Wolves leadership group working to 'unite' squad after tough start

Wolves' fifth loss in eight games came on Tuesday at Ipswich in the Carabao Cup, as fans began to express their anger at the club's predicament.

But O'Neil has trust in his squad's leadership group to pull the team together.

He said: “I think everybody outside will be shifted emotionally by results. It’s impossible not to be impacted by results.

“So when everything is going well, it will be ‘the leadership group is working well’ and when we lose a game it will be ‘is the leadership group working?’

“They’re a great group and they’re working hard to unite things.

“There is still a lot within the group that needs fixing but that’s not from a lack of effort from the players.

“The players worked their socks off throughout and that is where we are at this moment — some nice bits and some bits that aren’t good enough and we need to fix them."

Dan Bentley, who is a key member of that leadership group, came in against Ipswich but made a number of errors and was arguably at fault for all three goals.

O'Neil added: “He’s OK. He’s disappointed, of course. We’ve lost a cup game to a team in the division below so the dressing room are disappointed. They know playing for Wolves we need to do better than that.

“I do think it’s important to look at the facts and where we are at the moment.

“When I was brought in six weeks ago it’s because things weren’t completely rosy.

“That’s why there’s a change of manager and there are a lot of things that need to be fixed and we’re trying to fix them in the middle of a Premier League season.

“There’s a lot of work to do but that is where we are at the moment. We’ve named a strong team with 11 players that should be capable of winning here and we didn’t so it’s more responsibility to get more out of them."