Matt Doherty: Wolves targeting Premier League title within six seasons

The defender, who returned to fitness for last weekend's clash with Huddersfield at Molineux, told 'The Offside Rule' podcast that the club are hoping to quickly bring European football back to the West Midlands but also have their sights set on securing Wolves their first top-flight title since 1959 inside the next decade.

"The vision for [Wolves’ owners] is probably to get in to Europe first, finish in the top six or seven. And then I think they want to win the league in the next five or six years," he said.

"I imagine [a Premier League title] is the goal. It’s obviously really exciting to be able to be a part of it now, at the start of it. Hopefully, I can stay here for when that happens."

Defeats to Watford, Brighton and Huddersfield have damped the side's electric start to their Premier League campaign, but Doherty remains adamant that his teammates would be ready to tackle European football.

The 26-year-old also agreed that Nuno Espirito Santo's current crop of exciting stars may be the best newly promoted side in the league's history, despite the recent dip in results.

"Yeah, that might be true at times with some of the football we’ve played," he said.

"We’ve drawn at Manchester City, we’ve drawn with Manchester United, we’ve drawn with Arsenal. We’ve gone away from home and won.

"If we have the chance to get [into Europe], then you’ve got to take it.

"It’s not that we’re not ready. We need to finish as high as we can. I think we will, for the remainder of the season, do really well.

"I don’t want to put a place on it, but I think we’ll have a top 10 finish if we can keep doing what we’re doing performance-wise.

"But we’re not thinking ‘lads, we need to finish here or there’, we’re just going game by game.

"We play some good football, we create a lot of chances and don’t give away that many chances.

"We’ve conceded 13 big chances this season, I think that’s third-best [in the league]. So, if we can put the ball in the net a bit more – all of us, because I’ve missed chances too – we’d be on for a really good season."

Doherty, who has worked under eight permanent bosses since joining Wolves as a teenager, hailed Nuno a 'world-class manager' and praised his cool-headed approach even after some of the side's most disappointing performances.

"There have been times when he probably could have gone mad at us for a performance we’ve put in or a result, like three losses in a row where you think ‘it’s changed’, but not at all.

"He says: ‘We’re going to do the same stuff, lads. We’re just going to train, and train as well as we do’.

"We obviously train really well, the sessions they put on are great. Come game time, we’re ready to go. It all comes down to the attention to detail, all the staff is the best I have seen.

"[Nuno has] different techniques, a different philosophy. I maintain that he’s a world class manager and we’re lucky to have him."