Max Kilman: Criticism of Wolves boss Gary O'Neil 'unfair'

But a thrilling display at Molineux saw Wolves take down champions City, and skipper Kilman came to his manager’s defence.

He said: “It’s definitely unfair. Pressure comes with football and when a new manager comes in, if the results are not coming in early, of course there will be even more added pressure.

“But within the squad, people can’t see behind the scenes and the amount of work him and his team are doing and how they’re setting us up tactically.

“The quality of training has been phenomenal and it’s a matter of time before we started picking up the results.

“From the first game against United, the performances have been there, but there’s been little moments lacking in concentration where you get punished by the top teams. We’ve had really tough start against really tough teams and we took the hit, but the manager’s game plan in all the games has been really good.

“It also comes down to us on the pitch to do the right thing and get the result.

“We have to push on from this. It’s given us a lot of confidence, so hopefully we can kick on.”

Despite poor results, Wolves have had some good performances and good spells in games, and Kilman believes this win was a vindication of O’Neil’s methods.

He added: “We’ve only had Gary for six weeks and he’s been working extremely hard, and he got it spot on today.

“He’s been helping all of us so much and it’s hard for him to come in at a time just before the Premier League season.

“Slowly, now you can see it’s paying off and the results are coming. We kept the intensity for the whole game throughout.

“Him and his staff have come in and done an excellent job. They’ve stuck with us and helped us through a tough period. I think it shows the character within our squad to want to learn from a top coach like Gary.

“We want to improve and get the results, and today we showed it against the best team in the world.”

A solid defensive performance saw Wolves keep world class striker Erling Haaland quiet, while the forwards did their part in the 2-1 victory.

“It was unbelievable from start to finish,” Kilman said.

“We stuck to the manager’s game plan and he set us up perfectly for this game. Credit to him and all the staff. We worked really hard this week, after a tough defeat on Tuesday, and we stuck to the game plan, worked our socks off and were very dangerous on the counter. We deserved this.

“There’s so many top teams in the Premier League with top strikers, but coming up against Haaland you know he’s one of the best in the world right now.

“We had to be on it and obviously City have other top, top players, so we had to be fully focused.”