FACT ROOM...
Wolves have beaten Norwich away from home in the top-flight for only the second time, and the first since February 1980 (P9 W1 D5 L3 before today).
Norwich have failed to keep a clean sheet in 13 Premier League home games, their longest ever such run in the competition.
Wolves have conceded the first goal in a Premier League game on 11 occasions this season – the jointmost along with Arsenal; Wolves only went on to lose three of those games.
Cantwell Saiss Jimenez
RAUL JIMENEZ can smell a top-four finish for Wolves after they moved within touching distance with only their sixth win of the season.
Tottenham manager Jose Mourinho warned last week that Wolves are genuine contenders for a Champions League spot and Jimenez agrees.
“We are there, we are close, we are fighting,” said the Mexican striker. “It is special for us.”
Although Norwich were the better side in the first half and went ahead through Todd Cantwell, Wolves bared their teeth after the break and hit back with a Romain Saiss leveller. Jimenez grabbed the winner
with his 16th goal of the season and later claimed that the Wolves campaign has not surprised him.
He added: “We are a team that always wants more. We set a very high bar for ourselves this season and we are doing well.”
Keeper Rui Patricio kept Norwich at bay with fine saves from Teemu Pukki and Alex Tettey before Wolves clawed their way back into the match and got a positive result for the eighth time after conceding first.
Jimenez (celebrating, right) is relishing the responsibility of being the main man.
“This is what I have been looking for since arriving in Europe, being the important striker in a team,” said the former Benfica and Atletico Madrid attacker.
“The secret is working and never losing faith. I spent three years at Benfica and one year at Atletico Madrid, but I didn’t play as often as I wanted to. I always kept wanting more and that was the secret, to keep wanting more.”
The next big test for Wolves is at Molineux on Boxing Day against reigning champions Manchester City, who they beat on their own turf in October.
Jimenez, taking confidence from that 2-0 victory, said: “It’s always special to have games against this kind of team. We are thinking we can win that game.”
Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo played down his side’s topfour hopes. Asked if a Champions League slot was in his sights, Nuno said: “No. We don’t compete for the table, we compete to perform. We judge ourselves on how we do things and today in the first half we did very bad and in the second half we did very good. This is the standard. We go game by game.
We stay humble, no matter what success we have, we stay humble.”
TIM KRUL has called on Norwich to get back to finishing games strongly.
The Canaries clinched Championship promotion last season on their ability to dig out late wins from losing positions but, as this defeat by Wolves showed, things are different this season.
“I’d rather go 1-0 down and win 2-1 of course and that happened here before,” said goalkeeper Krul after City failed to keep a clean sheet for a 13th successive game.
“It’s not that we are tactically not right or anything like that.
“The manager prepares us fantastically before every game. Look what we did against Wolves. We’ve shown top, top football and Wolves must have thought they were in a right game but they managed somehow to get three points.”
Dutchman Krul (above) knows the importance of beating the teams around them, starting with Aston Villa on Boxing Day.
He said: ‘There is no point in looking at anyone else because we need to do it ourselves. We can’t just keep hoping other teams are going to slip up.”