Wolverhampton Wanderers

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Wolves manager Gary O'Neil to BBC's Match of the Day: "We helped them, we did help them. They are obviously an incredible side and they punished us for mistakes, but some of our mistakes were terrible.

"A couple of ridiculous turnovers for the ball, like really bad that cost us and the first goal. The officials don't make any difference to the result today, but I don't agree with the awarding of the first penalty.

"I thought it was a pretty bad decision. You see a coming together like that all of the time. I think Gvardiol's motion and follow through creates the contact as much as Rayan. I'm not sure what Rayan is meant to do, you can't disappear at that moment.

"I was disappointed with the awarding of the first one, but then more disappointed with sort of the mistakes my own team make, so we just made it a bit too easy for Manchester City."

On being in the stands due to a touchline ban: "I would say it impacts how quickly we're able to get stuff on so it's hopefully something I don't repeat and hopefully, I get to spend the rest of my managerial career down on the touchline and be able to help the players.

"It didn't have much impact on the game, but it would have been nice to be down there and move things around a little bit quicker but we need to dust ourselves down."

• Erling Haaland scored his sixth Premier League hat-trick for Manchester City, with only seven players scoring more in the competition’s history. All six have been at the Etihad Stadium, with only three players netting more at a single venue.

• Manchester City extended their unbeaten run in the Premier League to 20 games (W16 D4). They’ve won each of the last six in a row, scoring four or more goals on five occasions in that run.

• Wolves have kept just two clean sheets away from home in the Premier League this season, though this was the first time they’ve shipped 4 or more goals on the road.

• Man City’s Erling Haaland became the third player to score multiple first-half hat-tricks in Premier League history (also v Nottingham Forest last season), along with Andrew Cole and Michael Owen (2 each).·

• Haaland scored four goals in a Premier League match for the first time. His fourth goal came in the 54th minute today, the second earliest four goal haul by a player in the competition’s history, after Gabriel Jesus in April 2022 (53rd minute against Watford).

• No side has conceded more penalty goals than Wolves in the Premier League this season (8). Only in 2021-22 (9) have they conceded more from the spot in a single campaign in the competition.

Chris Sutton is making predictions for every Premier League game this season against a variety of guests.

For this weekend's matches, he takes on Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill.

Sutton's prediction: 3-0

It definitely helps Manchester City that they are not in the Champions League because their full focus can be on this game.

City boss Pep Guardiola says his players are tired but they are unlikely to get much sympathy about that when they can bring Erling Haaland off the bench, like they did against Forest.

Wolves beat them at Molineux in September, but that is not going to happen again. Gary O'Neil's side saw off Luton last week but their form has fallen away in recent weeks and this should be comfortable for City.

Nathan's prediction: 4-1

Read all of the predictions here

There are five Premier League matches taking place today and we will keep you updated on all of them.

Full commentary:

• Burnley v Newcastle, 15:00 - BBC Radio 5 Live

• Man City v Wolves, 17:30 - BBC Radio 5 Live

Follow all of the action and reaction here

Wolves boss Gary O'Neil has been speaking to the media before Saturday's trip to Manchester City in the Premier League.

Here are the main lines from his news conference:

• Jean-Ricner Bellegarde, Pedro Neto and Santiago Bueno have all returned to full training and are available for Saturday's match. Mario Lemina is back in training but has a "little bit more to do", while Craig Dawson remains out.

• Reflecting on September's 2-1 win over City, O'Neil said: "In the first game we were at home, which makes it easier. They were missing a couple of players. I think everybody is pretty aware of how good they are in the run-in as well, so I would expect it to be a much more difficult test than the one we faced back in the early part of the season."

• On facing a side fighting for the Premier League title: "They probably don't feel like they can make a slip. I would have thought with Arsenal breathing down their necks they will expect to need maximum points from the games they have got left to get it done."

• More on the challenge facing Wolves at Etihad Stadium: "We go there trying to give everything we can, try to be as close to perfect as we can and see if we can cause an upset. Three points would be massive to us."

• On serving a one-match touchline ban on Saturday: "It will have an impact, of course, but there are things in place. I am in the changing room with the players doing all of the pre-match prep, and at half-time and at full-time. I will be in communication with the bench and have a decent view tactically of the game from where I am sat."

