Shropshire Star

Bruno Lage: Special days like this is why I took Wolves job

Bruno Lage has thanked Wolves for giving him the opportunity to become manager so he could experience ‘special’ days like the incredible 3-2 comeback win away at Aston Villa.

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Wolves looked destined for defeat when they fell 2-0 down at Villa Park, but three goals in the last 15 minutes of the game handed them an unlikely victory.

It was finished off by a 95th minute deflected free-kick from Ruben Neves and speaking after the game, Lage was grateful for the chance to be boss.

He said: “This is why I wanted to come to the Premier League and I thank Wolves for giving me that chance. That is the (kind of) game I want to live in my career.

“I live some days like that at Sheffield Wednesday as assistant, and they are the kind of days I want to live in my career.

“I thank Wolves for giving me that chance. Today is a good day for us.

“It was a good game. We played the game we expected to play, where one team has the ball and they had good chances.

“At 2-0 we tried to change our dynamic a little bit. We wanted the ball more between the lines and after 2-0, we had 30 minutes to change it and we started to have more possession and we created chances.

“In the same way we scored that goal from Ruben (with a deflection), Villa scored their second one (with a deflection).

“No-one deserved to lose.”

The 3,000 travelling Wolves supporters created a carnival atmosphere as the team snatched the win, resulting in incredible scenes after the final whistle.

And Lage is now giving his side an extended break to recover.

“I’m not an emotional guy, my focus is on the next moment, but for sure this will be one of the days we remember,” he added.

“This is the kind of game that, for sure, we will remember for a long time. This is a massive club and when you come to play in this stadium to play in the same confidence at 2-0 down, it’s a special day for us and for the future.

“I will give the boys two days off because they deserve it and then on Tuesday we need to start work. After that we play Leeds and it’s a tough team to play against.”

Raul Jimenez was surprisingly left on the bench for the clash, having arrived back in the UK late on Thursday after the international break with Mexico.

Lage has now confirmed he did not want to take any risks with the striker after a long flight.

“Raul is very important for us and the way we play, but he’s not the only one, the other players are also important,” Lage said.

“I don’t want to take risks with these kind of players. I said yesterday we may need to protect (Romain) Saiss more because he played more time for the national team than Raul, but my concern is about the travel.

“The flight was too much time, he just arrived and felt tired. He wanted to play. I put him in the warm up after 60 minutes and every time I looked he was giving me signals to come on.

“I preferred to go with Fabio and Daniel because I don’t want to take risks with him. We don’t have a big squad and I don’t want injuries because I don’t take the best decisions.

“Now is easy to talk about it, but if you lose or draw (it isn’t).”