Gary O’Neil hailed ‘incredible’ William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes after Wolves’ defeat to Arsenal.
After a difficult week and two successive defeats, the Gunners got their Premier League title challenge back on track with a 2-0 win at Molineux on Saturday.
Leandro Trossard broke the deadlock on the stroke of half-time before Martin Odegaard’s injury-time goal put the game to bed.
Despite the defeat, O’Neil was proud of how his team fared against a side chasing the Premier League title and reserved special praise for Arsenal’s centre-back pairing.
‘We had a couple of good moments and of course they’re a tough team,’ the Wolves boss said.
‘You look at how they defend the goal and how compact they are, and if you do manage to get through them – which we did a couple of times – the two centre backs are incredible, in Gabriel and Saliba, they’re really good physically.
‘We had some moments which we didn’t quite capitalise on, some crosses into good areas but managed to hit David Raya with them, we had a good chance to go one up which would have been a big lift for us when we hit the post, but they’re a difficult team to create against, especially when virtually all of your attackers are injured.
‘Trying to create against the best defence in the world with not many attackers is a tough task, but the lads gave it a very good go.’
O’Neil, who has been dealt an injury crisis at Molineux, added: ‘It was an incredible performance and one of my favourites, considering how tough I thought it was going to be for us.
‘For the lads to show the togetherness, the commitment and the work-rate to push Arsenal as hard as we did, I thought it was an incredible effort from everyone.
‘I’m very proud, although disappointed with the second goal, especially that it was really soft, and we didn’t deserve to lose 2-0.
‘One-nil and not being able to score would probably have been the worst it could have been for us, but to lose the second one was really disappointing, but I’m really proud.’
While Arsenal returned to the top of the Premier League after beating Wolves, their opponents stay 11th as they look to finish in the top-half of the table.
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