Julen Lopetegui has warned his Wolverhampton Wanderers players that they are far from out of the woods after Bournemouth dragged them back into the relegation scrap. Marcus Tavernier scored the only goal of the game at Molineux to hand a vital victory to Bournemouth. Wolves remain 15th in the Premier League table, but they are only three points above the relegation zone.
Julien Lopetegui said: “It’s negative because we lost. This is a very bad day for us. The key moment was when we suffered the goal. Our reaction was not good. You can suffer a goal, this is football, it’s about how you react. In the last 20-25 minutes we forgot to play football so it was easy for them to defend. I am not happy with our last 20-25 minutes. When I arrived here we were bottom, now we are in the middle of the fight. You win two matches but it’s not enough. We have to arrive on 40 points. We know it’s very hard to get points in this league.”
Lopetegui surprised everyone inside Molineux by taking Adama Traore off in the 77th minute. Adama was one of Wolves’ most dangerous players before being replaced by Raul Jimenez. Explaining Adama’s withdrawal,
Julien Lopetegui said: “Because we were playing with two forwards and we needed our full-backs to arrive. He was a bit tired and we needed another kind of player in this moment. That’s why I changed it.”