Vitor Pereira is using his side’s two performances at Anfield in February as a learning tool as he prepares his group for a trip to Manchester City.
The head coach was disappointed with his side’s first half showing against the eventual Premier League champions, but a big improvement after the interval, which led to pushing the Reds to the end, showed what this Old Gold team is capable of.
Now, Pereira once again takes his side away from home to one of the leading sides in the division, and rather than showing his opponent too much respect, he wants Wolves to do themselves justice on Friday evening.
On facing Man City on Friday
“With the idea to compete for the three points. This is our focus, respecting ourselves, and we need to decide which team we want to be. A good example is our game at Anfield. We must decide if we want to be the team that played the first half, with too much respect, or we choose to be the team in the second half, a team with ambition, organisation and character. I prefer the second half.
“Tactically we know, looking at our game, what we need to do. We will face a very strong opponent, but it’s a time to create competition in training, to create happiness in training.
“You try to create your identity. Of course, each opponent is different, but you must look at your game, and in the different moments of the game, we know how to move, how to organise, how to press, how to be with the ball. We are doing our video preparation, looking for the spaces that we can explore and the strong things that we need to control.”
On revelling in the Premier League
“This is a special league, top in my opinion, the best league in the world. It's a pleasure when we play at home, of course, because we play with our supporters, but it's a pleasure for me to play in the stadiums that I watched on TV in the countries that I worked in before. It was the target to come and compete in this kind of environment, and this is special for me.
“I faced him [Guardiola] one time in my career with Porto. We won the Europa League, and they won the Champions League and the Super Cup. We played Monaco the Super Cup final, 2-0 for them, the second goal in last minute. It was a fantastic game, a good experience.”
On focusing on his team
“We need to look at our game, because we face different teams, with different dynamics, because this is the Premier League, we need to understand with our game, with our idea how to face this team. We need to understand where the spaces are, the movements, what they want to create, but looking at us, our identity, the work that we did these four months, and the spirit, the mentality.
“In the Liverpool game I saw two different teams, two different mentalities, the first one with a lot of respect, waiting and in the second half I watched a different game. I see my team with courage, playing, pressing, trying to score goals. This is my personality, and this is what I want to see in my team. Of course, they will have more possession than us. But I believe that it’s possible to compete and to create chances to score. Of course, we need to defend well.”
On the players making decisions on the pitch
“That's what I call tactical maturity. I'm there to help them. As a team, we need to have a brain to understand what’s happened and what we need to do. I try to prepare them, and I believe that we are ready. We are prepared.
“Sometimes we prepare the team to play short, to build a play short, but if we just have this solution, that's a problem. It means that you need against a team that presses you, they will come to press us. We need to have another solution. We need to look for the game and understand if they come to press higher the space is there. We have these solutions because we worked and prepared different solutions.
“On the pitch, because they are playing, they have to decide if the space is from the sides, is in the middle, a long pass and second balls. As a coach, I need to prepare them for different scenarios, different solutions on the pitch. They will decide the best one in the moment.”