• He added: "It is not ideal - if it was ideal we would do it every week. But no problem. The coaching staff are equally aware of what we are trying to do tomorrow and me being higher up will allow me to get a different view on things and I can get some messages down."

Follow all of Friday's Premier League news conferences

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Wolves sporting director Matt Hobbs says he is "really excited" for Tommy Doyle's future at the club after it was confirmed the midfielder will move permanently from Manchester City in the summer.

Doyle, 22, has spent this season on loan from City, making 30 appearances in all competitions so far for Gary O'Neil's side.

"We’ve never seen Tommy as a player on loan, and he hasn’t acted like one," Hobbs said after the deal was announced.

"He’s gradually earned more minutes and become more important, which I think is an ideal first year. What he offers to our midfield is something different to the others, so there was a huge amount of inevitability to this.

"He buys into who we are as a club and what we’re trying to create culturally within the group. He’s a great player to have for what we’re trying to achieve off the pitch and he gives us so much on the pitch, so he’s the exact type of player I think Wolves should be signing.

"If you look at the type of players we like to sign as a football club, they generally haven’t reached their ceiling yet and have loads more to come.

"Tommy is a fraction of the player he will become, with the more he gets used to the league and the greater his understanding gets. I’m really excited for now but also his future at Wolves."

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Wolves have confirmed the signing of Manchester City’s Tommy Doyle on a permanent basis.

The midfielder signed on loan at the start of the season but the Midlands club have now taken up the clause to sign him permanently for just under £5m.

The deal does not officially go through until 1 July 2024, which makes Doyle still ineligible to play against his former club when the two sides meet this weekend.

Here are the key facts and figures before Saturday's game between Manchester City and Wolves in the Premier League.

• Manchester City have won seven of their past eight home Premier League matches against Wolves, losing the other 2-0 in October 2019.

• Wolves have completed one Premier League double over City since Pep Guardiola joined the club in 2016, which happened in 2019-20. No side in Guardiola's entire league managerial career has completed more than one double over the Spaniard.

• Manchester City are unbeaten in their past 31 games in all competitions (W25 D6). The last Premier League team to have a longer run were Manchester United, who went 33 games without defeat between December and May in the 1998-99 campaign.

• All five of Wolves' Premier League away wins this season have been against either teams starting the day in the relegation zone (two) or London clubs (three). They have lost 18 of their 20 Premier League away games against sides in the top two, winning the others at Tottenham (December 2018) and City (October 2019).

• Kevin de Bruyne's two assists in City's 2-0 win against Nottingham Forest last time out took his overall tally in the Premier League to 110; he is now just one behind second-placed Cesc Fabregas in the all-time ranking in the competition.

• Both Hwang Hee-chan and Matheus Cunha have scored 11 Premier League goals for Wolves this season. There has been just three times a player has scored more for the club in a campaign - Steven Fletcher in 2011-12 (12) and Raul Jimenez in 2018-19 (13) and 2019-20 (17).

Mike Taylor
BBC Radio WM reporter

The entirely unexpected victory over Manchester City at the end of September was the breakthrough result for Wolves’ season. They had taken only four points before that day, City had dropped none.

The result was a shock, but in no sense a fluke, as everyone present - up to and including Pep Guardiola - acknowledged. "We deserved it," said midfielder Mario Lemina that evening. "We had the better tactic to beat them in this game."

The players, it was evident, were fully tuned in to Gary O'Neil's wavelength by then. But that day was also the moment at which a large section of Wolves supporters - unsettled by the summer leading to Julen Lopetegui's departure and unimpressed by the appointment of O'Neil - began to give the new manager a fairer hearing.

Pulling off the same trick again on Saturday will be harder, and not only because there will not be the same Molineux volume pushing them on - although their travelling support will doubtless be clearly heard, unlike O’Neil.

Finally pushing the Football Association's patience too far with his critiques of decision-making, he will be absent from the technical area, as by coincidence Guardiola was in September.

Although they were brighter against Luton on Saturday, there is still not quite the same fizz about Wolves' forward raids as at their peak moments this season when they often embarrassed more fancied opponents who gave them room to run. Having Hwang Hee-chan and Matheus Cunha back has certainly helped, but as O'Neil explained on Saturday, there is more to fitness than merely not being injured.

