Against Brighton & Hove Albion last week Wolves started five players born in the 200os – a Premier League first – and were rewarded with a lively performance and three points. As the group prepare for a trip to Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday, Nuno praised the likes of Morgan Gibbs-White and Fabio Silva, and believes all the young players are bringing a lot to his group, on and off the pitch.
On giving youth a chance
“It’s been like this all season, we have a young squad, we have many young players who need time to play. It happened many times during the season due to the circumstances that we had with players injured and problems with Covid, we’ve been able to use many of them.
“We trust the young player and lets see now for the remaining matches how we’re going to balance the team. It’s all about balancing the youth with experience, even the senior players can learn a lot from the youth players, so we’re trying to make the games useful for us in the future.
“It’s about what I think we need in these three games. We need energy because we want to prepare ourselves for what’s ahead of us, based on what we have to do now to compete. We’re going to have three tough matches, starting against Tottenham, so let’s prepare ourselves to do it game by game.”
On all the players developing
“Not only young players, we’re developing all players, because I believe even the senior players, with a lot of matches and experience, can learn a lot if they have the focus that each day is a chance to learn something. Looking at young players, many times you realise mistakes that you did, and that is also a learning process for the senior players.”
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On Silva pushing on
“I believe that all the young players are developing. When you look at a young player, you have the temptation to look what the players will become in the future and that is a mistake because you ignore the needs in the present.
“Fabio is doing well, having games, every aspect of his game is useful because he had to adapt to the physicality of the Premier League and the intensity of the defenders, and he’s much stronger on that aspect of his game. He’s had chances, he scores, so he’s taking good advantage of the moments that he has on the pitch.”
On Gibbs-White’s development
“We’ve been working with Morgan for four seasons now. When we arrived in the Championship, Morgan was already here, integrated in the first squad. He was injured, he had a half season that he didn’t participate, then in the first season of the Premier League he was in the squad, he was an option.
“He belongs to a fantastic generation of English football – he’s a world champion at under-17, he scored in that big moment for the England squad, so we have a lot of expectations.
“Morgan is growing, he was on loan, he was injured, he joined us trying to recover his fitness, so all the analysis has to be very careful. We cannot expect many things from a player when he didn’t have the chance over and over again to play game after game. This is the true development that we expect, so I’m happy with Morgan, because I know him, he has ambition, motivation, he’s working very hard and this is the mindset that we expect.”
On getting his moment
“It was something that was there. He played many games in previous seasons and had clear chances – it was something that was there. He feels the club in a very special way, he’s grown with Wolves, he’s spent all his life with Wolves, so it was a big moment for him.”
