Wolves wasted their opportunity with a sloppy goal, says Ki-Jana Hoever

Tomas Soucek netted on his 27th birthday after a slice of luck allowed Michail Antonio to race into the box and put it on a plate for the midfielder.

But Wolves were opened up too easily and too often and Hoever was disappointed by the manner in which Wolves went behind.

“It’s a frustrating game,” he said.

“I think we deserved more if we look at ourselves. We can’t suffer a goal like we did, it’s a waste of a whole game basically. We played some good football and had some chances, but we didn’t score and we gave away a sloppy goal.

“The first 10 or 15 minutes was very good – we were playing and having the ball.

“Then, they pressed us really well and we started to play long balls.

“It’s difficult. We tried to get in behind but it didn’t work.

“In the second half we tried again and sometimes it worked, but it wasn’t a good game from our side.”

West Ham had eight days between this game and their last fixture, while Wolves came into the game following a late defeat at Arsenal on Thursday night.

Bruno Lage made five changes from that defeat and Hoever was reluctant to blame the West Ham performance on fatigue.

He added: “There was some changes and some fresh legs, so I won’t blame it on that.

“The boys who play have a rythem and could be fatigued, but we can’t blame it on that.”

Wolves brought on Daniel Podence, Pedro Neto and Raul Jimenez in the second half in an attempt to get back into the game, but only managed one shot on target all game.

That effort, a 25-yard strike from Ruben Neves that was straight at Lukasz Fabianski, came in the 87th minute and Hoever insists that is not good enough.

He said: “It’s disappointing. If you look at the game and the game plan we had, it’s really disappointing that only in the 87th minute we get a shot on target.

“We created some more chances, even though we didn’t get a shot on target, but we need to be better.”

Wolves are still in the race for Europe but their hopes have been dented by two losses to top seven rivals.

Having now dropped to eighth in the league, the Dutchman says the team are taking it one game at a time.

Hoever said: “January and February were great months. We played good football and won a lot of games.

“Now we’ve lost two in a row but we will try to take the positives and learn from this game.

“We will go again next week.

“I think Conor Coady has already said that we just look at every game and at the end of the season we will see where we will be.

“We’re not looking into the future that much. We just look at every game every week and we’ll see at the end of the season where we are.”