With just two days of rest after the game against Arsenal, tonight the Wolves will head to London against Tottenham Hotspur.
Recent & head-to-head records of the two teams
My Wolves are currently 8th in the Premier League with 34 points, but after winning all four games in January, my Wolves suffered a 0-1 defeat in the first two games in February.
Tottenham are currently 7th in the Premier League with 36 points, and going into 22 years, Spurs have played eight games, 4 wins and 4 losses, and on Wednesday they lost 2-3 at home to Southampton.
The two sides have met twice this season, losing 1-0 at home to Tottenham Hotspur in the second round of the league, followed by a defeat on penalties in the League Cup in September. After my Wolves returned to the Premier League, the two sides met 7 times in the Premier League, and Wolves won 2, drew 1 and lost 4.
Pre-match remarks
Speaking about Tottenham before the game, Wolf manager Laje said: "As you know, Conte was a great player and now a great coach, he won the league title at Chelsea, his three-centre-back system is amazing, and it will be a huge challenge to face one of the best coaches in football today. Conte has been with Tottenham for three months and their pace has not been smooth due to COVID-19 and injuries. Every coach is talking about the need for stability in the performance of the team, and I talked about it in particular in September and October, and told everyone that we want to keep the performance stable. I didn't watch Tottenham Hotspur play against Southampton on Wednesday night, but I know Southampton are tough to deal with and we are the only team this season to have doubled them at home and away. ”
Huang Xican returned
Laje said after the last game that he had planned to let Huang Xican play in the last 15 minutes, but huang Xican felt uncomfortable with back spasms that day, so he did not play. After 2 days of rest, perhaps Huang Xican can play a more active role tonight.
Goal puzzle
In response to the problem that my Wolves have not scored in the last two games and that wolves have only scored more in the league this season than Norwich and Burnley in the relegation zone, Laje said: "Against Norwich I felt like we players needed to get into the box more, and we did a better job of that against Arsenal. We don't have a shortage of goal scorers, Jimenez can score a lot of goals, Neves was the one who scored the most last year, Bourdains scored two goals this season, Huang Xican scored four goals, there are other players who can help us score goals in the game, and the most important thing now is to give the players confidence. It's not just Jimenez, every player needs to score goals, it's not just a player thing. Just as Jimenez is very important for our defense and José Sa is very important for us to have the ball, I will not put pressure on anyone alone, I will put pressure on the whole. Not only Jimenez, all wingers deserve to score more goals, and defenders, who should score a lot of goals when attacking from set-pieces. The midfielders have scored a lot of goals. Scoring goals is not one person's responsibility, it's the team's responsibility. ”
Set-piece defense
Before the 22nd round of the Premier League against Southampton, Wolves had never conceded a set-piece in any competition this season. But since being scored directly by Ward Prous's free-kick, the Wolves have conceded goals in four consecutive games due to set-pieces, and the first half goal conceded against Arsenal also brought the End of the Record of 14 consecutive league games without conceding a goal. How to re-stabilize the set-piece defense is a problem that Laje and the players urgently need to solve.