Saints boss: "Intelligent Wolves defended better"
Southampton boss Mauricio Pellegrino said Wolves' 'more intelligent defending' was the difference as his team were dumped out of the Carabao Cup.
Saints were losing finalists in last year's competition but bowed out at the first attempt with goals from Danny Batth and Donovan Wilson winning it 2-0 for Wolves.
Pellegrino believed that Wolves' superior defending was the reason they won the match.
"I'm disappointed," he said. "It was a difficult night because we gave one step backwards in our performance.
"We have to learn from this type of game that when you stop a little bit and when we are not focused 100 per cent like we weren’t at the beginning of the second half, it is really difficult to beat teams.
"We knew that Wolves defensively are a very strong team and don’t concede much, but it was a pity because in the last 15 minutes of the first half we had three or four chances to score and didn’t take them. If we score that changes the game completely.”
"The difference was the first 25 minutes of the second half where they managed the ball well but we conceded a set play.
""The goals are accidents. In the second goal everyone was in attack, in the counter attack they were quicker than us. We have to try to learn from this situation.
"The best news for us is maybe we'll have more time to prepare for Premier League games.
"I think they were more focused than us in the second half, in those 25 minutes. But when we managed the game better than them we couldn't score. And they scored in one set play.
"They never created too many chances. It was more or less the same in this aspect. They were more intelligent in defence, this was the difference."
