Although Lage is not suffering from symptoms, he will not be present at Stamford Bridge on Saturday afternoon, and will instead pass on instructions to his staff from home, but ahead of the visit to west London, Roberts undertook the boss’ pre-match press conference, and he insisted the Wolves players have the mentality to bounce back from a poor run of form as they take on Chelsea without fear.
On a mentally strong squad
“The modern-day footballer now has to be mentally strong to go and play home and away against the biggest of teams. The boys here, they’re a good group, they’re together and in the week, we work hard. Mentally, we go into every game trying to have a good performance, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
“But the boys will have no fear of going to Chelsea and playing. We’ve been to Man United and won, we’ve been to Tottenham and got the result there, and we can step up any time. So tomorrow, when the boys step onto the pitch, then hopefully they’ll be at that level where we can put on a performance.
“It’s all about the performance, if we’ve got a good performance, we’ve got a chance. We’ve worked hard this week, and to go there and put on a performance, that’ll give us a great chance of getting three points, and that’s what we’ll be looking for. They’re a good team and we’ve got to be on it.
“We played well [against Chelsea at Molineux]. We’ve been through it all week, looking at what they were trying to do, how we nullified them, and our attacking chances, for us to go there tomorrow and create a few more. They’re a world class team, so we’ve been doing everything during the week to try get in certain situations to break them down.”
Grafting away on his birthday 💪 pic.twitter.com/3erfz83jxN
— Wolves (@Wolves) May 5, 2022
On getting out of a rut
“Day to day we’re working hard, obviously. We’ve seen what we need to do, as a staff, as a squad. Each team at some stage goes through bad spells and at this time we’re having a bad spell. The boys are working ever so hard on the training ground to correct it, both ends of the pitch, defending and attacking. Every day working hard.
“I’m never happy [with set-pieces]. We’re always trying to improve, defending and attacking. Defending, I think we’ve done OK. Attacking, we had a meeting this morning about how we can improve things and make it better, with either runs, deliveries, set-up, because we want to improve every game.
“The last couple of games attacking wise, we haven’t been happy as a group, the staff and the players. We’ve worked on it this week, we’ve had meetings, and showed a couple of things we can improve on.”
On pushing each other to be better
“I’ve been here 10 months now, and I came into the group, and they are a pack – literally. They’ve got some good leaders in there; big John Ruddy, Coady, Joao [Moutinho] and numerous others. They’re a tight group who stick up for each other when times are going against them.
“Over a season, the stronger the pack we are, the better we can be in certain situations. We’re going through a bad time at the moment, the last three games, but they don’t just switch off, they’ve been on it and at each other during the week, pushing each other on and driving each other on, so hopefully we’ll get that reaction tomorrow.
“That comes from the leader above [Lage]. He’s come in and he’s said exactly what he wants from each player, and each position, he wants competition, he’s driving each other, he’ll have a go at them, but he’ll also give them a cuddle. It’s good management.
“Sometimes you’ve got to work a different way to get the best out of each individual, and we’ve got a manager here who is very good at doing that. But the boys take it on board, they stick together and I can’t stress enough how hard they’ve been working each week because we know we’ve got a big game and a big week coming up.”
⚽️👀 @JoaoMoutinho pic.twitter.com/zBL8kCygfx
— Wolves (@Wolves) May 6, 2022
On Sa’s impact
“I’ve been happy with Jose. He’s still got a lot to improve. I saw a bit of him in the summer, I was doing a bit of work at the Euros, I was given a couple of goalkeepers and Jose stood out.
“He’s still got potential to get even better. He’s 29, again a baby, and has come into a league where he’s had to learn quickly. He’s a great character, what we’ve worked on in training and in the classroom, he’s taken on board and has been producing on the pitch. I want that to continue and I want that from all my goalkeepers.
“I keep saying about the highest level, but if you want to play in this league, you have to have a bit of character about you because there’s going to be times when you’re low, times when you’re high and you’ve got to be in the middle.
“You’ve got to be able to deal with not getting too excited when you’re going well and not too low when you’re having a bad time and I’ve got mentally strong goalkeepers. We do that through the training that we do, the help that we get here and they’re fine individuals.”
On Ruddy’s influence on the squad
“When I first came in the building, I knew about John, I’d heard about John, and he’s stepped up to being a great professional this year. Jose has come in, he’s played well and he’s playing well because he’s got good goalkeepers behind him, pushing him.
“My thing is, if you want to be number one, you have to train like you’re number two every day, regardless of whether you’re number two or number one, and I can’t speak highly enough about John, because not just with the goalkeepers, but he gets in to the younger ones, he helps with the staff, he helps with the younger players, he helps with all the staff around the club and he’s just a proper geezer in footballing terms.
“Ideally as a goalkeeper you want to play, but you can’t always because the man in front is doing alright, and Jose’s done alright, to be fair, but John is a top man.”
