Ruben Neves promised Daniel Podence that he would end his free-kick drought before firing Wolverhampton Wanderers to victory over Aston Villa. Wolves appeared to be heading for defeat at Villa Park on Saturday after Danny Ings and John McGinn put the Villans 2-0 up with 15 minutes remaining. Podence stepped off the bench and teed up Romain Saiss to reduce the arrears before Wolves captain Conor Coady levelled the match in the 85th minute. Bruno Lage threw players forward in search of a winner and introduced star striker Raul Jimenez, who was rested after playing three games while on international duty with Mexico. And with just seconds on the clock at Villa Park, Adama Traore was fouled on the edge of the box to give Wolves one final chance. Neves hadn’t scored a free-kick since Wolves defeated Arsenal 3-1 at Molineux in April 2019, so Podence needed some persuading to give up the ball.
Ruben Neves explained: “Podence was with the ball but I said to him ‘give me the ball and I’ll score’. He said ‘if you’ll score I’ll give you the ball. You don’t want to score like that (deflection), I was shooting to his side and when he moved it hit the defender. Their second goal was a deflection as well so they cannot talk about luck as they had it as well. The most important thing is a win and when you cannot play as you want – some games things aren’t coming – the team spirit comes and we showed our spirit, character and how we want to take things forward.”
The victory moves Wolves up to eighth in the Premier League with four wins from their opening eight fixtures going into next weekend’s battle with Leeds United.
Ruben Neves added: “The first three games we played well and lost, now we didn’t play so well and we win – that’s football. If we stick with this team spirit we will do well. We will go game by game, this was a huge win for us and now let’s rest and think about the next one.”
