Moyes' Programme Notes For Wolves Cup Clash

Good evening and welcome back to Hill Dickinson Stadium for tonight’s third-round Carabao Cup tie.

After our excellent victory at Preston North End in the second round last month, the draw handed us the same opposition we faced at this stage of last season’s competition at Molineux.

With the home supporters behind us this time, we will be going all out for a different outcome.

This will be the first occasion this season we will have encountered three games in one week.

It’s a big part of football scheduling and it’s something we’re all used to, but certainly for the teams in European competition the weekend-midweek-weekend routine is something you become much more adapted to.

We’re hoping a good cup run will give us more opportunities to enjoy that routine ourselves but we know we face difficult opponents tonight in a Wolves team who have started their Championship season in good form. I’m sure their focus will be on trying to get back to the Premier League as quickly as they possibly can.

We returned from Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday night with a well-earned point.

There were some really good individual performances from our players and a number of things we did very well. There were also lots of things we know we can do better and which we can work on to try to improve.

We knew Saturday night’s game was going to be difficult. Tottenham started really well and put us under a lot of pressure for 20 minutes, but we dug in and in the end found a way of getting ourselves something out of the match, at a place which for many years has proved to be a difficult hunting ground for us.

We have made a positive start to the season and we want to build on that momentum as much as we can.

That helps build belief and we are looking for our players to play with as much confidence as possible. In lots of cases this season they have done that.

The one thing which was hugely important in that was keeping another clean sheet. This is something we want to do as often as we can this season and it was great for Jordan Pickford to find himself earning his 100th in the Premier League.

He was only the fifth English goalkeeper to reach that milestone and it put him alongside some really goodnames.

We know all about Nigel Martyn here. Plenty of his 137 Premier League clean sheets came while he was wearing an Everton goalkeeper’s jersey.

David James, David Seaman and Joe Hart are the other three in the ‘Century Club’ which underlines the scale of Jordan’s achievement.

All footballers enjoy reaching these kind of landmarks.

Centre forwards all want to score goals, midfielders want assists as well as goals themselves, while for goalkeepers keeping clean sheets is a really big thing.

Let’s hope that Jordan’s 100 clean-sheets figure rises as the season goes on.

I am sure Jordan will be the first to thank his defenders and his teammates for contributing to that figure, but he can take all the credit for another award he received last week – the Premier League’s Save of the Month for his excellent stop against Crystal Palace.

Our supporters rightly saluted him on the day for that save and we hope they get the opportunity to enjoy some big moments at the other end of the pitch tonight.

The crowd obviously has a big part to play in cup ties and we know our fans will get behind all of our players tonight. As always, you can make a big difference for us.

Finally, I would like to welcome Wolves and their new manager Cesar Peixoto and his staff to Hill Dickinson Stadium.

We wish them all the best for the rest of this season, but only after tonight. 

Enjoy the game.

David