Neves says he doesn’t care about criticism of his goal record

Wolves midfielder Ruben Neves has hit back at criticism of his goal record during his time at Molineux.

In an interview with the Athletic, Neves said that he has read it written that he should have more goals to show for his time at the club.

But he has said he does not care and explained why it is so hard to score more often than he already does.

“Shooting can be a good solution for the team but I always say that my main target is not to score goals!” Neves said, apparently getting animated.

“People don’t always understand that. Maybe they think I need to score as many as Raul Jimenez, but I’m a midfielder, my main target is to put the team to play.

“Shooting is a good solution when the team is down and we don’t have space to play through them. But it’s hard to do. If I can shoot, I will. But if there are better solutions, I’ll do that.

“Thirty yards from the goal, it’s very, very hard to score. Goalkeepers (in the Premier League) are at the top level. I saw someone saying that for the number of shots I have, I need to score more, but I don’t care about that.”

There would not be so much scrutiny on Neves to score if Wolves had an array of forwards who were regularly scoring upwards of ten goals a season.

At the moment, there is only Raul Jimenez who has proved he can do that in England within the Wolves squad and he has not been at his best this season.

But that means that there is unfair pressure on Neves to do more than what he usually does, which is come up with a steady supply of belters each season.

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