WOEFUL WOLVES PUT TO SWORD
WOLVES BOSS Dean Saunders believes he needs to bring in players on his wavelength as his side suffered back-toback relegations.
Two first-half goals from Kazenga LuaLua sealed Saunders’ side’s fate as Brighton now turn their attention to a play-off semi-final against Crystal Palace.
And Saunders now feels the transfer market will be key in the rebuilding of his club.
“We need to get some players in who think like I’m thinking,” said Saunders. “With fresh minds, who want to win, no damage done to them and no confidence issues.
“The odds were against us, but to be honest I’ve felt sick since the Burnley game. So I had the same feeling before the Brighton game. We needed a minor miracle.
“The game against Brighton summed our season up. We put balls across the face of goal but we didn’t get on the end of anything.
“We weren’t good enough in our box and we weren’t good in theirs, it’s been going on for three years.
“We’ve got to move forward now. Sometimes out of crisis comes opportunity and we’ve got an opportunity now as we’ve hit rock bottom.
“We need to change things drastically otherwise you go along thinking everything is alright. When the whistle went I shook everyone’s hand and I said ‘I’ve just started rebuilding now’.”
The away side had the first effort of the match three minutes in, as Bakary Sako’s effort from distance was denied by the post.
Moments later, Brighton had grabbed the lead. LuaLua found space for himself on the edge of the area and superbly curled his shot towards the bottom corner for his fourth league goal of the season.
Wolves slowly edged into the game after conceding, controlling the majority of possession in the process.
However they were reduced to taking pot shots from distance, none of which tested Tomasz Kuszczak.
Six minutes before the break Brighton doubled their lead. LuaLua once again found himself in space around the penalty area, allowing the forward to brilliantly run through the defence and slot the ball past Dorus De Vries.
Wolves nearly responded with a goal of their own soon after, but Jamie O’Hara was unable to tuck home Sako’s well worked free-kick.
The second half began with Wolves starting to come out of their shell a bit more.
Ten minutes after the break Wolves nearly pulled one back, but Roger Johnson failed to head O’Hara’s free kick on target.
With less than ten minutes to go,Vicente Rodriguez made a great darting run through the midfield but failed to get his shot on target.
Gus Poyet’s side now face a trip to face Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Friday night in the first leg of the play-off semi-final.
The Brighton boss believes his side are in a great position going into the game.
“We cannot get away from the stats, we have the best defence in the Championship,” said Poyet.
“People that watch this football club and the way we play probably didn’t know that.
“It’s an unbelievable achievement because of the way we play, because of how open we are.We take so many risks. If we can maintain that, we can be a difficult team to beat. I hope now we’re in the play-offs I hope we can maintain that.
“If you think about the form we are probably in the best situation. The teams in the play-offs, apart from Watford, I was expecting to be there.
“I will try my best to keep their minds on football, it could be a great match.”