Wolverhampton Wanderers won a very close game against Besiktas in Istanbul thanks to a late winner from French centre-back Willy Boly, giving them their third straight win.

Story of the game

Playing in Turkey is a challenge in and of itself, however, Besiktas have been in a bit of slump this past couple of weeks, with four losses and a tie in their last five games, so Nuno Espirito Santo’s team were the favourites coming in.

The home team began the game dominating possession, as was expected, but as we’ve seen in these past few games, Wolves don’t mind spending long periods defending and waiting for the moment to launch quick counter-attacks trough Raul Jimenez, Pedro Neto or Morgan Gibbs-White.

Despite being comfortable defending, after the first 30 minutes, Wolverhampton's defence started showing signs of fatigue, which allowed players like Mohamed Elneny or Adem Ljajic to find spaces between the lines and create scoring opportunities. But even though the Turkish team had two very good chances on the first half, at halftime the score remained 0-0.

The second half was more of the same. Nuno took out Neto and subbed in Adama Traore to give some more speed and creativity on the offence, but possession, or lack of it, remained Wolves’ biggest flaw - 61% to Besiktas vs 39% to Wolverhampton - so scoring chances remained slim.

After 80 minutes of very little offensive production, Wolves finally started looking for a goal that would put them ahead. Romain Saiss thought he'd scored near the final whistle, but the referee ended up disallowing the goal for offside.

And when most fans were already coming to terms with the draw, Ruben Neves pinged the ball into the box where centre-back Boly was completely alone and scored, making it 1-0 and giving Wolverhampton Wanderers their first Europa League group phase win.

Key takeaway from the game

Wolves’ lack of organized attack

Even though Wolves have been able to win their last two games, on both occasions they were unable to have similar possession or similar goal-scoring opportunities as their opponents. Jonathan Castro hasn’t been playing to his usual standard and the absence of Diogo Jota has been showing.

Man of the Match

Willy Boly

In a game with so few opportunities to score a goal, the Frenchman had to win the man of the match. However, Boly's game was more than just the goal. He was authoritative and commanded the defence when Besiktas started applying pressure and offered experience when it was needed the most.