Wolves manager, Gary O’Neil has praised his players for a “solid” home win over reigning champions, Manchester City.
Hwang Hee-chan smashed in a 66th minute winner as Wolves ended Man City’s unbeaten start to the Premier League season, after Julian Alvarez had pulled the reigning champions level following Ruben Dias’ own-goal.
Speaking post-match, O’Neil was delighted with the win which lifted them up to 13th in the table after their “tough” start to the season, which has included defeats to Manchester United, Brighton and Liverpool in their opening six league games.
The ex Bournemouth boss however praised the commitment of his players as he explained that they “stayed committed in every game,” whilst having “stuck to the plan and delivered a fantastic performance – which carried some threat as well as being very solid.”
O’Neil proceeded to explain that his team had to play “solid” football to beat City as he continued: “We needed to find a way to be solid, which the lads were, and then have enough attacking players to carry us up the pitch in the team.
“Pedro [Neto], Channy [Hwang] and Cunha, we had to trust them to do real good offensive jobs, so we can use their ability to get us up the pitch, and it worked very well.”
Wolves though could of let their focus drop after conceding but Hee-chan struck the winning goal, which O’Neil called “a big moment” in his team’s season so far.
The 40 year-old manager went on to address how his team responded to Alvarez’s equaliser as he said: “It was a big blow for us, but we needed to reset and not let all the good work we’d done go to nothing.
“I was trying to make the lads reset because they needed to get their minds back on what they were doing and make sure it looked like it had done for the previous 65.
“Getting another breakaway goal is always a possibility when you have Pedro and Channy in the team, so it was a really good performance.”
Wolves next face Aston Villa in a Midlands derby at Molineux on Sunday 8 October but O’Neil has warned against complacency as he iterated: “We’re just trying to win games of football. We’ve done that today, but we’ve got another tough one coming next year.
“Villa won 6-1 today, and they’re in the top four, so I think we’ll have completed the full set next week of playing the top four at home.
“It’s another tough game, but if the prep can go as well as it did, the lads can stick to the plan and find the right structure, then we’ve got good enough players to create problems.”