"I did some work around the squad depth, not many of our players have played more than 30 games in a season very often," he said. "There is an awful lot of them out there where this is the most games they have ever had to play.

"Not only do we have a small group, we have a group that are not used to having to play 38-40-game seasons. Joao Gomes, Toti, I think this is Mario's biggest season, Cunha's biggest season - there are loads of them that have had to play an awful lot more than normal. The group have given so much to get to this point."

The lesson for next season is clear. For now, Wolves - who at least will be the team not weighed down by expectation on Saturday in Manchester - must top up their energy reserves with adrenaline, and devise a new code for City to crack.

• Live commentary of Manchester City v Wolves on BBC Radio WM (Saturday, 17:30 BST)

• Listen to BBC Radio WM Football Phone-In (Monday-Friday, 18:00-19:00)

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Referees' chief Howard Webb believes match official Tony Harrington was right to rule out Max Kilman's late goal in Wolves' 2-1 defeat by West Ham last month.

The goal was initially awarded on-field by the referee before VAR reviewed the incident and saw that Tawanda Chirewa was stood in an offside position and impacting Hammers goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski's line of sight.

Hartington overturned his decision having seen the incident again, but Wolves boss Gary O'Neil called it "possibly the worst decision I have ever seen" and was subsequently charged by the FA and since received a touchline ban.

Speaking on Sky Sports' Mic'd Up programme, Webb said: "You can see there on the footage that [Chirewa] is really close proximity to Fabianski right in front of him and in an offside position.

"He positions himself there from the corner but doesn't get back into an onside position when Kilman heads the ball forward. He remains offside and he's therefore penalised for that offence."

The Key Match Incidents panel - the five-person independent committee which reviews all 'key' decisions made by Premier League referees and VAR after each round of matches - agreed unanimously with the officials' decision of offside.

"We're certainly not here to try to take goals away if we don't need to, but we are pretty consistent here and all over the world in terms of how we judge these types of situations," Webb added.

"It is in line with the way the laws of the game are applied all over the world. If you stay in that offside position right in front of the goalkeeper, you're going to have an impact. And most goalkeeping people I've spoken to at least expect this to be to be penalised."

Read about the other incidents from the programme here

Dave Azzopardi
Fan writer

It’s amazing what happens when you have your best players fit and available to play. Wolves have done okay since the start of January but certainly struggled for consistency going forward with the injuries to Hwang Hee-Chan, Matheus Cunha and Pedro Neto.

Saturday’s win against Luton showed how much we have missed that quality going forward with Wolves looking much more threatening going forward and creating better clear cut chances last weekend. Both Cunha and Hwang started, the first time the pair have lined up together since 30 December. I’m actually pleasantly surprised with how well Wolves have done this season too, considering our 'best' front free in Neto, Cunha and Hwang haven’t started together since 28 October!

With both Cunha and Hwang starting together this season, Wolves have won nine out of 18 games, losing just five. Without one of both of them starting, Wolves have won just four out of 17 games. This shows how crucial they both are.

Gary O’Neil has had a very impressive debut season as Wolves head coach but if he can keep hold of both Hwang and Cunha I have no doubt he will have another successful year next campaign. If those two stay fit alongside another forward (whether that be Pedro Neto or a replacement), I’m confident Wolves fans will have lots to celebrate about again next season.

Dave Azzopardi can be found at Talking Wolves, external

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Premier League clubs have voted in favour of adopting an anchoring economic model, which will be linked to the earnings of the bottom club (tv and prize money).

The proposed system would operate like a spending cap.

The next stage is final analysis and drafting of rules, which will potentially be put to clubs at an AGM in June.

The model will be presented to clubs and - should clubs vote in favour then - it will replace the Profit and Sustainability Rules currently in place, from the 2025-26 season onwards.

Any new element of the financial system would come in shadow next season, to fully replace PSR in 2025-26.

“We will obviously wait to see further details of these specific proposals, but we have always been clear that we would oppose any measure that would place a ‘hard’ cap on player wages," said the PFA

“There is an established process in place to ensure that proposals like this, which would directly impact our members, have to be properly consulted on.”

