Gary O'Neil: Wolves striker Sasa Kalajdzic still has a long way to go on injury return

He scored a last-minute winner off the bench against Everton and opened the scoring against Blackpool in the Carabao Cup, but is yet to start in the Premier League.

A sluggish performance at Ipswich have been his only minutes in the last month, with Kalajdzic being an unused substitute in the last three league games, as O’Neil warns the forward is not yet working at his optimum.

“He’s still got a way to go to get back to pre-injury, which is expected,” O’Neil said. “He played 55 minutes the other night and was asking to come off at that point because he had nothing left in his legs.

“That’s where Sasa is at the moment. We’re working very hard with him to move him on from that.

“Maybe some of his touches he can tighten up on, but that’s a consequence of where you are physically. You start to feel more leggy and start to make more errors.

“That’s where Sasa is, but there’s still stuff there that we can use and be a big threat for us, as we saw at Everton. We’ll try and maximise what he’ll bring.

He’s training hard and working hard, but maybe we’ve not seen enough from him yet to feel he would be leading the line for 90 minutes.

“But commitment-wise, he’s working his socks off, wants to improve and wants to commit to the group. He’ll have an impact, I’m sure. He obviously has extreme strengths in certain areas that we can utilise.”

When asked if people are asking too much of Kalajdzic after his anterior cruciate ligament injury, O’Neil added: “I can go off personal experience where I suffered a couple of serious ones, and even in yourself you feel like you’re back.

“You’re looking at the manager going ‘come on then, I’ve been training for two weeks now, I’m ready to go’. Then when you’re further along in your journey and you look back, you realise you definitely weren’t ready.

“There’s a journey you need to go on and the main thing is Sasa has come out the other end of a really tough spell and he looks like he’s in a good spot physically, mood-wise and work-rate wise.

“It’s up to us and Sasa himself to get him match sharp, where he can help the team from the start of games and sustain periods without feeling like he needs to put his hand up to come off after 55 minutes.”