Wolves star Hwang Hee-chan has offered an apology to his teammates, after he was unable to ‘help the team’ while he was out injured.
It has been a tough final third of the season for Wanderers, with Gary O’Neil having to contend with injuries to several key players.
O’Neil lost all three attacking players who had shone in the first half of the season in Hwang, Matheus Cunha and Pedro Neto to hamstring injuries.
Craig Dawson and Jean-Ricner Bellegarde were also sidelined.
It’s still been a great season for Wolves considering the predicament last summer, but for some fans, there are also feelings about what might have been.
Hwang has been reflecting on the 2023/24 campaign in a chat for the club’s official website – and the South Korean has gone as far as to apologise for being unavailable…
Hwang was frustrated when he suffered a hamstring injury after come back from international duty at the Asian Cup with South Korea.
Hwang did play two games against Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield United, but then missed Wolves’ next five Premier League games, as well as the FA Cup quarter-final with Coventry City.
Hwang has been susceptible to hamstring injuries since he signed for Wolves in 2021 initially on loan from RB Leipzig. The player’s explosiveness does seemingly make him susceptible to such issues.
Hwang has been speaking about the current season, and he has taken it upon himself to apologise to his teammates for being unavailable.
He said: “After the New Year we had many players injured and for me, as a player and as a striker I want to say sorry to my teammates and to everyone. I will say sorry because I didn’t help the team, I couldn’t help the team and it was very painful for me.
“I tried my best to come back stronger. Then after I came back, we didn’t win for seven games but after we were all together with Cunha, Nelson, and Mario and everyone then we won at home. This is the most important thing.”
After Wolves’ defeat to Manchester City on Saturday, in which Hwang bagged his 12th Premier League goal of the season, Micah Richards spoke about Hwang and how things could have been so much better for the club had he stayed fit.
This is a lovely show of humility from Hwang, but Wolves fans everywhere will tell him he does not need to apologise for ‘not helping the team’.
Injuries are part and parcel of the game, and there is seemingly nothing Hwang could have done to avoid time on the sidelines.
Ultimately, Hwang – who cost Wolves just under £14 million – is a high-octane, high-intensity kind of player and him playing flat-out arguably helped him to score as many goals as he has.
It is not his fault that he ended up injured. Perhaps if O’Neil had a bigger squad then he could have been afforded more time to rest but as Wolves fans know, this just wasn’t possible.
He has helped the team in a huge way this season and hopefully, Hwang can get on the scoresheet in these final couple of games and finish his best season for Wolves with a flourish.
