Nuno delighted with his focused Wolves
Nuno Espirito Santo has heaped praise on his Wolves squad for keeping up their unbeaten run hot on the heels of an international break.
Nuno's side, after having several travel across the globe with their countries, made it eight without defeat in the Premier League by winning 2-1 at Bournemouth.
Joao Moutinho – who had played for Portugal against Lithuania and then Luxembourg – was on the scoresheet, as was Raul Jimenez – after playing in Panama and then against Bermuda in his home nation of Mexico.
And Nuno said: "That's what it is about. When you come back from an international break, knowing the players have been all around the world, it's about getting together and keeping to your tasks.
"You have to try to make the things you've been doing all the time – reproduce it on the pitch."
Wolves had a knack of failing to deliver on the back of international breaks last season, and earlier this term, they suffered a humiliating 5-2 home loss to Chelsea following the one in September.
But they put in a scintillating first-half performance at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday, despite the fact Ruben Neves, Rui Patricio and Diogo Jota (Portugal), Matt Doherty (Ireland), Romain Saiss (Morocco) and Leander Dendoncker (Belgium) – as well as Moutinho and Jimenez – only had a couple of days to prepare at Compton after representing their nations.
Moutinho opened his account for the campaign with a perfectly-executed free-kick, and Jimenez finished calmly from close range for his 14th Wolves goal of the season in all competitions.
Bournemouth were resilient in the second half, despite having Simon Francis sent off, and scored through Steve Cook.
Nuno, though, despite the less-impressive second half, was delighted with all of his players' displays.
"I think all of the players performed really well," he said.
"As a team, we performed very, very good. It was very good."
As well as coming up with the opener, Moutinho had a big hand in Wolves' second as he found Adama Traore with a clever through-ball before the Spaniard set up Jimenez.
And while he did not wax lyrical about Moutinho's goal or his part in Jimenez's, Nuno added on the man who has signed a new contract until 2022: "Joao is an important player as he has the experience to know what the game requires in each moment."
