Gary O’Neil is backing his team to cause Tottenham Hotspur problems on Saturday, but knows they’re in for a tough test in the capital.
The Old Gold beat Spurs at Molineux back in November with one of their performances of the season, but the return fixture takes place in a different environment, with Tottenham welcoming key players back. O’Neil himself lost Matheus Cunha to injury this week, but was feeling more positive on the situation, particularly as he has Hee Chan Hwang ready and available on Saturday.
On Cunha’s recovering beginning
“Matheus Cunha is a hamstring injury. A little bit of muscle damage in the middle of the muscle. He’s really optimistic, he feels good, not too much pain there. He’s keen to get straight to work and start pushing and getting back to help the team as soon as he can. We haven’t set any timelines.
“We obviously know there’s an injury there, but pain and symptom wise, he’s feeling very good, and we want to give him every opportunity to keep pushing as hard as he can. Obviously, we respect the injury and the symptoms, but it’s important that we allow the team and Matheus opportunities to work hard to get him back as soon as possible.”
On Hwang rejoining the group
“Channy’s completely fine. His calf was a little bit sore last week but he’s not feeling it at all anymore. He’s done a couple of full days’ training and, unless I get any surprises, Channy will be fine and available to start or come off the bench tomorrow.
“Everyone else is fine. We go there almost as strong as we can be. A tough test on the back of a disappointing result at home and we need to try and respond in the way he have done the rest of the season.”
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On backing his team at Tottenham
“I’m really confident in the team and the group, and what I know is they’ll try and produce, but obviously, Tottenham at close to full strength will be a real test for us, as it is for everybody who goes there. In any Premier League game, especially away against the big sides, you know you’re going to need to be at 100 per cent and everything’s going to need to be as close to perfect as we can get it, like we were at Stamford Bridge.
“We’ll do our best to do that and see if we can make it an uncomfortable day for Tottenham. They are a really good side, they have some top quality players, extreme strengths, and they will ask us a lot of questions. So, we need to be able to answer them and we know we can pose a threat with some of the attacking players we have.
“They don’t change, they play the same way a lot. Really comfortable with the ball, have a lot of the ball, really aggressive without it to get it back quickly, so we’ve prepared the lads on what that might feel like, especially at their place with their home crowd and them coming after us. We’re going to need to be clean with the ball and understand the solutions very quickly. They try and combine a lot, loads of short passes, combining through the middle, obviously fantastic attacking players. We go there with a game plan and a shape we’ve used before and look to carry it out as well as possible.”
On learning from the last Spurs game
“The home game, some of the clips and how we went about it, plays a part obviously, although I expect Spurs to be stronger than that this time, especially at their place. They had both centre halves and James Maddison missing last time, so it’ll be a stronger Spurs side, but the principles of what we try and do remain. So, if Spurs are the same tactically, we have a decent idea of what they’re going to do. That doesn’t make it easy to stop, but you know what they’ll try to do. We have some good players ourselves, who we hope can cause them some problems.”
On Fraser developing well
“Firstly, he’s unbelievably willing to work in any sort of capacity, as a number nine, so whatever is needed from him that day game plan wise, you know that he’ll give 150 per cent out of possession, in possession. He’s a presence, I thought he did well a couple of times aerially against Brentford, won a couple of flick ons for us, made a couple of decent runs in behind when we managed to open up some spaces.
“Development wise, he’ll learn loads at his age. The level we’re trying to get him to, to be able to play in the Premier League, you look at number nines in the Premier League and they’re pretty good most of them, so Nathan knows he’s got an awful lot of work to do around his link up play and being tidy with the ball. What you do know with him is he will arrive in the goal. There was one really good run he made in the second half, I think the cross was intercepted, but his movement was excellent in the penalty area. He’s obviously very young but we know what we have in him and we’re working hard to maximise it.”
On the levels being maintained
“They always train well. On the back of Chelsea, they trained fantastically well in the lead up to Brentford. Sometimes in football matches and Premier League games, you have a few bits that don’t go your way and the lads are slightly below the level on the ball, missing a few key passes, and all of a sudden it can be a tough afternoon for you.
“Obviously, we always guard against that, whether we’ve won or lost, the messages through the week are always the same. They will be between now and the end of the season. We’ll do our best at Tottenham and hopefully we win and everyone’s celebrating another big win. If we lose, we get ready for Sheffield United the following week the same as we always do, so there’ll no adjusting to emotion from the previous result, we always focus on the next one.”
