Nuno previews Wolves: "No doubt, it will be special"
Sat 21 August 2021, 15:45|
Tottenham Hotspur
Nuno Espirito Santo says it will be ‘special’ to step back out at Molineux again as we take on Wolves on Sunday (2pm).
Nuno led the Black Country club back to the promised land of the Premier League with a Championship title win in 2017/18 and followed up with successive seventh place finishes in the top flight in 2018/19 and 2019/20 before finishing 13th last term. He also took them into Europe and the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa League in 2019/20.
Now he returns to Molineux, the fixture calendar typically throwing up the fixture for Nuno’s first competitive away match.
“It’s going to be special, no doubts about it, special,” said Nuno, who joined Wolves after stints at Porto and Valencia. “It was four years of our lives working together, with the fans, from day one, and we should be so thankful.
“So, it will be special, but everything comes to an end, and everything has a start. We’re at Spurs now, and we’re going to face Wolves, and my focus is only - with all my love and respect for the Wolves fanbase, for the players, the staff, everyone - that we do all we can to compete well on Sunday. They are a good team, good players, new manager, so it will be tough, but we are ready, and we want to play.”
Nuno was back in European competition with us this week, as we flew out to Portugal for the first leg of our UEFA Europa Conference League play-off against Pacos de Ferreira on Thursday evening. That meant a 2am arrival on the Friday ahead of a 2pm kick-off on Sunday.
Nuno took the decision to rest the full starting 11 from Sunday’s outstanding victory against Manchester City, and told us: “It’s about anticipation, and the decision was made clearly, knowing, and realising that arriving back so late, and so close to the next game, would be an issue for us in terms of preparation, dealing with the game by itself.
“So, we decided like this... on one side, we must put our squad out to play, the players involved in games, because we’re going to need all the squad. On the other side, we knew that the players who started the game, if they were involved yesterday, in terms of the next one, we’ll deal with that, but I think we’ll deal with it better in the way we did it. We’re looking forward to the game on Sunday, honestly, because the players who stayed here are ready to go.”
