“Of course, we would like to win our derbies, but it’s game by game. It doesn’t matter the team who we go and play, the most important thing is that we focus on what we need to do because they have a good team.
“They are in a difficult position, but they’re trying to get out of this position and will do whatever they can to win the game. But we know that, and we need to be prepared to do our best to win.
“It doesn’t matter the game, we try to do our job and win the games.”
On recording two wins from two since the league restart
“Of course, we’re happy. That is why we work, we work every day, every week after the lockdown to prepare this game.
“We are prepared and we played well to achieve these results. It’s important for us that with these two games we have to wins, but we have to continue because we know it doesn’t stop here.”
Get in the mood for tomorrow with some classic goals against Aston Villa...
— Wolves (@Wolves) June 26, 2020
🐺🎥 pic.twitter.com/kCKivdCvVO
On having to be patient before the goals arrived
“The teams know how we can play. We have players with quality and if they give a lot of space, they are in trouble. They know that, so they go back a little bit and defend a bit deeper, so it’s a little bit difficult for us, but we need to keep the ball to try to move them and after that, create the best space to create opportunities.
“That’s what we do, and fortunately we score and after that we can do our football because they have to press more, and we have more capacity and more space.”
On welcoming a break from football
“For me, no, it’s not welcome, because I’ve never stopped for two months before. I think normally, me and the international players never stop for two months.
“When I say stop, it’s not totally stopped, but when I go on holiday I usually do something else, I go to the beach and play head tennis, I play table tennis, I play tennis, and these kinds of things make me better physically, and I can do something for the muscles.
“But when we are at home, you can only do some things and it’s not the same as what we do on the pitch.
“Obviously, the break from when we have a lot of games is good, but the way we need to stay at home to do only some specific exercises is not too good.”
