Bruno Lage reiterates Wolves belief after victory at Watford

A Watford own goal and a strike from debutant Hwang Hee-chan handed Wolves their first victory of the campaign after a good performance at Vicarage Road.

After good displays in their opening games, but three 1-0 defeats, Lage was asked if this win was a relief and the boss was keen to say that he always had belief it would come.

Lage said: “I don’t feel the team played the way they (usually) play, it’s a question of time for the goals and to have the first three points.

“The most important thing, I said at the beginning, is that we don’t change our pathway. We know what we have to do.

“We want to play this way, create chances and score goals. So, no (it is not a relief). My ambition is the same.

“My feeling is the same since the first day, the way we played against Leicester.

“It’s not a question of being relieved or not. It’s a question of belief, our work and our players.”

Watford winger Ismaila Sarr had an impressive first half and was causing Fernando Marcal and Romain Saiss issues on their left flank.

But in the second half the forward was kept quiet, and when asked how he addressed that problem at half-time, Lage added: “First of all, I think we started very well, the first 15 or 20 minutes. We controlled everything.

“Then they balanced the game a little bit. They had two good situations, especially for their right side, and we didn’t control the space well.

“As you saw, after half-time we started to press in a different way and took that space. We talked with Marcal, Saiss and Joao to resolve that problem. They put three men there and they had space on that side.

“In that way, that’s why we also changed Trincao to the left and Adama to the right, to create problems for them.”

Skipper Conor Coady echoed his manager’s thoughts, too, saying that the belief has been there with Wolves’ impressive performances so far this season.

He said. “We’ve been patient but we’ve also believed as well. We’ve not stopped believing in what we wanted to do.

“We know we’ve been performing well but we understand that at the end of the day it’s about picking up points.

“We were desperate for that win, honestly. We’ve spoken about it for weeks because we feel like we’ve been a little bit hard done by at times.

“It’s about picking up points and that was massive for us. To come here and not only put on a good performance, but get the win.”

There was a moment in the second half, however, when the game slowed down and goals looked unlikely.

But when asked if any doubt that Wolves would score emerged at that time, Coady added: “No, never. We believe in our play and we’ve created a lot of chances up to now.

“We always believe in the way we try to do things and the way the manager wants to play. It’s important we keep on doing that.

“It was never something creeping in that we were doubting things. We were always doing the same stuff, trying to press and trying to be aggressive.

“We’ll take any goal as it comes. I haven’t looked at the table once, I don’t look at it until a certain point because there is no point. We just want to improve as a football club and improve ourselves every day.”