O’Neil | ‘We need to find a way to get one done’

O’Neil | ‘We need to find a way to get one done’

Gary O’Neil insists Wolves can’t continue to perform so well and not pick up results this season.

Not for the first time this term, the Old Gold were impressive down in Brighton on Wednesday evening, but once again were this losing side, this time leading to their Carabao Cup exit. Goncalo Guedes and Tommy Doyle were on target in the defeat, which saw O’Neil’s side dominate the second period, and the head coach’s belief remains high that his group will be able to get over the line soon and earn a result they deserve.

On results not matching performances

“Of course, lots of positives. The main thing is always the result, of course it is, and we know the run of fixtures is brutal that we’re in, and that we still face coming. We made a lot of changes, and the team still functioned well. We made some errors without the ball first half that gave Brighton a little bit too much joy. Once we managed to get that tidied up with the players, and they were able to follow the plan much better, we were better side, which takes some doing here. We should have won that second half, no problem.

“Of course, that’s not going to help us, but moving forward, and you can feel it from the fans at the end, they can still see that there’s a lot going. We’re giving ourselves opportunities to win football matches against tough teams, and unfortunately, at this moment, we haven’t managed to turn one our way.

“The lads still take a lot of heart from how well we were able to do on the road, at a tough place, against a side that hasn’t lost yet this season. You see the changes that they made and see how strong they are. Gutted to lose again and gutted that the lads gave themselves such a fantastic opportunity of getting a big result on the board for us today, and just that last little bit let us down and the sucker punch at 3-1 obviously made it very difficult.”

“I thought Guedes was excellent. He’s obviously had a tough few years with injuries and being unsettled at the club. He showed quality, he was bright, he worked unbelievably hard for the team. There were lots of positives in there. The only thing that we can really control is the way that we perform, and the way that we perform increases our chances of getting results.

“I haven’t checked, but if you go through the odds that go out before matches, I would guess we’ve been second favourite in all of them so far, and we probably will be for the next few as well. So, we are having to fight against the odds at the minute in the games, we’re doing enough in them to give ourselves a chance of taking results and falling a little bit short.

“So, obviously, I’m disappointed with that, and I need to keep pushing to make sure that we don’t come up short. As tough as the fixtures may be, we still need to find a way to get one done. But enough quality, enough good structure and enough togetherness to let you know that we’re still fighting for everything, and that we’re able to put results on the board.”

On taking a result playing badly

“I don’t want to play bad or ugly. We probably played bad for 45 minutes against Chelsea. The rest of it, not bad at all. First half today we were a bit off, not sure why. Similar game plan to normal, but just getting a few bits of it wrong, maybe a lot of changes led to that, but we were able to tidy it up at half-time.