Reaction | Wolves 2-1 Liverpool

After defending brilliantly for 80 minutes, Rob Edwards’ side took the lead through substitute Rodrigo Gomes’ clever finish, and although Mohamed Salah struck one back for the visitors just moments later, Andre’s deflected effort in added time queued jubilant scenes around Molineux.

After the final whistle, former Wolves full-backs Andy Thompson and Lee Naylor discussed how Edwards’ side were able to achieve the victory, what a difference confidence in the players can make and some big individual and team performances from across the squad.

Upsetting the odds

Thompson: “You’ve just reminded us about the six games on the bounce that we won this time last year which kept us up, and I know we’re still adrift by quite a bit, but all of a sudden, we’ve brought people back into our realm and brought people in touch of getting off the bottom. Burnley are just three points above us, and then you’ve got West Ham and Forest, and they’ll be looking down now wondering what’s going on. If we can go on a run, if we can get any kind of form going into these last games of the season, they’re going to be concerned, especially on the back of that. They’re going to be concerned watching that, watching the Villa game, and thinking, ‘What’s happening here?’”

Naylor: “That’s the difference that Rob’s brought to the team. The fitness side of it, the hard work, the hard yards you have to put in at times in games where it’s vital. You either win or lose it, and at the moment it’s going for us and we’re winning it. And what a feeling. The way we are winning games like we are, it’s such a good feeling. Last minute winners and the defending that we’re doing, it’s last gasp, we’ve got people going end to end in final minutes of the game, this shows the fitness that the boys have got now, and that’s all down to Rob and how he conducts his training. Me and Rob were speaking yesterday, and he said it’s not just one or two games to get this fitness, it has to build. He said they’re running 7,000 metres more as a team in each game now than what they were. And that’s huge.”

Fitness levels being increased

Thompson: “How many games did we win late on because we were fit under Nuno? If you get people fit, they can go longer, performances are maintained and we’re seeing instances of it. Also, it’s substitutions at the right times. Bellegarde gave the ball away for the goal, but I thought the three subs who came on made a difference. Bellegarde was running with the ball, Tolu held it up as good as he’s done this year, and then you’ve got Rodrigo Gomes, who I’ve always liked. He gives you that energy and somebody who is positive with how he plays, and he went out there and did it as well. Liverpool had 80-odd per cent possession in the first part of the second half, and it just shows you if you can defend well, keep people at bay and then you can start to break out, then that’s what can happen. They were pushing for the game, they started pushing out and it’s nice to see us on that counter-attacking football where he can punish teams. We did that against Villa, and we did it again tonight.”

Naylor: “Who cares about stats. The only stat that matters is the result. All I’m bothered about is the result. You can keep your stats!”

What a night. What an atmosphere.

Thanks for roaring us onto victory 👊 pic.twitter.com/q66hxyTAu8

— Wolves (@Wolves) March 3, 2026

Players high on confidence

Thompson: “We’ve said all season that the low confidence they had, then all of a sudden, because we’re starting to get results and we’ve seen results, not just scoring-wise but with the work-rate, with the quality to what we’re doing, and I said before that we need to be more clinical and more of a danger in that top third, but we’re starting to put everything together now. Teams are going to have a lot of possession against us, mainly in their own half, because we’re happy for them to do that, but as long as they’re not causing us a problem, we’re happy for them to have the ball. But what the difference was tonight and against Villa, was the counter-attack and being clinical when we have the chance.”

Naylor: “When you’re not seeing much of the ball as a team, it’s then, ‘Is your set-up right? Are you defending right? Are your team talking? Is there communication?’ And it’s been brilliant. You can see people pointing and telling each other what to do. We made a point of this earlier in the season, because we didn’t see anyone talking to each other, we didn’t see anyone pointing to each other, we didn’t see anyone taking charge, it just wasn’t that way. But now we can see everyone, you can see they’re hunting in packs, hunting in twos, trying to chase the ball down, and when one of them doesn’t win the ball back, you’ve got another one backing him up, and that’s what you need.”

Big individual performances

Thompson: “If you keep doing the right things the majority of the time, you’re going to get results. Sometimes you make your own luck, but by doing the right things, by defending right, by keeping the ball, by picking people up, that gives you an opportunity to get things right and build on the way we play. We didn’t half defend well tonight. We absolutely threw things at it, we squeezed things, we were getting the challenges in. How many times did Krejci get in front of the ball? I thought Santi again was outstanding again. But as a team, they defended so well.”

Naylor: “We haven’t touched on Sa’s save, and that was a top, top drawer save. Not only as he shot through the legs of Tchatchoua, but it’s then ricocheted off Mosquera, gone further away from Sa, and then he’s having to stretch even further to get fingertips to it, but it’s just a top, top save. Those are the big moments in games where you need your goalkeeper to show up, and he showed up.”

The goalscorers ⚽️⚽️ pic.twitter.com/LEoFXUsSpn

— Wolves (@Wolves) March 3, 2026

Going again on Friday night

Thompson: “We get another win! Get through to the next round of the cup. I’m sure that’s probably unsettled Liverpool. They probably came here thinking this was going to be easy and they’d get the right result, get three points. But we’ll make changes, [Hugo] Bueno will come back in, Yerson will come back in, and Armstrong might still play. But it’s nice to see the bench [full] again and nice to see players come on and make an impact.”

Naylor: “Every game he goes into, he puts everything into it, and we’ll be full force out for the win. I can’t see him changing much and maybe just those two players, and Rob will be thinking the same thing because I think they showed in that game, with the amount of defending we had to do and then on the transition, to go and score two goals was just huge.”

Thompson and Naylor were talking to Mikey Burrows on Wolves’ official post-match podcast, Matchday Live Extra, which is available to listen to now on all podcast providers.