Lage: Wolves ‘not far away from’ Premier League big spenders
Bruno Lage believes Wolves have shown this season that they can compete with big-spending Premier League sides, such as Arsenal and West Ham.
The Molineux side were beaten 1-0 by the Hammers on Sunday afternoon, but head coach Lage insists it was a “good performance” from his side.
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There was talk of Wolves finishing inside the top four this season, but back-to-back defeats to West Ham and Arsenal have put a huge dent in their chances.
Lage believes these results have shown the difference between his team and the ‘real teams’ fighting for the Champions League places.
“The most important thing is we have 12 games to go and the people are talking about what is our goal – it should be very clear, our goal is to continue to play the way we play,” Lage said Sunday’s defeat (quotes via Birmingham Mail).
“We go into our next game against Crystal Palace and we need to play like we did against West Ham.
“We arrived in February with 40 points and our fans are talking about Champions League, and the real teams who have that goal because they invest a lot is teams like West Ham and Arsenal.
“We are not far away from them, because we played very well against them. Against Arsenal, we conceded a goal at the end, and today we conceded that chance and didn’t score any goals.
“We haven’t won anything, but I think we can understand better that we’re not far away from these teams. It’s in short details, in experience, and we need to win in the next 12 games to do our job. It’s been a good season until now, and we need to fight for every point until the end of the season.
“Under my command, no one is going to relax until the end of the season. I want 43 points against Crystal Palace.”
On the result against West Ham, Lage added: “I think it was a good performance.
“We played the way we wanted, and we like. We controlled the game with the ball. We started well, in the first 20 minutes I think we were the better team. After that they balanced, and until the end of the first half they were better than us.
“After the break, we started well, the first 15 minutes was very good, then we gave them a chance to score.
“If you look at our performance, it was good, but the way we conceded that chance to score was unbelievable.
“We must understand we are playing against a strong team. (Lukasz) Fabianski is one of the best goalkeepers in the world to stop crosses, they have tall defenders, and we needed to find a way to score a goal with our profile of players.”