23-year-old Wolves player looked like his electric old self last night against Man United

Wolves were beaten 1-0 by Manchester United last night in their first Premier League game of the season.

Gary O’Neil, taking his first game after replacing Julen Lopetegui, oversaw a brilliant performance from his side.

Raphael Varane’s header was the difference between the two teams.

Wolves should have had a penalty right at the death when Andre Onana clattered Sasa Kalajdzic as he tried to punch away a cross.

But it somehow wasn’t given, and Wolves fell to an undeserved defeat.

Despite a frustrating loss, there were so many positives to take from the performance.

And one of the biggest for Wolves was just how lively Pedro Neto looked…

Pedro Neto was superb for Wolves against Manchester United

There were lots of solid individual displays last night in the Wolves team.

But Neto was one of the very best players for the visitors.

The Portuguese winger worked his socks off, but was also a constant threat playing on the right wing.

He gave Luke Shaw real problems, and constantly looked to get the ball into the box for Matheus Cunha, and then Fabio Silva and Sasa Kalajdzic when they came on.

The 23-year-old has had injury problems in the last two years but here, he looked really sharp.

According to Squawka, he created four chances and completed four take-ons, suggesting him as being one of the biggest threats in the match.

He also won five duels, which will delight O’Neil.

Neto looked something like his old self against United

It was amazing to watch Neto’s performance last night against United.

He was one of the outstanding players, and he was unlucky not to get on the scoresheet.

Arguably, he actually did look a bit like the electric player of a couple of years ago.

He was previously one of the brightest young talents in the Premier League, and Wolves fans will be massively encouraged by his display last night.

If he can finally recapture his form, Wolves are going to improve dramatically in the final third.

Gary O’Neil’s glass-half-full approach and positive display lifts gloom at Wolves

On Friday afternoon, phones and laptops pinged in unison around Molineux and Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Compton Park training ground.

Every staff member received an email from new head coach Gary O’Neil expressing his delight at joining the club and thanking his new colleagues for his warm welcome.

It was a small gesture that summed up O’Neil’s approach to his first five days in charge — five says that culminated in Monday night’s uplifting display at Manchester United and transformed the mood of a fanbase.

In his first meeting with his players a day earlier, O’Neil had addressed head-on the negative “noise” around the club amid a summer of no transfer spending and the departure of Julen Lopetegui.

The new boss told his players they would use the adversity as extra motivation to prove wrong the naysayers tipping them for relegation.

O’Neil has barely had the chance to get his feet under his new desk. After defeat in his opening game in charge, there remains much work to do at a club facing significant financial issues.

But in less than a week in the role, O’Neil has been relentlessly positive. On Monday night he was repaid both on the pitch and in the stands at Old Trafford with a defeat that was greeted like a victory, such was the hope it generated among a fanbase desperate for reasons to be optimistic.

Lopetegui’s reign did not end with misery at Molineux. The Athletic has been told that the mood in his final weeks in charge was downbeat but businesslike.

But there was a nagging feeling among staff that, had the Spaniard remained in post and continued to talk down the club’s chances of success amid the refusal to spend money on players, morale would have inevitably trickled away, however justified some of Lopetegui’s grievances were.

O’Neil has not spirited away Wolves’ problems in less than a week at the helm. But the former Bournemouth boss has, instead, chosen to leave them to someone else and adopted a glass-half-full approach to the players he has.

That spirit of optimism contributed at Old Trafford to a display that brought no points — due in no small part to a now-familiar VAR controversy — but plenty of encouragement.

And it combined with some smart tactical planning to produce a performance that, on many other nights, would have delivered victory for the visitors.

Wolves had the second-highest tally of shots by a visiting side at Old Trafford in the last two decades.

And, while it brought them no tangible rewards, Wolves’ comfortable victory in the expected goals contest — xG is an industry-recognised metric showing the quality of chances created by each side — was an accurate reflection of a game in which they made most of the running. As the graphic below shows, they created significantly more shots with a high xG value than United.

O’Neil’s side were especially dominant in the closing stages. The below graphic demonstrates how Wolves were slightly ahead on an xG front before Raphael Varane’s goal and went on to dominate on that metric over the last quarter of the game.

O’Neil helped bring about the positive display with a brave setup that put United on the back foot.

There was no sign of the low-block, defend-for-your-lives approach often seen from opposition sides at Old Trafford.

Instead, the new Wolves boss asked his back four and holding midfielder Mario Lemina to hold station for the most part but gave the rest of his players free reign to press and disrupt United’s ability to pass the ball ‘through the lines’.

At times, as seen in this screengrab from the second minute, Wolves’ midfield adopted a diamond line-up in midfield.

While Lemina sat deeper to keep tabs on United captain Bruno Fernendes, fellow central midfielder Joao Gomes could often be seen, especially in the first half, pushing further forwards to pressurise the deep-lying Casemiro and allow United no easy route through midfield.

With Matheus Nunes and Pedro Neto out wide and forward pair Matheus Cunha and Pablo Sarabia playing ‘high’, United’s players had a tough night and only won through a single, scrappy goal from Raphael Varane deep into the second half.

“We did go low block a couple of times with Bournemouth last season but generally I try to find a way to be aggressive sensibly,” said O’Neil.

“It verged on being not quite as sensible as I would have liked at times. It was a little bit like a basketball game.

“But I wanted to be aggressive when we were set and comfortable and the lads carried it out very well.”

Away from his pressing, Cunha enjoyed his best performance for Wolves since his £43million arrival from Atletico Madrid in January.

While Cunha was effectively Wolves’ No 9, he dropped deep on a regular basis to collect possession in midfield and run at the United defence and ended up carrying the ball further than any other forward in the first weekend of Premier League fixtures.

“He missed a lot of training this week with a slight issue so we were never going to get 90 minutes out of him but he caused Manchester United some real problems,” said O’Neil.

“Lots of things he can still improve and he knows what they are. I’ve tried to help him as much as I can and we’re going to keep pushing because there is one hell of a player in there.

“But we do need to still work and get him to a level that I think he can be at to be able to do what he did more regularly, add a goal at the end of it, be able to do it for 90 minutes and lead the team.