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Joe Gallen: Wolves have the quality to shock

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Joe Gallen today insisted Wolves will "surprise" the Championship next season – especially the relegated Premier League teams.

Wolves play all three of the recent top-flight teams in their first four games, with Norwich at home followed by Rotherham away, Fulham away and Cardiff at home.

Kenny Jackett's assistant head coach believes Wolves, boosted by the momentum of romping to the League One title, also have the quality to shock the recent top-flight sides with many players coming under the radar of the leading clubs.

"We have a lot of players who are unknown and under the radar and early on when we play the ex-Premier League clubs, I think we can surprise them," said Gallen.

"In terms of the step-up, the players at this level are bigger and stronger and they will make better decisions on the ball, but we believe we have a group that can cope.

"I think we should have a lot of confidence from last season.

"In terms of the games, they were a little bit like an FA Cup third round tie last season so the boys had to be at their best in order to get some points.

"This season there are a lot of big clubs including ourselves and the thinking is maybe it won't be as strenuous as people might think."

Gallen believes the fact many of Wolves' players still have to prove themselves in the Championship is a bonus, not a negative.

"A lot of players haven't played in the Championship and some might see that as slightly detrimental," he said.

"We don't see it that way at all. We see that as our players having to prove themselves and step up.

"It will be interesting to see how it goes but we're confident our players can step up with the hunger of not being in the Championship and go and perform at that level."

Wolves kick off their pre-season match programme next Friday with a trip to Cheltenham.

Gallen says the gruelling three sessions a day the players have got used to over the last two weeks will start to ease up to help prevent injuries.

"We're doing three sessions a day which Kenny introduced last season," he said.

"The main part of the day is when the balls come out because that's when the players come alive.

"That middle part of the day is football for about an hour where we're working on their passing and receiving the ball and now we're going into 11 versus 11 games now.

"The afternoon session is a gym session mainly geared to preventing injury.

"The key thing is if you step it up too quickly, injuries occur.

"So it's a fine balancing act between pushing them enough and pushing them too far where there's a clogging up of the treatment room.

"That's exactly what we don't want. But as the games start to come next week, we'll ease the training down and let the games take over in terms of their fitness levels."