Following their early goals, Wolves showed to defensively manage the game against Sheffield United very well in their 2-0 victory at Bramall Lane.

Strikes by Raul Jimenez and Romain Saiss inside the opening six minutes was all that was needed to gift the Wanderers three points in their first Premier League fixture of the 2019/20 campaign.

After their fantastic start, due to how Nuno Espirito Santo’s side set up for the remainder of the game, the Blades failed to create an abundance of good opportunities and they were not able to get in behind Wolves’ defence on many occasions.

This is something that Santo would be very pleased with especially considering how good of a season in the top- flight Chris Wilder’s side had last season, and prior to the encounter, he would of known that they had the capability to cause problems to the Pack.

Therefore, with the fact that the home side’s only decent chances in the match came when John Fleck hit the post and when Oli Mcburnie’s header was cleared off the line in second half stoppage time, the Portuguese boss will arguably be more happy with how his team kept hold of their early two goal lead.

Centre back trio solid once again

As they have done throughout Nuno’s reign as manager, Wolves played three centre backs in the form of Conor Coady, Will Boly and the second goalscorer Saiss.

Consequently, as it has been shown in particular since their promotion back to the Premier League in 2018, playing with this certain mindset and identity has helped guide them to another victory.

After making the thunderous start that Wolves did, they did not flood players forward because they knew that due to the tendency to United’s centre back to overlap behind defences, and the fact that Wilder opted to play two strikers, the Wanderers could have consequently become exposed at the back.

Accordingly, when the Blades had possession of the ball the wing backs of Adama Traore and debutant Marcal tucked in and dropped in deeper, making it a lot more difficult for the hosts to slip the likes of Billy Sharp and McBurnie in behind the defence.

For the first 15 minutes of the second period, there is no doubt that United came firing out of the blocks and they did attempt to pile the pressure on the Wolves defence.

However, for this spell, despite the hosts coming close when Fleck hit the post just before the hour mark, the visiting defence overall managed to cope and hold well the pressure that the home side tried to put them under.  

Assured defending allowed for deadly counter- attacking

As the game wore on and the Blades threw more men forward, due to Wolves defence being consistently solid throughout the entirety of the game, at the other end of the pitch because of the good hold up play from Jimenez and the electric threatening pace of Traore, on reflection the away side could have extended the margin of the end result.

This was especially the case in the last 20 minutes as Saiss smashed the ball onto the post while somehow Jimenez could not find the target from close range.

Also, Traore on two occasions came from deep roles to go on individual runs forward after seeing gaps in the United defence that could be exposed.

However, he failed to provide the finishing touch as on both of these occasions he failed to test new goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale.

Consequently, despite the fact that Nuno will be delighted by their first result and performance of the season, he may feel that they should have been a little more clinical with some of the chances they created in the second half.

As a result, he may feel that this is an area that must be worked on ahead of their next game in the Premier League which is against Manchester City at Molineux.