‘I can’t imagine’ - Wolves boss namedrops Newcastle United and Aston Villa in injury complaint

Wolves boss Gary O’Neil has lamented his side’s luck with injuries after he was forced to name four academy players on the bench for their clash against Arsenal at the weekend. After a spirited performance, Wolves eventually fell to a 2-0 defeat against the Gunners to severely dent their faint hopes of qualifying for European football next season - whilst Arsenal strengthened their title tilt.

Wolves’ current injury list is seven-strong with only one or two of those sidelined players expected to play again this season. It is a situation seen up and down the league and O’Neil admitted following Saturday’s game that his side are far from the only team forced to deal with injury issues, name dropping Newcastle United and Aston Villa in his argument. However, he then went onto explain why he believes his team have been hit harder than any other team in the division: “I haven’t checked but I can’t imagine there’s another team in the country as short as we are at the moment, I think 10 senior outfield players were available to play 90 minutes today. It’s a tough situation,” O’Neil said after Wolves’ loss to Arsenal.

“If you look at the number of injuries, it’s probably not in excess of some of the other clubs - if you look at Newcastle and Aston Villa, they’ve had quite a few missing. But their start point is probably 25 or 26 players and ours is 19. Take seven away from 19 and it gets pretty short pretty quickly.”