Wolves boss Bruno Lage ready for defensive crisis
Bruno Lage has revealed he is testing some of his Wolves stars as emergency centre-backs in preparation for their impending shortage.
Wolves will be left with two senior centre-backs when Romain Saiss and Willy Boly travel to the African Cup of Nations in the New Year, with Yerson Mosquera still injured.
All season they have played with a back three and Lage has revealed he is already preparing his players to fill in for the absentees, with Leander Dendoncker, Fernando Marcal and Ki-Jana Hoever the most likely to step in.
Lage said: “We are working with our players and we are very happy with them.
“We are preparing solutions and putting players in centre-back, so they have a chance to understand the position.
“My concern is when we don’t have the players and they have too much time out with problems.
“I don’t use it as an excuse, but if I don’t have the players with me because every time they are injured, then I don’t have the players.
“If they are fit and ready to play, we have a good squad and I am comfortable with them. But when we don’t and we look at the bench and have some kids from the under-23s and we don’t have some positions, it’s harder to manage.
“How can we manage in this period of games with just three centre-backs, we don’t have a chance.
“Every time we are putting the players in with little things (injuries) we are taking a risk.”
Wolves do have one player returning, however, in Bruno Jordao.
The midfielder has started getting minutes under his belt for the under-23s and yesterday played just over an hour in the Premier League Cup.
And Lage has said Jordao still needs more time before considering him for the first team.
“He’s played minutes to get his confidence and now we go to the second phase to give him more minutes for sure,” Lage added.
“He cannot go to the bench straight away. We need him to get to a different level.
“First he has started training with the team and has played twice. He will play more time in the next game and we want him to play at least two or three games for 90 minutes.
“That’s for him to win all the confidence and recover all the time he lost with his injury, so that when he comes he’s fully fit to help the team.”
When asked if Jordao is doing enough in training to impress, Lage added: “Yes, since the beginning.
“Two months ago he started watching our meetings to try and understand the way we play and train.
“I saw some things when he played last year for Famalicao. I need to try to understand what he can give us and what position he can play for us.
“He is doing his best and we are very happy with him. For now, there’s no problems, which is good.
“We have finished that first phase and we go again to put more minutes in his legs.”
Meanwhile, Brighton have suffered ‘three or four’ positive Covid-19 tests ahead of Wolves’ visit to face them tomorrow night.
The unnamed members of the playing staff tested positive yesterday and the club were undergoing more tests to ensure they do not have more cases in their camp.
Speaking yesterday, Brighton boss Graham Potter did confirm that they had not discussed postponing the Wolves game and they were preparing as usual for the arrival of Lage’s side.
