Bruno Lage: Wolves are not far away from becoming Champions League contenders

Fans were dreaming of a top four push after an impressive season so far, until Thursday’s loss to Arsenal and Sunday's defeat to West Ham all but ended those hopes.

Lage is adamant that he will continue to fight for the remainder of the season, but conceded Wolves still have work to do to bridge that gap.

“The most important thing is we have 12 games to go and the people are talking about what is our goal – it should be very clear, our goal is to continue to play the way we play,” Lage said.

“We go into our next game against Crystal Palace and we need to play like we did against West Ham.

“We arrived in February with 40 points and our fans are talking about Champions League, and the real teams who have that goal because they invest a lot is teams like West Ham and Arsenal.

“We are not far away from them, because we played very well against them. Against Arsenal, we conceded a goal at the end, and today we conceded that chance and didn’t score any goals.

“We haven’t won anything, but I think we can understand better that we’re not far away from these teams. It’s in short details, in experience, and we need to win in the next 12 games to do our job. It’s been a good season until now, and we need to fight for every point until the end of the season.

“Under my command, no one is going to relax until the end of the season. I want 43 points against Crystal Palace.”

The performance at West Ham left many supporters underwhelmed, but Lage believes he side did well and has asked for a repeat performance next week.

“I think it was a good performance,” he added.

“We played the way we wanted, and we like. We controlled the game with the ball. We started well, in the first 20 minutes I think we were the better team. After that they balanced, and until the end of the first half they were better than us.

“After the break, we started well, the first 15 minutes was very good, then we gave them a chance to score.

“If you look at our performance, it was good, but the way we conceded that chance to score was unbelievable.

“We must understand we are playing against a strong team. (Lukasz) Fabianski is one of the best goalkeepers in the world to stop crosses, they have tall defenders, and we needed to find a way to score a goal with our profile of players.”

Meanwhile, Lage has confirmed Nelson Semedo suffered a hamstring injury against Arsenal on Thursday, but they are still assessing the severity of it.

He said: “We are still waiting. It’s a hamstring injury but we are waiting for a final report.”