Ruben Neves: Team spirit key to Wolves success
Ruben Neves believes the ‘team spirit’ among the Wolves squad can take them far this season as they make amends for their early season losses.
The 3-2 comeback win over Villa at the weekend came courtesy of some good fortune, as well as some fight, after Wolves had struggled to get going earlier in the game.
But it is exactly that fight – which they also showed to come back from 2-0 down against Spurs in the Carabao Cup – that Neves believes will serve them well.
He said: “It’s one of the most important things we have, since I came here we have a really strong spirit and everyone pushing to the same side, everyone is happy and trying to help.
“We scored the goals when the subs came on so that shows how the team is, everyone is ready to help.
“The first three games we played well and lost, now we didn’t play so well and we win – that’s football. If we stick with this team spirit we will do well. We will go game by game, today was a huge win for us and now let’s rest and think about the next one.
“Since I came here, we’ve always spoken about bouncing back. We didn’t have a great season last year, so we all wanted to bounce back again. There’s been some changes of course and a new way to play. A new manager.
“We are working really well and are trying to get as many points as we want. Think game by game as we always do. That’s our main target.
“At the start of the season we had three defeats in a row and we wanted to bounce back. Now we are doing OK and that’s the main thing. When things don’t go well, bounce back. That’s what we want to do.”
Daniel Podence and Fabio Silva both made an impact off the bench for Wolves on Saturday, helping to overturn the deficit at Villa Park.
And after leaving Raul Jimenez out, Lage admits he battled with the tough decisions.
“We didn’t have the players during the week with us, so we prepared three players to play with us between the lines – Leander, Daniel and Fabio,” Lage said.
“I chose Leander because he’s a guy who can run and appear in the box. I didn’t want the strategy to give easy marking to strong guys like Mings.
“I wanted to put men on the back of the midfielders and at 2-0 they continued to press very well.
“Now it’s easy for me to say I made the right choices for the game, but the job is very hard. My decision was to protect Raul but it doesn’t mean the other players are not important.
“The other players who started, and those that came on, helped the team win three points.
