Wolves are without suspended pair Mario Lemina and Nelson Semedo. Hugo Bueno is a doubt with a hamstring strain but Jean-Ricner Bellegarde is back after serving a three-match ban.
Bournemouth have been boosted by the Despite coming up against Bournemouth, the club that sacked him after he kept them in the top flight last. Summer signing Alex Scott has also returned to training but is lacking match fitness, while Tyler Adams faces another lengthy spell on the sidelines after a second hamstring surgery.
Here are the key lines from his news conference:
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O’Neil said this will be the “toughest weekend” he’s had in charge in terms of squad availability, but was reluctant to reveal who is missing.
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He said the international break came at a bad time for his team: “I don’t like those breaks. We lose a lot of players for them. It’s difficult to do good work with the group. You can do bits with individuals and understanding their roles, but in terms of progressing our understanding, those breaks pause that for us.”
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O’Neil insisted there is “lots of stuff” he has yet to implement at Wolves: “I still think we’re early, it takes a while. The lads need time to digest and understand it. We’re still at an early stage and we haven’t put too many layers in at the moment. It’s fairly straightforward at this moment to where it will hopefully be in a few weeks or months.”
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Despite coming up against Bournemouth, the club that sacked him after he kept them in the top flight last season, O’Neil said there was “zero consideration” about it heading into the game: “It’s 0% about me and what it means to me. It’s a game we want to take three points from against a team we can compete against. Nothing extra for me. The players are ready for a tough Premier League game.”
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O’Neil explained how he’s managed to drastically improve Wolves’ goal scoring record so far this season: “The attacking players have been very good. The quality of the players and trying to get them into areas – and explaining the importance of arriving in those areas – has probably played a apart in it. It’s a short window to look at whether it’s something that’s actually improved or something that’s just happened. The judgement will still be ongoing with that.”
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On Hwang Hee-chan’s impressive goalscoring rate, O’Neil said: “It’s a really good return. It’s not like he’s scoring one in a million hits. He’s arriving in good areas and scoring goals. That you can see continuing. It’s not just [Hwang], it’s the work of the team. It would be an incredible rate to keep up, but let’s hope we can keep it as close to what it is.”
