Rob Edwards is convinced Wolves are still moving in the direction, despite defeat to Manchester City last time out, and has called on his group to learn from that afternoon.
The Old Gold are looking to bounce back from seeing their five-match unbeaten run end at the Etihad, but the head coach watched back that 2-0 defeat and remained upbeat, knowing his side did a lot of good things in the second half.
Saturday’s test will be a different one, against a Bournemouth side fresh from victory last weekend, but Edwards has seen confidence in training this week, which is giving him belief of a return to winning ways against the Cherries.
On preparing for Bournemouth
“I’ve got loads of respect for them, for the job that Andoni [Iraola] is doing and has done with all his staff. They're a really hard-working team, with loads of energy, they play football on the front foot and I love watching them play. It must be really exciting to be connected with that football club at the moment. It’ll be a very difficult, challenging game, but one that we're really looking forward to as well. Even though we lost last time out, we can still take a lot from it. There's a lot of confidence in the group at the moment, so I'm looking forward to a good game.”
On the momentum remaining
“You look at levels and you look at what we're up against. I know they had a couple of difficult results themselves, but you know what you're going up against when you go to the Etihad. I thought overall, watching the game back, the performance was actually good. We wanted to have a little bit more intent and threat in the first half, but City were that good, it was really difficult at times. We tried to take the ball and tried to do the right things, and I thought second half we did a lot of good stuff. I was proud of a lot of things that day. We've shown the lads some good stuff.
“Tomorrow's a different day in a different game, different opponent, maybe a different style of game, but there's still things that we can keep improving on and learning on. The vibe around the place is still pretty good, despite, from the outside, the position that we're in. I keep saying it, I do feel like we're moving things in the right direction.”
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On Rodrigo Gomes being back involved
“He's a brilliant human being. I've spoken about him really glowingly in recent weeks, when he's been coming back. He’s a ball of energy, he's a really good footballer, and what I really like about him is he can play in a number of different positions, so it's great that we got him more minutes again at the weekend. He's obviously someone that's in our thoughts going forward. It gives us another string to our bow and more competition for places, and touch wood that continues on the injury front.”
On strengthening the squad
“Clearly, we're in a difficult position so we’ve got to be selective in what we're trying to bring in. There's a reality to what we're trying to do. But we want to try and bring in the right people. I want us to be good with the work that we do. I want it to mean something. I want people to come and be able to make a difference and affect us in a real positive way. So, we want to be quite selective with it as well.
“We want to be able to improve this squad going forward, for the now and for the future as well, whatever that may hold, which does provide a challenge for us. It does make it probably a tad more difficult than what January already is.”
