Gary O’Neil has explained how Wolves were undone so easily in their 3-0 defeat to Newcastle.
Wolves’ European hopes took a huge blow on Saturday afternoon as Newcastle ended O’Neil’s side’s three-game winning run.
It was a poor performance at St. James’ Park with Newcastle looking likely to score every time they attacked.
Key first-team players missing was certainly a factor, with Wolves missing Matheus Cunha, Joao Gomes and Hwang Hee-Chan.
As a result of the defeat, Wolves have now fallen to 10th, four points off seventh place.
After the game, O’Neil explained how the game went against Wolves as they suffered one of their heaviest losses of the season.
‘Slack moments’ cost Wolves
It was a disastrous start from Wolves who quickly went 1-0 from a quick counter-attack. One goal soon became two after terrible goalkeeping from Jose Sa allowed Antony Gordan to tap home.
The first half put the game out of sight for Wolves. Despite an attempted comeback from the visitors, they were unable to get a goal before conceding yet again in added time.
Now, looking back on the game, O’Neil points towards Wolves’ errors at the back as one of the main reasons for the defeat.
“I’m really proud of the group and I thought they gave absolutely everything,” he told Wolves. “We’ve had a tough week, a really good week, but a really tough week and a tough end to the week.
“Key players missing, a lot of young lads in and around it today, and we had large spells in the game where we looked really good, had lots of control, had loads of the ball, but two real slack moments for the goals cost us.
“They were lucky that both of them ended up costing us and two of them had large deflections on them, but one we left ourselves open on the counter-attack, which was really disappointing because we spoke about it and the second one was the pressing phase which we go slightly wrong.”
Wolves’ defence need to switch on early on
Multiple times this season, Wolves’ poor defensive displays early on have nearly cost the side.
This has been seen against Spurs, Nottingham Forest and Brentford. While Wolves were able to pick up a point from these fixtures, the backline did not recover against Newcastle.
This issue has now occurred too many times this season. Consistency at the back is a real issue, especially with that Newcastle performance coming on the back of two consecutive clean sheets.
Against Fulham, Santiago Bueno needs to come back into the starting XI. The Uruguayan has not put a foot wrong in recent weeks and has been highly unlucky not to be in the team.
Now, after a terrible showing against Newcastle, O’Neil must put more trust in his back-up defender to help bring some more stability to the Wolves backline.