An own goal and Hee Chan Hwang’s debut effort, just minutes after he came off the bench, proved to be the difference in Wolves’ win over Watford, but the captain knew if the players continued to perform as they had been doing in their opening month of the season, it would have only been a matter of time until the team picked up all three points.
On waiting for the win to arrive
“It’s huge that we’ve got points. We knew that we’ve been performing quite well, we’ve been playing some good football, creating chances and doing well, but the most important thing is picking up points.
“We’ve been patient, but we’ve also believes as well. We’ve not stopped believing in what we’ve wanted to do. We’ve been performing well, but we understand that, at the end of the day, it’s all about picking up points.
“We were desperate for that win, we’ve spoken about it for weeks because we feel we’ve been a little bit hard done by at times, but it’s about picking up points. That was massive for us today.
“It was huge that we come here and not just put on a good performance, but also got the win as well. It was massively deserved what we’ve done today, but it was also massively needed.”
Up. And. Running.
— Wolves (@Wolves) September 11, 2021
😆 pic.twitter.com/8ixO4wqtZB
On not losing confidence
“Never. With how we were playing, we believed and we were creating chances. I feel we’ve created quite a lot until now, so I think we always believed in the way we wanted to do things, and we believed in the way the manager wanted us to play, and it was important we kept on doing that.
“There was never a time when we were doubting things, we were always doing the same stuff, trying to press, trying to be aggressive, trying to create things, and we’ll take any goal as it comes.”
On a fortunate opening goal
“We spoke about it before the game about taking goals any way possible, and it’s obviously gone in off their lad. It’s always tough when you see own goals.
“But for us, it was always important that we kept knocking on the door, we kept on creating chances, kept on having shots at goal, kept putting balls in the box and we did that.
“It came from a short corner, so a bit of good play from us and a little bit of initiative from the boys and it ended up in the back of the net. It was massive for us.”
On Hwang’s debut strike
“We don’t care how it goes in, it could have gone in off any part of him, but it was important that it went in. It’s always big, the second goal, in a game of football. When it’s 1-0 against a good side like Watford, it’s always on the edge, but when you get the second it makes it a lot easier.
“He’s incredible. He’s a great fella, a real good fella. He’s improving every day and he’s not trained much with us, only the last couple of days, but you’ve seen today how sharp he is, how happy he is, how much he runs, how aggressive he is when he presses people, and then quality on the ball as well.
“He’ll be fantastic for this football club and the most important thing is that he’s a fantastic fella to bring to the club as well, so we’re really happy to have him here.”
On the win breeding confidence
“It does give you confidence. You might think I’m lying, but I’ve not looked at the table once. I don’t look at it until a certain point because there’s no real point at the minute.
“It’s something where we want to improve ourselves as a football club, we want to improve ourselves every day and we’re trying to give the best of ourselves every day to the manager, to the football club and to the supporters.
“We need to keep on doing that now and a win always breeds confidence, but it was important today and we move forward now.”
What an introduction 🙌 pic.twitter.com/4UijQSmIo9
— Wolves (@Wolves) September 11, 2021
On facing Brentford next weekend
“It’s important we keep on listening to our manager because the way he plays is fantastic and we look towards Brentford now and we will improve, we will get better because they’re a real top team.
“With the games from the start of the season, they’ve come up and really put their way of playing onto the Premier League.
“They’re a top team. We watched the first game of the season when then played, the atmosphere they created at the new ground, they’re a real, real good side.
“But we remember playing them in the Championship as well, and they were a really good side then, so we know how tough it’s going to be. We’ll make sure we work this week, we’ll recover and we’ll get ready for it.”
