Shropshire Star

Leo Bonatini not far off a Wolves return

Leo Bonatini's injury absence is expected to be a brief one – as Nuno Espirito Santo praised the club’s medical staff.

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The Brazilian striker was absent for Saturday’s 2-1 win over QPR at Molineux with an unspecified problem.

The Al Hilal loanee has scored 12 goals this season and been a crucial component in Wolves’ success.

And the Express & Star understands he isn’t far away from returning to the first-team squad, with a likely absence of one or two weeks.

Meanwhile, Nuno has spoken of the importance of injury prevention within his backroom team. Bonatini and Romain Saiss are short-term absentees but apart from them and long-term injury victim Phil Ofosu-Ayeh, Wolves’ injury record has been impressive this season.

Nuno said: “Injury prevention is something we’ve worked on.

“We have good people taking care of that. The science helps.

“I’ve always taken an interest in it (as a manager) because the fitness of the players is good and sometimes prevention is the best solution.

“If you can read well the science of the player and prevent things from happening when you can see that they’re there just by taking a training session or a week of a different approach, you can prevent a longer period that the injury causes. If you balance that, prevention is good.”

Wolves came through a tough test against QPR and the head coach said his players’ work ethic is an important reason behind their consistency.

“The way the players work every day, this is what is most important,” he added.

“We must never lose the focus of that. Teamwork, hard work – success comes back on that.

“It’s never too easy. Saturday was a very difficult game and we won it.”

Meanwhile, centre-half Conor Coady, who cleared a shot off the line in the last minute, believes Wolves can still improve.

They currently have a 12-point lead and one lost once in 17 matches,

But Coady said: “You’ve got to improve, you can always get better and we’re never going to be the finished article, it’s as simple as that.

“The club’s done fantastic this year but there’s still a long way to go.

It’s about improving on the training pitch week in, week out, learning from my mistakes, listening to the manager and getting better.

Of his goal-saving block, he added: “It’s instinct a lot of the time. Sometimes you have to throw yourself at the ball.”