Gary O’Neil has identified two areas in which Wolves still need to improve after talking about last weekend’s defeat at the hands of Sheffield United.
The team at the bottom of the Premier League, Sheffield United, shocked Wolves last week by winning their first game of the season thanks to a late penalty.
In the defeat, VAR and officiating once again proved to be crucial factors in deciding the result of a Wolves match; Gary O’Neil called this decision “worrisome.”
However, O’Neil wasn’t going to back down in the face of a team as dejected as the Blades; instead, he acknowledged that his Wolves team needed to get better.
In an interview with Wolves Weekly, O’Neil discussed his thoughts on the defeat and offered two recommendations for how Wolves may get better.
“We got a bit lost in the second half; I think things changed and we weren’t able to adapt,” O’Neil says of the Wolves’ performance. “If we want to be better and we want to make sure we win that football match, we need to be more clinical in the first half and be able to adapt better to the change in the second half.”
But O’Neil continued, reminding everyone that players are still adjusting and that he hasn’t been with the team for too long.
“The boys are really good at taking it on, and it’s still such a short amount of time that we’ve been working together and there’s still so much for the lads to understand around what we are trying to do, so no surprise from my part that there are still errors and there will always be errors but the lads not understanding quickly enough.”
Wolves were unlucky
Despite it being a really bad loss to take, O’Neil will have taken confidence in the fact Wolves probably should’ve had the game wrapped up early.
The penalty was the only chance Sheffield really created all game, with Cameron Archer’s strike only counting for 0.19 xG according to FBRef
If Wolves were able to be more clinical, no doubt they would’ve won this game, a fact which can also be said for multiple games this season.
Mario Lemina’s chance immediately after Archer scored is one chance of note which should’ve been converted, with an xG of 0.91.
.
