Gary O'Neil hails 'big win' over Burnley - 'We're ahead of where I expected us to be'

Gary O’Neil admitted his Wolves side are in a better position at this stage of the season than he expected after battling to a 1-0 victory over Burnley at Molineux.

Wolves were forced to offload a number of key players in the summer transfer window ahead of the new campaign amid concerns over breaching the Premier League’s financial fair play rules.

Despite that, O’Neil has led Wolves to five wins from 15 and has them threatening the top half of the table.

“We're ahead of where I would have expected us to be,” O’Neil told Amazon Prime. “And not only points-wise, understanding, what we're trying to do, buy-in from the players.

“So yeah, we're ahead of where I expected to be but that's credit to the players. The lads are out there. When you have to cross the white line it’s very, very different.

“They deserve all the credit. They give me absolutely everything, as you saw tonight, and hopefully we can keep going and keep improving.”

O’Neil has received plaudits for engineering victories over reigning champions Manchester City and a resurgent Tottenham. From a team that couldn’t buy a goal, they’ve become one of the league’s great entertainers.

But against Burnley, it was determination and opportunism that got them over the line.

With Jose Sa still sidelined, Daniel Bentley deputised superbly in the Wolves goal, producing a magnificent double-save – first to deny Jay Rodriguez from close range and then to tip Josh Brownhill’s follow-up effort by the post – to keep the game goalless.

After so nearly opening the scoring, the visitors were then architects of their own downfall in going behind.

Dara O’Shea’s pass to Sander Berge on the edge of the Burnley area was underhit and Pablo Sarabia pounced before Hwang Hee-chan finished with the composure of a player bang in form.

The South Korean delayed just long enough to open up the goal and casually found the corner to give the hosts the lead at the break.

Wolves probed for another in a high-tempo second half but Hwang’s strike proved decisive.

“It's a big win,” O’Neil added. “I don't think we can underestimate how big a win it is because we've played a lot of the top teams here where we've been able to be solid and stay in our shape and counter-attack.

“Today I asked some different questions and to be honest, the game looked how I expected.

“Burnley are well organised, well drilled, tough to break down but I thought we were in control. I thought we were the more threatening and delighted with the win.”

After beating Sheffield United 5-0 last time out, Burnley had a chance to get out of the relegation zone but let it slip.

Manager Vincent Kompany rued his side's missed chances in the first half but said "that's the difference at this level."

“Of course we want the result. And we felt that this game was fairly even, could have gone both ways," Kompany said.

“But I think the strength of our team is we go again, we need to be better than three teams in this league, and I think our team's got so much room for improvement still.

"So it's an exciting group to work with. Of course, now, it's a painful moment."

Burnley were persistent in playing out from the back and that ultimately proved their undoing.

“It's not a great pass,” Kompany added. “It's not an easy pass for the midfielder either to do anything with so.

“But you make mistakes in games like this, you get punished. We didn't punish them and ultimately, that's the difference at this level.

“We haven't been able to do it to the same extent, we had plenty of moments there as well for us where we could have hurt them and just maybe those final moments aren’t there at the moment.”

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