Wolves man reaping the rewards of training ground hard work

The Spaniard has been a mainstay in the team for a number of months now and has helped Wolves into a race for European football.

His third goal of the season secured all three points against Sheffield United on Sunday and the head coach is pleased with his contribution.

"I love what he brings us at the moment and loved his first half," O'Neil said of Sarabia.

"The first half was very, very good and the lads' understanding of finding solutions and creating chances was excellent. We probably could have scored one or two more.

"It was a fantastic goal. You wouldn't believe how often we work on those situations with Rayan and Pablo, and sometimes the other way round when Pablo's delivering from those kind of areas.

"Pablo's timing of his run and the area he arrives in is not luck, we work on it with him and he works extremely hard on it.

"I'm delighted with the goal, it was an excellent goal. Pablo was very, very good in a tough game. He made some good forward passes and managed to get Nelson (Semedo) in a few times. I'm really pleased with where Pablo's at."

The goal was Wolves' 40th this season, which is a marked improvement on 31, 38 and 36 for the whole of the last three seasons.

O'Neil added: "I'm really pleased. I saw something in the media around it being more goals this season than we've scored in the previous three, so we have made improvements in that.

"It still has to get better because it didn't look like we had much chance of scoring the 41st goal after half-time.

"There's still lots to improve on but I'm pleased. I'm proud of the players and when you take the whole situation and where we are now, it is a big achievement.

"We're in a good spot and need to reset and keep pushing. I'm pleased with the goal scoring."

Wolves had a scare during the warm-ups on Sunday, when Hwang Hee-chan went down holding his knee and seemed to be in some discomfort.

After being seen by the medics the forward started the game and played 86 minutes.

"He stood on the ball and rocked his knee a little bit," O'Neil said.

"He's fine now and can't feel a thing. No pain at all, so it was probably a bit of a shock for him with a big game coming up and feeling some pain in his knee at that time.

"But he's absolutely fine. No problem. He's important for us with his runs in behind and we've missed that.

"He got tired and didn't look as much of a threat in behind in the second half, but in the first half he gave us a good outlet."