Wolves' Mario Lemina was determined to avoid another Premier League relegation

Midfielder Lemina, who signed for Wolves back in January for £9 million, suffered relegation from the Premier League with Fulham during a loan spell at The Cottagers in 2020/21.

He was one of a handful of signings Julen Lopetegui made in January as he attempted to move Wolves away from the drop zone to safety.

The signings worked and Wolves navigated their way out of trouble with survival secured with a handful of games left in the season.

The 29-year-old former Juventus midfielder has revealed that dropping out of the top flight back in 2021 was the hardest moment of his career, and he was focussed on making sure it did not happen again.

He said: "It’s been tough. It was really tough, but I’ve really enjoyed it. I came to a good place, with good players, with a good crowd and good fans, and I knew what I had to do here, I knew the work that I’d have to pass through to get to the point that we now own.

“It’s been long, it’s been hard, it’s been tough, but we’ve really enjoyed it as a team and we were able to get this chemistry between us which was really important, and I think it’s going to be a good one for the next season. Well, I hope that it’s going to be easier next season.

“It was for me the hardest part of my life as a footballer when I’ve been relegated at Fulham, and I wanted to make sure that was not going to happen again.

“With more experience and more maturity, I came to this team and I knew what we were going to face and what we needed to do and I was ready for that. I just tried to give my experience to all of the other players and share with them what I’d learned from when I was last in that situation, so they can understand it.

“It was just about work, work, work, really hard, every single day and at the end of the day, we deserved what we’ve done.”

The midfielder signed a two-and-half-year deal when he signed for the club from Nice back in January.

He was one of a number of signings, as Wolves added Joao Gomes, Dan Bentley, Craig Dawson, Matheus Cunha and Pablo Sarabia to their ranks in a bid to boost their survival fight.

Lemina, who became a key figure in the final moments of the season, admitted that he thought it wasn't possible for Wolves to be in the position they were in, and he would not have made the move had he not believed survival was possible.

He added: "If I was thinking that we weren’t going to achieve it, I would never have come. I was really confident with that and I knew the manager from a long time where he’d been performing before, and I knew the players that we had got in the team.

“At the end of the day, I thought it would not be possible for this team to be deep in the league. Of course, something had to change and we were going to improve in some part of the game, and we were going to have these points. And I was right, so I’m really happy.”