Express & Star

Wolves have to take chances says Max Kilman

Max Kilman admits the defeat to Liverpool was ‘tough to take’ and believes Matheus Cunha’s missed chance could have changed the game.

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Wolverhampton Wanderers' Matheus Cunha has a chance

A superb first-half display saw Wolves head into half-time 1-0 up, but Cunha missed a free header after misjudging the flight of the ball from close range, in a huge opportunity to make it 2-0.

Liverpool went on to dominate the second half and come away 3-1 winners, and when asked about that missed Cunha header, Kilman said: “If we were 2-0 up then it would’ve been a different game.

“It was good to see us creating those chances and getting into good areas, which has been a problem for us over the past couple of seasons. That’s been a positive for us.

“But we have to be more ruthless in both boxes.

“The new manager’s come in and we still have a lot of time to work on that.

“It’s tough to take, in the first half we looked good and defended really well.

“We had really good chances to score and Molineux was rocking, but it was a game of two different halves in the end.

“They were clinical and took their chances. We didn’t finish some of our chances.”

Wolves have now conceded 11 goals in five Premier League games, 10 of which have come in the second half.

A running theme has seen Wolves crumble in the latter stages of games.

Kilman was unable to put his finger on the reason why and still insists the team have to be more clinical in front of goal.

The skipper added: “It’s difficult to answer, sometimes in games, you can’t control circumstances.

“But we need to improve in terms of finishing games off and also being more ruthless, defensively.

“We’re still learning from the new manager, things will click quite soon, we just need to stay together.

“We have enough quality to be on the front foot, we need to keep understanding how the manager wants us to play.”

For all of Wolves’ positive attacking play and 11 shots over the 90 minutes, the side only managed to direct two of those on target as they fell to defeat at Molineux.

When asked if he can take positives from the fact Wolves did create some chances, Kilman said: “100 per cent, we found it difficult to score last season, but I’m sure that will come.

“We have a lot of positives to take from the first half, but we needed to control the tempo, even when they equalised, we wanted to slow the game down.

“These things will come, we still have a very new squad.

“We’ve had a tough start, but we’re looking to build and progress.”

“He’s (Gary O’Neil) given us a lot of freedom to go and produce good stuff. And we’ve been doing that.

“Hopefully, sooner or later, things will turn for us.”