Gary O'Neil: Wolves hit by sickness bug before West Ham loss
Gary O’Neil has revealed Wolves’ squad was hit by a sickness bug in the morning of their 3-0 defeat to West Ham.
In an afternoon where Wolves struggled to lay a glove on the Hammers and conceded three poor goals, O’Neil was keen to highlight the ‘disappointing result’ and did not want to offer excuses.
However, he did reveal that Craig Dawson, Mario Lemina and Matheus Cunha all struggled with illness overnight ahead of the clash and only played after declaring themselves available.
O’Neil said: “It’s really disappointing, but in terms of where the group are, there are reasons at this moment why we’re not quite at full strength and we’re not performing quite as clinically or ruthlessly as we were a few weeks ago.
“The good news is Rayan (Ait-Nouri) got through 25 minutes and Pedro (Neto) is nearly back.
“Mario, Cunha and Daws were all ill overnight in the hotel put themselves forward to play.
“It’s one of those I have to take on the chin and I have to accept that it’s not good enough, regardless of how good the shape is, how many times we played through it and how many times we arrived in the penalty area.
“If you let them run straight through on your goal from counter-attacks, then it doesn’t really matter.
“It’s disappointing but I’m still positive around where we can get to and hopefully the turnaround we’ll see soon with some players coming back.”
Jose Sa was also absent from the squad after picking up a shoulder injury in training ahead of the game.
O’Neil hopes it is not serious after making a late call to take him out of the side and play Dan Bentley.
“He had a collision yesterday (Saturday) in training on his shoulder,” O’Neil added.
“He finished training, travelled down with the team no problem, and then woke up with issues with his range of motion. Hopefully it isn’t serious.
“It was a late call to remove him and same with the lads that weren’t feeling well. It was flagged that they struggled through the night.
“There’s no excuses because it’s a Premier League game and it’s massive to everybody, but I have to analyse it and on the three goals we concede, I can work with the players and make sure they understand the situations better.
“Hopefully, the group will then have days when it’s in better shape than it was today.
“I don’t like discussing individual parts as I’m not here for anyone to take blame for an individual goal, it’s on me and on all of us.
“The fact that Toti decides to commit forward too early (for the first goal) is my fault, not Toti’s.
“We’ll make sure we tidy those bits up. West Ham were very clinical, so little mistakes like that on another day, the goalkeeper saves it, or it goes wide or it’s blocked. They were just very clinical.”
