Gary O’Neil explains why Pedro Neto and Jose Sa went off against Newcastle United
Gary O’Neil shed some light on the injuries picked up by Jose Sa and Pedro Neto during yesterday’s 3-0 defeat to Newcastle United.
Wolves were rather brought back down to earth at St. James’ Park as Newcastle dealt a blow to Wolves’ European football hopes.
Alexander Isak opened the scoring after a fortuitous deflection from a shot from Bruno Guimaraes. Anthony Gordon then capitalised on some poor goalkeeping from Jose Sa to tap home, and then at the end Timo Livramento added a third after he was allowed to wander into the Wolves penalty area.
They were disappointing goals to concede, but Wolves did not deserve anything from the game, despite creating some decent chances and having good spells on the ball.
It was a frustrating one to take, and it was yet another game where Wolves lost players due to injury…
Gary O’Neil gives updates on Jose Sa and Pedro Neto after Wolves’ loss to Newcastle
Last month, Wolves fans were rocked when news came through of a ‘significant’ hamstring injury for Matheus Cunha.
Hwang Hee-chan couldn’t play yesterday due to a hamstring injury he picked up against Sheffield United, and is now set for six weeks out. Joao Gomes was also unavailable yesterday.
The injury curse continued yesterday for Wolves, with two players having to be withdrawn.
Jose Sa and Pedro Neto both went off at half-time, with Dan Bentley and Nathan Fraser replacing them respectively.
Speaking after the game, O’Neil gave an update on the duo. Thankfully, their issues don’t appear to be the same severity as Cunha or Hwang.
He said (via Sky Sports): “Sa has a sore quad, and Pedro had a tight hamstring. So we couldn’t take any risks with either.
“Tough one. No Channy, no Cunha, no Pedro. Tough situation for us, but hopefully he’ll be OK. He (Neto) doesn’t feel too bad, there doesn’t seem to be any injury there, just some tightness. We’re hopeful he’ll be back for next weekend.”
Tough period for Wolves
While Sa and Neto don’t look like they’ll be it for long, if at all, these are concerning times now for Wolves.
O’Neil did say recently that his squad was ‘creaking’, and we are now getting injuries much more frequently than in the first half of the season.
It was probably bound to happen given how small Wolves’ squad is, and the fact O’Neil hasn’t rotated all that much this season.
It is going to be very tough for Wolves to finish in the European spots because of their lack of squad depth. If they do miss out though, it would still have been a great season considering the chaos of last summer.
