Ladislav Krejci’s Wolves message after goalscoring Birmingham return

Ladislav Krejci made a goalscoring return to Wolves action in the big derby at Birmingham before vowing to be ‘first in line’ on the pitch to help the team achieve their dreams.

There had been widespread speculation that the versatile Czech defender would be moving on this summer, amid plenty of outside interest, and injury had also ruled him out of action since playing the last six minutes of the EFL Cup win against Port Vale a month ago.

Krejci, who became a permanent Wolves player after a season’s loan before heading to the World Cup this summer, played down suggestions he wasn’t happy to remain at Molineux and is firmly focused on helping the team to a successful campaign this time around.

“It was very nice to be back and to score,” he said in the wake of yesterday’s 2-2 draw.

“It’s something that I’m trying to do all the time and why I love football, so I’m happy for this moment.

“It’s very important for me because a lot of people said a lot of things - not everything was good, but there was also something.

“As a player, as a professional, you have to take it somehow and work, even if it’s not true.

“But we are footballers, we need to solve it.

“The only thing I want to say to the fans is thanks for the support from all of us. I will show them on the pitch that it meant a lot for me to reach our dreams, and I will be first in the line to help out.”

Krejci admits he will need to get used to a new challenge in the Championship, particularly the sort of challenge provided in local derbies like yesterday, but is confident the team can adapt and be successful.

“On the one side, I’m happy that I finally got to play and play a full 90 minutes, so I’m happy for this, but I’m not happy with the result,” he said.

“We struggled a bit in the second half, but we need to take the good things from it and use them in the other games.

“I’ve always heard and also seen that the results are like this in this league – it’s up and down.

“I don’t have too much experience with it, but you can see that from the beginning of the game we kept the ball quite well and had some domination, but in the second half it was only long balls.

“There was some fantastic defending, bravery and everyone stuck together, so it was good that in the second half we didn’t concede after all that pressure.

“But we are the team who want to dominate the game and be at the top of the league, so we need to take from this that we need to be calmer on the ball after the second duels, keep the ball and dictate the game.”