Nottingham Forest 0-4 Wolverhampton Wanderers
Bruno Lage recorded his first victory as manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers and Francisco Trincão scored his first goal for the club in an impressive League Cup triumph at Nottingham Forest.
Daniel Podence also found the net as Wolves continued to demonstrate a desire to entertain with their style of play, following two frustrating 1-0 defeats in the Premier League during which Lage’s side earned praise for a positive approach.
The match at the City Ground had a strong Portuguese feel on both sides, as ten Luso players were included across the two squads. João Moutinho, Podence and Fábio Silva were selected in the line-up for the trip to Forest, with Trincão joined on the bench by Rúben Neves and Nélson Semedo. Forest started Baba Fernandes in defence and Tobias Figueiredo, Cafú and João Carvalho among the substitutes.
After a goalless first 58 minutes, Wolves finally opened the scoring through Romain Saiss, before the Portuguese contingent took over. Teenage striker Silva found Podence in the box and the former Sporting man finished with his right foot, after which Trincão was introduced to make it 3-0 with a calm finish from another Silva pass to cap a lovely team move. Morgan Gibbs-White put the seal on the win late on, leaving Lage to praise his players for their progress over recent weeks.
"It's a process" - Lage
“The dynamic pleased me,” Lage said. “You need time to create the dynamic. That is important for the players. They must continue to believe in what we are doing. It is a process. We try to give them confidence, we try to show them the right way when we are working.
“This is the plan. We will continue working. It was a good game; it was the way we wanted to play. We had plenty of the ball, we created chances, we pressed high.
“We are gaining confidence with the work we are doing with this team and we are happy with the result.
“You want to be patient, but not too much. You do not want to confuse that with moving the ball slowly. That is what I said at half-time. We needed more tempo.
“The competition has massive importance for us. The way I live and the way I work is that always the most important thing is the next game. So now we will prepare for the next one.”
Wolves host Manchester United and Bruno Fernandes at Molineux on Sunday.
By Sean Gillen
