Wolves beat Leicester City 3-0 on Sunday in Vitor Pereira’s first game in charge.
Wanderers have been struggling badly in recent weeks, and those struggles led to Gary O’Neil losing his job after the defeat to Ipswich Town.
But Wolves acted and brought in Vitor Pereira and the new Wolves manager is off to the perfect start.
Despite having just days to work with his new players, Pereira oversaw a fantastic performance at the King Power.
Wolves were clinical in the final third, capitalising on poor defending.
But most impressively, Wolves looked a completely different outfit defensively compared to past weeks.
Wolves were solid, and compact and there were no real moments of jeopardy. There was organisation and control, things we just hadn’t been seeing under O’Neil.
And on a day of firsts, Matheus Cunha also wore the captain’s armband.
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How Lemina and Semedo responded after Matheus Cunha wore captain’s armband v Leicester
Matheus Cunha of Wolverhampton Wanderers celebrates scoring his team's third goal during the Premier League match between Leicester City FC and Wol...
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There had been some talk about the captaincy in the lead-up to this game.
Obviously, O’Neil recently stripped Lemina – who missed the Leicester game through injury – of the captaincy ahead of the game with Ipswich, after his emotional reaction after Wolves lost to West Ham.
Nelson Semedo was made the new captain.
Pereira praised Semedo in his first press conference but said he’ll think about the captaincy, suggesting it could yet change hands again.
Certainly though, it would be a very bold decision to change it again.
Against Leicester, Semedo was the captain, but after he went off on 89 minutes, it was Cunha who received the armband.
Cunha Instagram
© INSTAGRAM FROM META
And it was a moment that made Cunha proud. He took to his Instagram Story after the game and said ‘First time captain of this team. It’s a pleasure to learn from you @nelsonsemedo50 @lemsm13’.
Both Semedo and Lemina respond after being tagged. Semedo wrote ‘very prepared man’, and Lemina replied with ‘Baller’.
Another big performance from Cunha
Guedes was probably Wolves’ best player against Leicester, but it was another top showing from Cunha.
The Brazilian hadn’t been very impactful across O’Neil’s final few games in charge, but he was back on song for Pereira’s first game.
It was a nice moment when he got the captain’s armband, with some fans actually having called for him to succeed Max Kilman as captain in the summer, ahead of Lemina.
We’ll see what Pereira decides to do from here. Semedo seems like a sensible choice to sport the armband now and taking it away from him doesn’t feel like a necessary decision to make.
He’s not so emotional like Lemina and also Cunha, and one gets the feeling that Wolves would benefit from having someone more calm and collected as captain for the rest of the season.
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