Matt Doherty admits it “hurts” to see the club he loves struggling, which is why he’s determined to ensure the Wolves squad is doing everything in its power to start showing some fight.
The Irishman was critical of the whole group after Saturday's defeat to Brentford – the Old Gold’s tenth in a row – and his feelings hadn’t changed when sitting down at Compton Park on Monday to look ahead to the next challenge against Liverpool.
The defender wants Wolves to start doing themselves justice and will be doing everything he can to turn the tide on Saturday, which will be an emotional day for Doherty and many involved, as Diogo Jota is remembered by the two former clubs at Anfield.
On the dust settling on Brentford
“I still feel the same. We were in the game for a period of time, and then it got to an hour in where we had to try and win the game, and I don't know happened then. Do we lose a little bit of focus? Are we working hard enough? They’re questions that we can ask each other, and I'm not excluded from any criticism, I'm included in that completely. The moment to try and win a game, we're coming a bit unstuck, and it's up to us as players to figure it out.
“It's the hardest league in the world, you're not going to get anything given to you, so it’s up to us to produce some magic, but also keep the ball out of the net. We don't have time or energy to feel sorry for ourselves, we have to just wake up for training every day, chest up, head high and work as hard as we possibly can. At the moment, there are 19 other teams ripping the Premier League away from us, and we need to fight back, even if the end result is the same. There are ways to go about it, and I'd rather do it a certain way, and not the way that we're doing at the moment.”
On playing for the manager
“Obviously, we've not started off well enough for him. The coaching staff have not been the issue at all, we've been coached well, our game plans have been good, we're just making, as players, individual mistakes. This is all of us, it’s not just the 11 that played the last game or the game before, it's everybody who's played this season, we've all made individual mistakes. None of us have reached the level, myself included, of last year, and that just creates a perfect storm of things not going well, and when you're not winning games Premier League, that slippery slope is tough to get off because you don’t get given anything.”
On the situation hurting him
“The club's given me absolutely everything I have in my whole life. They took a chance at me when I was 18 years old, when they maybe didn't have to, they could have got rid of me, I'm sure, loads of times. Until I was here at Nuno, I was never the most professional. I never lived typical lifestyle of not going out and having my head down, I always loved to do all that stuff. So, there were plenty of times where they could have gone in a different way, but they stood by me, and they believed in me the whole way. The club's given me everything, I couldn't be more grateful, and that's why this hurts a lot.”
On remembering Diogo on Saturday
“When we played City at the first game of the season, with everything that went on before the game, me and [Jose] Sa found that quite difficult, because he was just a superstar, and I'm not even talking about on the pitch, just as a person. An unbelievable person, so humble, funny, and just a great teammate to have around the place, but somebody who put the team first. With forwards that's not always the case, you want your forward to be kind of selfish at times, but that was never the case with him.
“He was an incredible human being, and it was an awful situation in the summer. It was one that a lot of us really struggled with, especially in that first game. I still listen to that song all the time. I hope something special happens when we play them and I hope his family is there, because I’d love to see them. I know that he loved Wolves as well, so hopefully we can put on a show as well that would make him think it’s the club he recognises.”