Aston Villa, Manchester City and Manchester United opposed the vote, with Chelsea abstaining.

We asked for your views on Saturday's match between Wolves and Luton Town.

Here are some of your answers:

Wolves fans

Tim: It could so easily have ended in tears when Luton had a last-gasp shot... but it didn't. There is no doubt that Wolves deserved the win. We really dominated the match and the score certainly didn't flatter us. Bring on Manchester City next Saturday.

Kieran: Finally we got a win. Well done team. It is a shame that Dawson is out for the rest of the season, but we can play without him. Next up is Manchester City, which will be tough. We have beaten them already, so who says we can't beat them again? Come on you Wolves!

Jon: It was good to finally get a win, particularly after the awful display against Bournemouth. Boubacar Traore was very impressive in midfield. Once we got the second goal, we looked very comfortable. We gave them hope at the end, but they never looked like equalising. Hopefully our patched up squad can make a fist of our next match against Manchester City!

Simon: That's more like it. It had all the hallmarks of a banana skin game. Former Wolves player Rob Edwards, Luton fighting for safety, Wolves in poor form. But we got the three points. Job done.

Luton fans

Christian: I've had faith all season. I'm starting to doubt if we can stay up now though. I was so hopeful for points against Brentford and at Wolves. We still have a chance, but only because Forest can't pick up points either and have had four points taken away as well.

Mickelson: Very, very poor. I think they have stopped trying.

Ian: I am proud when we win and loyal when we lose.

Finn: I think we will stay up, but the Premier League is another level. Just three more games to go and we still can stay up. Come on you Hatters!

Gary Lineker introduces highlights and analysis from Saturday's seven Premier League fixtures.

If you missed Match of the Day, you can catch up on the action on BBC iPlayer.

And you can watch highlights of Sunday's games on Match of the Day 2 here

Listen back to Saturday's BBC Radio 5 Live match commentaries in full:

• Man Utd 1-1 Burnley

• Everton 1-0 Brentford

Wolves manager Gary O'Neil has been speaking to BBC Match of the Day following the win: "It was a good performance. The score-line probably doesn't tell the full story. We were very comfortable for long periods and we probably should have put it to bed.

"We know Luton are a threat from crosses and set-plays, and we had to suffer a nervous few minutes at the end.

"It is amazing the difference having a couple of attackers makes to us. It is the first time since 30 December that we've been able to name Hwang [Hee-chan] and [Matheus] Cunha in the same team. We have had a tough spell without them, although they aren't fully fit at this moment, they are big for the group.

"We have got a talented group, but it's difficult to always be a threat without attackers. We can have the ball, think back to West Ham when we dominated possession, but we can't always make it count without the right attackers.

"There are so many positives from this season. We have improved on the points tally of last year, stabilised the club financially, and I think it is 13 academy players involved in matchday squads."

On the accusations that Wolves have been 'on the beach' in recent games: "They have been motivated in every game. We went to Nottingham Forest, with not too many players available, and we scrapped. We did that against Burnley too.

"We had an off-night on Wednesday, which we don't like, but it happens. We showed what we can do by bouncing back today."

Here are the key facts and figures following Saturday’s game between Wolves and Luton Town in the Premier League.

• Wolves are unbeaten in their past nine league meetings with Luton Town (W5 D4) and they have now won each of their last three home league games against the Hatters, having won just one of their previous six such matches at Molineux.

• Luton have won just one of their last 14 games in the Premier League (D3 L10). Since the start of this run in February, no side has won fewer games in the top four tiers (Rotherham and Sheffield United have also only won one game).

• Wolves have scored 48 goals across 35 Premier League games this term, with the Wanderers last managing more at this stage of a top-flight season in 1972-73 (53 goals after 35 games).

• Matheus Cunha has been directly involved in 18 goals across 29 games in the Premier League this season (11 goals, 7 assists). Only Raul Jimenez has managed more goal involvements in a single campaign for Wolves in the competition (23 in 2019-20 and 20 in 2018-19).

• Carlton Morris has now reached double figures for goals in consecutive league campaigns, after only managing to do so once across his first six seasons in the top four tiers.