Shropshire Star

Joao Moutinho: Wolves have their confidence back

Joao Moutinho believes Julen Lopetegui has restored confidence among the Wolves squad.

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Joao Moutinho (Getty)

After going 1-0 down at Southampton and then losing Mario Lemina to a second yellow card, Wolves fought back to claim a monumental 2-1 win on the south coast.

Lopetegui took over with Wolves bottom of the Premier League table, but since then has picked up more points than Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs, as many points as Manchester City and only one point less than Arsenal.

Wolves sit 15th in the table and Moutinho has hailed the impact of the head coach.

“He has brought confidence for the team, and spirit,” Moutinho said when asked what Lopetegui has brought to Wolves.

“All the players are here to help the team, not only the starters, and this is important.

“And for the game he brings intensity, he brings quality, he brings calm to play our football because we know we have quality and we have very good players who want to have the ball and I think we showed (that against Southampton).

“I don’t know if they are real statistics but I saw we had 60 per cent of possession against 11 players and we had 10 for a long time – and this that’s what he brings.

“It wasn’t only the manager (Bruno Lage) who didn’t do the things well and put us in the bad position but of course he (Lopetegui) brings a lot of good things for us and we continue to improve, to win more games because we know the position we are is not our position. We already showed that in other years and we will try to show it again.”