Gary Lineker has said that Wolves ‘outplayed’ Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday in the 2-1 win at Molineux.
Gary O’Neil‘s side bounced back from a frustrating defeat to Sheffield United the weekend before, with Pablo Sarabia coming in clutch for Wanderers.
Wolves were trailing 1-0 up until injury-time when Sarabia scored one of the goals of the season so far. He collected a ball over the top from Matheus Cunha and fired in at the near posts in what was a fantastic piece of technical brilliance. TNT Sports pundit Joe Cole said after the game that ‘only quality players can do that’.
Sarabia then set up Mario Lemina to score a 97th-minute winner.
Wolves fans were elated about the comeback – and Lineker has now given credit to Wolves on the latest Rest Is Football podcast episode…
Gary Lineker admits Wolves outplayed Tottenham on Saturday in 2-1 win
The Wolves-Tottenham game was briefly discussed on The Rest Is Football, and Lineker gave his thoughts about the pulsating game.
According to the post-game statistics, Spurs had more of the ball. But it was Wolves who had far more attempts on goal.
O’Neil’s side had 17 attempts in total, with four on target. Spurs had just six efforts on goal, with two on target.
At times, Wolves played some lovely, slick football – something that is becoming more and more frequent.
O’Neil has now had some time to work with the players at Wolves after coming in just days before the new season. It looks as though we are finally starting to see a genuine possession style of play emerge.
There was also plenty of aggression in the press, which is why Spurs were limited to so few opportunities.
Former Lilywhites striker Lineker admitted: “It’s all gone a bit Spursy for Tottenham. The Monday night game against Chelsea was a killer for them, wasn’t it? Not only did they lose the game and all the madness of the disallowed goals, to have two players shown a red card and to lose two of your best players, Maddison and van de Ven…
“It just felt from being really euphoric and going really well to suddenly everything falls apart, and then they play at Wolves. They were outplayed. But they nearly hung on.
“Obviously I’ve got an affinity to Spurs because I played there so I was kind of gutted.”
Wolves style of play becoming clearer under O’Neil
At times Wolves did indeed outplay Spurs, which was brilliant to see.
They were, of course, missing a number of players but they were still going to be a tough side to beat. Then, of course, they scored the early goal through Johnson, making life difficult for Wolves.
But the Wolves players believed in their manager’s plan.
Wolves are starting to look really good on the ball. There is some lovely link-up play happening right now, and it’s impressive how easily Wolves can progress the ball through the thirds. It has been notable how much better the team has been at playing out from the back lately.
Out of possession, Wolves are aggressive in the press which makes it hard for the opposition to play. Without doubt, there are some really encouraging signs watching Wolves right now.