The old gold suffered their first 90-minute defeat of 2023 at Manchester City on Sunday, when two quick goals after the break took the game away from them, but the skipper still spotted positive elements of the performance. Wolves have shown plenty of encouragement since Lopetegui’s arrival and Neves has called on the group to continue to treat every game like a final until the end of the season.
On signs of encouragement
“We’re improving. It’s clear we are improving step by step. We have a lot of work to do still, but we are confident – confident in ourselves, confident in the club, confident with our quality and attitude, so we just want to improve every single aspect of our game and try to play every game as a final, like we always say.
“We know we have a lot of work to do. We have a great attitude, we showed it before and on Sunday, we fight and work until the end. That’s what we want to do every single game this season, they’re like finals for us, and that’s our main target, to play and try to win every single game.”
On a tough afternoon on Sunday
“It’s really hard to play there, against one of the best teams in the world. They played really well. We tried, we had a plan before the match and tried to do it, but it didn’t work well for us. Maybe we needed to give a bit more, every single one of us in the first half. We changed in the second half, we tried to press a little bit more, but we made two mistakes in our box which killed us, killed the game, and they of course controlled the game after that.”
On what needed to be better
“We gave our best but have to improve a lot. Maybe we needed to try and risk a little bit more, we have quality to play as well, so you have to try and have the ball a little bit more, try and be more aggressive and not let them play.
“It was not the perfect start to the second half, we went to it with a great attitude, trying to change things, and then the goals killed the game. We need to know who we’re playing and put the plan we worked on during the week on the pitch, which is what we tried to do. You’re playing against one of the best teams in the world at keeping the ball, so you need to defend well and be compact.”
On changing things after the break
“We tried to go to the second half with a different attitude, be offensively a bit more aggressive, with a bit more pressing, and we conceded two goals in the first ten minutes, so it took away every aspect we wanted to improve.
“We gave everything, there are good things to take from the game as well. We need to improve, of course, but it’s a really hard pitch to play at. We tried to do it, unfortunately we didn’t get any points, but now we’re just looking forward.”
