Bruno Lage: ‘It’s not about Adama [Traore], it’s about all the players’

Wolverhampton Wanderers made it back-to-back wins for the first time this season with the 2-1 victory over Newcastle United on Saturday afternoon.

After a patchy start to the campaign, Wanderers boss Bruno Lage looks to have finally found a winning formula within the squad.

But that formula has come at the expense of one of the more popular figures at Molineux, Adama Traore.

The Spaniard has only made brief cameo appearances from the bench in the last two Premier League matches and despite chants from the home-end to introduce him midway through the second-half against the Magpies, he was only brought on in stoppage time.

It has been understandably frustrating for Traore who was recently reported to be on the verge of signing a new big money contract but Lage was quick to reiterate that this Wolves team revolves around more than just one man.

“Look, this is football,” he said.

“This is our job. We don’t have easy decisions.

“It’s good for me to say, now you can understand better, why I chose Joao [Moutinho] and Leander [Dendoncker] for the Southampton game and why I chose Ruben [Neves] and Joao for this game.

“Why I choose Adama for one game and not other games. It’s not about Adama, it’s about all the players.

“First of all they need to understand my way of working but also to understand the man they have in front of them.

“Look I never lie to them, I’m here to help them, to take the best from them. They need to continue to work. This is our job.

“You can imagine one player standing on the bench and the other guy goes inside and scores two goals to help the team. The same way when you have your chances, you need to go inside.

“Leander did well the last two games, he scored one goal for us and today he was on the bench and he came to help the team in the 10/15 minutes he played. This is football. Everyone needs to understand that.

“Every time, from my point of view, I want to arrive at the game, confident and comfortable and don’t think ‘maybe I should do this or that’.

“That’s why I come for the game with a lot of confidence and without doubt because every time I want to see everything, I want to analyse everything to choose the best guys for the game.

“You know football. Imagine I take the same decisions and we come here and we don’t win these two games. This is football.”