Julen Lopetegui has warned that Wolves are still in a battle against relegation after his side slipped to defeat at Leicester City. Wolves made a slow start to the game but capitalised on a mistake by Youri Tielemans that allowed Matheus Cunha to put them ahead. However, later in the first half, Jose Sa conceded a penalty, which Kelechi Ihenacho converted, before Timothy Castagne put the Foxes ahead on 75 minutes to give Dean Smith’s side their first win in 11 games. Despite suffering a disappointing setback, Wolves remain six points above the bottom three, with the same number of games left to play. When asked about his side’s six-point buffer to the bottom three, Lopetegui warned his players against becoming complacent as other clubs begin to steel themselves for the final run-in.
Julen Lopetegui said: “This is the worst message we can send to the players. It’s a very dangerous message because I know how football is and how the Premier League is. Until you have achieved one aim you have not done anything yet. Sometimes it’s not easy to explain it but it’s about the football. We are very clear with this message for the players, they know. Of course we have frustration because we didn’t get any positive things here. We have to recover very fast. We have a very hard challenge in two days (against Crystal Palace). We did good things but not enough.”
Lopetegui was proud of how his players responded to initially going behind, after a collectively slow start to the game, which culminated in Jose Sa committing the foul that led to Leicester’s spot kick. Wolves continued to create chances and could have nicked a point as Ruben Neves went close with a free-kick, late on, but the manager refused to dig out Sa’s error as the reason for Wolves leaving the King Power Stadium with a defeat.
Julen Lopetegui added: “It’s not the time to talk about individual actions. It’s about the team and when the team win all of us win and when we lost, all of us lose. It’s not about one or two players, so I will not talk about that. It wasn’t only about this situation.”
Wolves face Crystal Palace on Tuesday (7.30pm kick-off) in their next match at Molineux, as Lopetegui’s men seek to close the gap to Roy Hodgson’s side and continue to steer the club away from danger.
