Wolves face ‘fight to the end’ for survival

Wolves boss Julen Lopetegui believes the battle for survival is wide open.

The former Spain coach has guided Wolves five points clear of the drop zone ahead of Saturday’s visit of Bournemouth.

Last week’s 2-1 comeback win at Southampton gave Wolves, now 15th in the Premier League, a platform to stay up following a third straight win but Lopetegui feels the scrap will go to the wire.

He said: “We are going to be in a fight with about seven or eight teams until the end.

“We have to put the focus on each match now and Bournemouth are a very good team, they have good players, fast players, strong players, they are a tactically and technically good team.

“They have new signings and have had plenty of recovery time for this match, so all of this means we are going to have a very big and very hard match.

“Bournemouth and us, we both need a lot of points and we both want these points. The aim is that we want to beat them, but it’s going to be a very hard match, I think it will be harder than the last match, I am sure, and we have to be ready to have the best results against a very good team.”

Mario Lemina is suspended, with Daniel Podence a doubt and Pedro Neto closing in on a recovery from an ankle injury. Boubacar Traore, Sasa Kalajdzic and Hwang Hee-Chan are out.

Lopetegui added “We don’t have space to have complacency. We haven’t done anything yet and we have a need for a lot of points, as do a lot of teams.

“When we’re all together it’s still going to be hard but having the fans’ support is going to make it (a third successive win) more possible.”