Gary O’Neil says Wolves lost too many individual battles in the second half, which meant their hunt for a Premier League win this season continued.
Wolves led at the break at Villa Park on Saturday through Matheus Cunha’s well-taken goal, but a 73rd minute equaliser for the hosts changed the momentum and the Old Gold couldn’t recover their control. Villa finished strongly to win the game, but O’Neil says the defeat could have been avoided, had Wolves stood up to pressure better.
“We just failed to cope when we came under some pressure, which is obviously going to come away from home at Aston Villa, when you’re 1-0 up. The pressure was always going to arrive and there are some key moments in that second half around winning tackles and dealing with crosses that end up costing us, and the game goes away. It felt like it got away from the boys fairly quickly, when there wasn’t an onslaught on the goal, and Sam wasn’t having to make saves.
“We knew that at some point we would have to withstand some pressure, but it wasn’t like they were banging the door down. There were a couple of situations where if we want to compete with Aston Villa, we have to do better with. The first goal comes from a tackle. Second goal comes second phase set play. We lose somebody around the back, and then that’s it.
“The game’s 2-1, and you can push and you can fight. We obviously leave ourselves a bit open for the third. The lads are finding out the hard way at the moment that you can’t just play well for a bit, fight and scrap and do well in duels for most of it, because the little ones that we’re not doing well in at this moment are costing us.”
“There’s nothing in the game. There’s no problem. Structurally, everyone’s in shape, the team’s good. Sometimes it takes more than that. You have to find a way to, when there is a duel and you’re 1-0, and the ball’s bouncing around, we have to come out with enough of those. There was probably a few in the second half, man for man battles it felt like we lost.
“We lost too many in the second half, which wasn’t the case in the first half. The lads knew that there would be pressure second half. They knew it would be tough, and you’re not going to come here and win at a canter. You’re going to have to dig in and you’re going to have to scrap, and we came up a bit short in a tough test second half.”
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