Wolves were unable to call on Jose Sa for yesterday’s game with West Ham United yesterday due to a shoulder – and Gary O’Neil explained what actually happened with the Molineux number one.
Wolves crashed to a dismal 3-0 defeat at the London Stadium, with Mohammed Kudus scoring twice before Jarrod Bowen killed the game in the second-half.
Wanderers looked like they had got back into it when Pablo Sarabia scored, but the Spaniard was ruled offside by VAR.
There was a sense of anger for Wolves fans when Vladimir Coufal was not sent off for a clear elbow on Jean-Ricner Bellegarde just before half-time. The incident left Ian Wright seething on Match of the Day 2, with the former striker branding it ‘pathetic’.
Wolves were without Jose Sa yesterday with Dan Bentley replacing him – and O’Neil explained afterwards how exactly his shoulder injury came about…
Jose Sa injury came about after ‘collision’ with teammate in Wolves training
Wolves fans were surprised to see that Sa was not in the matchday squad yesterday when the team news dropped at 1pm.
Gary O’Neil had not said anything about Sa in his press conference on Thursday, but Sa would suffer his injury in a training session on Friday.
It seemed as though Sa was actually ready to play, until he woke up struggling on the morning of the game
It turns out Sa’s shoulder injury happened in training as a result of a collision with a teammate. O’Neil said: “Sa had a collision with one of the outfield players yesterday in training and was fine, he finished training and travelled down on the bus and woke up this morning and had a bit of a lack of range of movement in his shoulder, so he wasn’t available to play.
“Those things happen, zero excuses, we need to be better and I’m sure we will be.
Wolves need Sa back fit and available
Unfortunately, Sa’s replacement Bentley did not have a great game yesterday against West Ham.
The former Bristol City star gave a good account of himself against Arsenal and Burnley, but he was very questionable on the first Kudus goal yesterday, and also for Jarrod Bowen’s goal.
Who knows if £7 million signing Sa would have done any better, but there can be no doubts that Sa is generally a much better goalkeeper than the Englishman.
Hopefully, this shoulder injury isn’t going to keep him out of action for too long.
The fact Sa was actually able to finish that training session may well be a suggestion that his latest issue isn’t too serious, and that he’ll be back for the Chelsea game.