Nuno Espírito Santo tells Wolves to ignore vocal Besiktas support
Nuno Espírito Santo says nothing should prevent his players from performing to their best in Thursday’s critical Europa League match at Besiktas: not the hostile atmosphere in Istanbul and not the fact that they arrived in Turkey less than 24 hours before kickoff because their charter flight was delayed.
Wolves and Besiktas both need to start picking up points after losing their opening matches in their group, and nearly 42,000 home fans will do their utmost to intimidate the visitors. Nuno insisted any din they make should fall on deaf ears. “I don’t see an issue,” he said. “You have to focus on the pitch, on Besiktas’s players. Play the game, enjoy yourself. Whatever the atmosphere is, it cannot interfere with your performance.”
One of the local newspapers took great relish on Wednesday in suggesting the Wolves’ captain, Conor Coady, had said he was “scared” about the hostile reception awaiting his team, but that report stemmed from a mistranslation. Coady emphasised on this eve of the game that he and his teammates will embrace a unique occasion. “It’s going to be an amazing experience, it really is,” he said. “It’s something we’ve been looking forward to for a while. It’s up to us to try to frustrate the crowd because we know how much they try to get behind their team.”
Nuno, who travelled straight from Istanbul airport to perform his mandatory press conference duties at after 10pm local time, said he had no regrets about choosing to train in Wolverhampton before flying to Istanbul. “If we had decided to train [at the stadium in Besiktas], we have had to get up at 6am so that would have perturbed the players’ rest and everything in your day is different. The delay was caused by things we could not control. We take decision [based] on what we can control.”
Nuno has to balance his team’s workload across a particularly arduous period, with Thursday’s showdown in Istanbul followed by a Premier League trip to Manchester City on Sunday. At least Wolves took a nearly full-strength squad to Turkey, with the only major absence being Diogo Jota, who stayed behind to recover from a toe injury.
The hosts are under even more pressure following a dreadful start to their season. The club by the Bosphorus are shipping goals at an alarming rate and are anchored in the relegation zone of their domestic league after six matches. There is speculation that defeat to Wolves, in the wake of their 4-2 loss at Slovan Bratislava in their first group match, could lead to calls for the dismissal of their manager, Abdullah Avci, who only took charge in the summer. Avci said he intends to ensure the Wolves’ match will be a “new start” for him and his team.
Coady, meanwhile, said beating Watford last weekend to claim a first Premier League win of the season showed Wolves are regaining their form. “Saturday was huge for us,” he said. “Not necessarily the result, but the way we played, we looked a little bit more like ourselves. We haven’t really panicked to much about the start of the season because we know it’s early but it was good, and the clean sheet was massive.”
Asked whether that victory has generated momentum that can drive his team, Nuno, as ever, showed contempt for fluffy concepts. “It’s not based on moment,” he said. “It’s about the ability to compete. If you are waiting for a good moment to do something, it’ not like that. Football is about always being ready.”