Bruno Lage believes Wolverhampton Wanderers should have been awarded a penalty to level yesterday’s match at Crystal Palace.
Bruno Lage said: “I haven’t seen the images for the first one so I don’t have an opinion. VAR is very important for modern football and it can help the referees to be better. The second one, sometimes you need to understand what happens – not on TV, but inside the action. On Rayan, the big foul was inside the box. There was a touch outside but the big foul was inside the box. Because of that, they should go by the referee’s decision, in my opinion. The referee saw it. It was a foul inside the box, not for the first touch. The referee didn’t whistle for the first contact, he whistled for what happened in the box.”
Here’s everything the Wolves boss said in his post-match press conference…
Reaction to the defeat
The challenge was to come here and continue with a good performance, like we did against Everton. That’s the challenge we need for this team, for these players, and also for me as a manager because that’s the dimension I want.
But we didn’t. When you look at the game, Crystal Palace did a massive performance. They were better in the duels, not just the defensive ones but also offensively.
We shouldn’t be afraid of nothing. Let’s play our game and then look at the performance and for a result.
I’m not happy today but when I look back at what we did over the last five or six matches, I cannot judge my players just on today.
Approach away from home
The last two, because what we did in Southampton and Watford was good – well, not very good, but good. The manager from Crystal Palace, Patrick Vieira, will watch the games against Leeds and Everton and understand that if you give space to us, we will manage the ball the way we want.
They came with a higher pressure to close our game and create us problems, so we needed to be clever to find the spaces. We didn’t have the ball the way we want. They were better than us in these things.
I will watch it back, but it was a little bit about the duels. Not just offensive, but defensive duels I want more from my men.
The goals Wolves conceded
When you look at our team you need to understand the profile of it. We are not strong playing a style of football man-to-man. If you stay too much time defending, we don’t have that ability to stay in front of our goal defending, that’s why we need to have the ball.
If you don’t have the ball, you spend more time defending. Our team doesn’t have the profile to stay too much time defending and wait for the duels.
International break plans
It’s not coming at a good time or a bad time. When you look at what we did in the 11 games, maybe today we don’t deserve to win points but in other games we have. We must continue to work.
Me, as a manager, I am the first guy to say maybe this is a good game to learn, how to play better against teams like Leeds and Crystal Palace.
We will try to work with some of the guys who are out on loan. We are trying to call some players who can come with us, so they’ll know our players better. We don’t have games, but we’ll work hard.
Why didn’t Adama start?
That’s the question every time. We need to take decisions. We played with Adama against Leeds and we didn’t have the chances in the transition. I understand the question, for sure we thought about it.
We tried to play. We tried to understand the game and find the spaces to play. Outside it was Rayan (Ait-Nouri) and Nelson (Semedo) in good positions and to find Hwang and Trincao inside the lines, after that we attack their defensive line.
But for that we need to have good decisions from the back and to find the spaces. That’s why when I look at the game, it wasn’t a good performance but also Crystal Palace did a massive performance.
They understood well what they needed to do to press us high and we didn’t have the ball like we normally do.
Does Adama’s contract situation have anything to do with it?
No, no, no. I don’t know what happened before. I am 100 percent free to take my decisions, that’s my job.
The personality I have, I wouldn’t accept that kind of thing in my role. If I need him to play and win games, I will put him in the game.
