Cristian’s verdict on Wolves: "When you are in control, you have to be clinical"
Cristian Stellini felt we missed our chance to put Wolves to the sword in a dominant first half display as we slipped to a 1-0 defeat at Molineux on Saturday.
The stats say everything you need to know. At half-time, we’d had 11 shots to the home side’s nil, struck the woodwork through Pedro Porro and seen Jose Sa deny Heung-Min Son, Ivan Perisic and Dejan Kuusevski. Even Wolves boss Julen Lopetegui said in his press conference, ‘Spurs deserved more’.
The pattern continued after the break, Sonny struck the crossbar again two minutes into the second half and when Fraser Forster was called into action for the first time to keep out Raul Jimenez on 53 minutes, the shot count was 16-1 in our favour.
Boosted by that, Lopetegui’s team began to step up and after a couple of fine saves from Forster, Traore won it eight minutes from time, a huge blow.
Speaking to SPURSPLAY afterwards, Cristian said: “My thoughts are that we expected a reaction (after losing to Sheffield United in the FA Cup in midweek), we expected to react from the start of this game, and the first half was completely under control.
“We played very well in the first half, had three good chances to score and to kill the game, but we were not ready to do it, and after that in the second half we struggled a bit.
“We needed time to adapt to some changes they made, then we lost some duels, their striker won some duels and that created a good pace for them. We defended well, they created two chances and one was a goal. This is the story of the game.”
The final shot count was 21-8 in our favour, and it was put to Cristian that it was almost unbelievable that we came away with nothing. “If you look at the stats, you could think it’s unbelievable,” he said. “But, in the Premier League, you know you have to keep a high pace and to go strong in every duel. After their changes, we lost some duels in the second half.
“Also, you have to be nastier when you have the possibility to score, you have to be aggressive. We had the chances but we didn’t realise how important it was to score in the first half. It’s a lesson we have to learn – when you are in control of the game, you have be clinical and kill the game.”