Wolves boss warns of punishment after more post match incidents

Following Mario Lemina's incident at West Ham that cost him the captaincy, Rayan Ait-Nouri was given a second yellow card in the aftermath of the 2-1 defeat at Molineux, as team-mates and staff held him back from an Ipswich player.

Matheus Cunha was also briefly involved as tempers flared and O'Neil is adamant he will not tolerate this ill-discipline.

"When the players step out of line, they're heavily punished by me," O'Neil said.

"I haven't seen it, but Rayan will know how I feel about it already because getting a second yellow card and being unavailable for next week's game can have catastrophic consequences. 

"However much stress and however much pressure we're under at this moment, we need to keep control. 

"You see that really a little bit where we go down to 10 men when Cunha comes off, and our centre midfielder goes and presses Ipswich's goalie, it's absolutely ludicrous. It's a ludicrous decision.

"Then when we've got 30 seconds left, having just battered Ipswich's door down for the whole second half, two people decide to change positions to defend a corner. They need to be better.

"They need to make better decisions. I'm pushing them to make better decisions, but they are a group that I know, as you saw today, are going to give everything.

"They just need some guidance in how, and in small bits, especially under this amount of pressure that they're under at the moment.

"I feel for them because today they were the better side but no one's going to care.

"They gave everything in a real tough situation, but at the moment, it's proving not quite enough.

"It's on me to put some more pressure on them and push them even harder to try and find the answers."

The visitors scored a 93rd minute winner as Wolves once again failed to defend a set piece, and O'Neil has issued a stark warning to his players about their place in the team.

He added: "You have no divine right to say you're better, who says that our defenders are better than Ipswich's?

"We can all sit here and say it if we want, but you get 90 minutes to prove it and at the minute we're not proving that.

"So I think we need to be more respectful to Ipswich firstly. Secondly, we need to be really honest with where we are because you either find a way to be good enough or you get replaced. 

"That goes for me. That goes for the players. That's the nature of the business, it's a very competitive industry, especially at Premier League level.

"And change will come if you constantly keep falling below the level, which we have in two key areas that are really difficult for me to protect them from.

"I can protect them from a lot with the game plan and that wasn't a problem today. There was nothing, there was no tactical stuff against a very good coach that's had that team for a long time.

"No tactical stuff caused us any problem, the prep was excellent, we moved the ball very well once we got going and we got them to play a bit quicker.

"But similar to at Everton, Pickford's going to boot it to Calvert-Lewin and O'Shea's going to boot it to Delap, and until you can cope with that, it's very, very difficult for you to win a football match.

"We should have won today, we haven't and off the back of the rest of the results, it feels like a real, real big blow. The lads have taken it really hard downstairs.

"We need to use the next eight days to make sure that we recover and get ready to go into the next big battle, which is Leicester, and hope that we're able to protect our big weakness and our achilles heel well enough to take something from that game."