Pedro Neto made his first appearance of the season since his long-term injury when Wolves beat Leicester 2-1 on Sunday.
Neto came on as a second half substitute and had a very late chance to score when Kasper Schmeichel came up for a stoppage time corner and Wolves were able to counter.
The winger fired wide and admitted to the club’s official website he was tired after so long out. There was also praise for boss Bruno Lage.
“In my head I always had the mentality of going for goal,” he said of his late chance. “It was my first minutes back and I will be honest, I was a little bit tired.
“I only saw that Schmeichel was out of the goal when he ran past me when I was running with the ball, so I then thought I should shoot. I tried, but I was a little bit tired.”
On Lage, he added: “He’s helped me, of course. At the beginning, I didn’t have a lot of his ideas because I was doing my recovery in Portugal, but when I came back he was there to help me. When I started training, he gave me the feedback I needed to come back. He gives a lot of confidence to the players and you can see that in the way we play.
“He’s very good. The coach has also brought a lot of ideas and if we do what he wants, we have the players to do well. The mentality and the quality are both there and the ideas are also there. We have to put those ideas and quality on matches, so I was not surprised at how well the team was doing.”
It is not surprising Neto felt tired after so long out of the side although there were not too many signs of that in his performance.
He will gradually get fitter and sharper as he readjusts to the feeling of playing intense Premier League matches after his period of absence.
A first goal will raise the roof if it comes at Molineux and that will be an important step, as shown when Raul Jimenez scored at Southampton earlier this season.
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