Wolves winger Michael Kightly revealed his free-kick goal was meant to be a cross in – but insisted he was aiming for the goal!

Kightly’s whipped-in set-piece evaded everyone before taking keeper Chris Weale by surprise as it ripped into the top corner of the net for the opener.

The England U21 international said: “I put it in as a cross, but aiming for the goal. I was glad and thankful that it went in. We practice it a lot in training – the gaffer says ‘aim for the goal’ and if everyone misses it, then it goes in.

“I scored one against Luton the season before last where you whip it in and everyone runs across the goalkeeper and he misses it.”

Kightly celebrated his fourth goal of the season by standing in front of the Bristol City fans and he revealed he was getting revenge after some choice ‘banter’ from the visiting supporters.

He said: “I went over there a couple of times to take corners and I got a bit of stick from their fans so I thought I’d say ‘how about that then? 1-0’

Kightly also had a few exchanges with former Wolves team-mate Michael McIndoe, including a booking for bringing down the Scot.

He insisted he had no problem with his one-time colleague, who was booed throughout for his perceived anti-Wolves comments.

Kightly said: “I get on with ‘Macca’ well. I ‘got’ him a couple of times but he was OK and I wish him good luck for the rest of the season.

“He’s said a couple of things since he left but that’s up to him. We just want to do our job, we’re not interested in anything anyone says about us.”

Kightly ran himself into the ground and revealed some eye-popping statistics provided by Prozone, the match analysts.

He said: “We’ve got some Prozone and at Charlton it showed I ran 12 kilometres in the game. The fitness coach Tony Daley has been brilliant. Everyone has benefited.

“I’m a good runner, but I was only eighth in pre-season. We’ve got a lot of good runners at this club and that’s all credit to Tony for his fitness programmes.

“God knows how much Andy Keogh ran on Saturday, and Jarvo and Karl Henry are the same. Everyone puts their shift in. On Saturday it felt as if I’d run 15 miles! I was tired and it was hot.

“In the last 20 minutes, we’re grinding teams down. When other teams are flaking away, we’re getting stronger. On Saturday, we didn’t really need to push on because we had the 2-0 lead.”

Keeper Carl Ikeme also revealed a few nerves as he made his first League start for Wolves.

He said: “I had a few butterflies before the start but it soon settled down when the game began, especially after I got my first touch of the ball.

“It’s not as if it’s my first game, but it was certainly my biggest. The lads did well all the way through and that helped me a lot.

“Wayne Hennessey and Matt Murray both encouraged me before it started and Wayne said ‘well done’ at the end.

“It was nice to make that save from Ivan Sproule – it gave me an extra lift.”