Neves | On Palace win, exploiting opponents and wing-back displays

1st November 2020

Ruben Neves insisted that making a quick start to their clash with Crystal Palace was all in the plan, as two goals in the first half-hour secured victory at Molineux.

The midfielder stared from the centre of the pitch as he controlled play throughout the contest with the Eagles, and felt that the game plan which was set up to overcome the challenge of their opponents was executed as well as it possibly could have been, while understanding there is still more to come from the players this season.

On win against Palace

“It was a great game for us tonight. I think we deserved it after the draw against Newcastle, that took us a little bit down, because we did a great game then as well.

“I think we deserved this win because we played very well, and we’re really happy with the three points.

“We always try to start strong, and I think we did it against Newcastle, we started strong and played really well, and today again, we went to the game with that goal, to try to keep Crystal Palace away from our goal because they’ve got very good players up front, so that was our plan today, and we did it really well.

“We controlled the first-half well, and the second-half, they started to play a bit more because they needed to score, and even then, we controlled the game well.”

#WOLCRY

Podence back on the scoresheet! | Wolves 2-0 Crystal Palace | Extended highlights

On putting more crosses into the box

“That’s what we work on during the week, we need to stress the opponent, and that’s what we did with the crosses.

“We have a lot of players with a lot of quality to cross the ball into the area, and if you can put more people into the box I think we can stress the opponent and take them with confidence, because even if we don’t win the ball from the cross, we can always win the second ball, and keep the ball in front. We’ve been working a lot on that part of our game.”

On his and Coady’s cross-field passes

“That’s because of our opponent. They were trying to close the middle, because they knew we have a lot of good players coming in the middle; like Neto, like Podence, so they tried to close the middle and we needed to find spaces on the wide areas because our full-backs were always free to play, we used those passes to open the game and to try to create spaces for us.

“We train for that and we always try to help the team, and today it was a game to do that like we did. We knew that if we did it well, we can cause problems for Palace, so we are really happy to help the team with those passes because it worked very well.”

✅ Goal
✅ Clean sheet
✅ Man of the Match

Some debut for Rayan Aït-Nouri 👏 pic.twitter.com/dHgBBOQGEb
— Wolves (@Wolves) October 30, 2020

On the performances of Semedo and Ait-Nouri

“It was amazing. We saw Nelson coming again to his best, with a lot of confidence on the ball, and he’s a fantastic player, and today, he already showed what he can give us, what he is and how he can help us in the future.

“Rayan is a fantastic player as well with a lot of talent. We try to help him a lot because it was his debut, but we are really proud of him because he had a great game, with a goal as well which will help us a lot, so we’re really happy for him, and hope he keeps working like this because he’s a great player.”

On more still to come

“It’s our philosophy since the beginning, since I came here, we think game by game and don’t look further in the table because we know our job and if we go game by game, we’ll get up there with the big teams.

“It’s our job, it’s our goal and we’ll keep thinking game by game to keep on doing that.”