Shropshire Star

Wolves boss Nuno: "I'm good friends with Neil Warnock"

Nuno Espirito Santo says he and Neil Warnock are now 'good friends' – as the Wolves boss demands a reaction from his players.

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Nuno and Neil Warnock (© AMA / Sam Bagnall)

Wolves travel to Cardiff on Friday night hoping to bounce back from arguably their worst performance since Nuno took charge, in a 2-0 defeat to Huddersfield Town on Sunday.

Nuno and Cardiff boss Warnock were embroiled in an angry spat the last time the sides met, with Warnock unhappy that Nuno celebrated at full time and didn't immediately shake his hand, after seeing Cardiff spurn two injury-time penalties

Warnock repeatedly told Nuno to f*** off and then later called the Wolves head coach a 'disgrace' in his post-match press conference.

But Nuno said today: "It's totally over. We had a chance to speak and clarify things, I can now say we're good friends.

"When you compete, both teams want the same, let's try and be better than them but always with respect.

"It was a fantastic game last season, very emotional. Both teams know each other well, we expect a very tough game."

Two goals from Aaron Mooy consigned Wolves to a fifth winless game in a row on Sunday, extending their worst run under Nuno.

The head coach said: "It was a very bad performance from us.

"We tried to figure out and understand why, now we're working on the 'what' to achieve what we want, we want to perform better.

"Like I always say, the past is the past. Even from bad moments you can have reflections, so this is what we want.

"We need individual consistency, we can't afford to have players up and down on their performance. It's a basic aspect for us.

"We were all disappointed. Individually, each one of us has to look inside and see what aspects didn't work and bounce back.

"We totally believe in what we do, the way we do things.

"Good performance with points, bad performance without points, it's not the most important thing, it's about how we react."

Wolves are still 11th in the table after 13 games. Would Nuno have been happy with that at the start of the season?

"Honestly, what we thought in the beginning of the season, we still think," he said. "We must go game by game, results will come but we must bounce back from the Huddersfield performance, this is our main goal for the Cardiff game.

"All season, last season, the support has been amazing and we're really thankful for that.

"Let's work hard and try and celebrate together."

And he added of the upcoming January transfer window: "In these moments we don't think about the transfer window.

"We're focusing on how we want to play and get better, put our total focus on that, forget about the window."