Hwang Hee-chan’s absurd goal was canceled, ‘7 games without a win’… “Worst game of the season” criticized by coach < Overseas soccer < Text of article

[스포티비뉴스=김건일 기자] While Hwang Hee-chan’s goal was canceled due to an absurd foul by a teammate, Wolverhampton Wanderers coach Gary O’Neill looked back on the Bournemouth game, saying, “It was the worst game ever.”

Hwang Hee-chan, who started as a front-line striker, scored the equalizer by heading a cross from Nelson Semedo in the 20th minute of the second half when the game was tied 0-1.

However, the score was canceled after VAR revealed that Matheus Cunha had elbowed the opposing defender while Semedo was holding the ball. Cunha was not involved in the scoring process, so it was a situation worth protesting for Wolverhampton.

Wolverhampton led the game with 62% possession, but Bournemouth had far more scoring opportunities overall. Despite having a 38% possession rate, Bournemouth overwhelmed Wolverhampton Wanderers with 21-15 shots, and their expected score was also 1.88 points, ahead of Wolverhampton’s 0.54 points.

“It was our worst performance,” O’Neill said in his post-game press conference. “There were too many sub-standard performances tonight. Collectively, we have to make sure this is not our level of performance. It was a difficult night for us, myself included. “We will go back and look at our performance and see what our level was,” he said.

Regarding the game, he said, “We looked a little dull. We made too many mistakes that we shouldn’t have made. We didn’t lose the ball due to pressure and we lost every duel. Every time the opponent passed a long pass, we caught the ball, but we didn’t. We lost the ball too much. We lost too many contests and gave the ball away too often, which wasn’t how we wanted to play. We need to guard the ball a lot better than we did tonight.”

He added: “To be honest, I thought the substitutes did a good job. They did a really good job in the second half to bounce back after the first half. The second half was a little positive, but it was a tough night.”

Hwang Hee-chan, who had been rehabilitating for over a month after playing against Brighton and Hove Albion last February, returned as a substitute in the game against Nottingham Forest on the 14th. After playing 51 minutes in the game against Arsenal, he appeared as a starter in today’s game and was on the pitch for the full time.

Coach O’Neill said, “We need to improve Hwang Hee-chan’s physical condition. Although he showed a little bit of what he can do today, he is not completely back to his old form,” and added, “Important players need to step up and solve the game. We were in a difficult situation, but before tonight. “The level of performance was good, but (today) it was the worst performance so far this season,” he said, raising his voice.

With this loss, Wolverhampton went undefeated in seven consecutive official games. After winning 2-1 against Fulham in October of last month, they have performed poorly with 2 draws and 4 losses in 6 games. It remained in 12th place with 43 points.

On the other hand, Bournemouth accumulated 45 points by winning the game that day, pulling down Wolverhampton and jumping from 12th to 10th.