Bruno Lage hopes Diego Costa can help toughen up Wolves defender Max Kilman.
Former Chelsea and Atletico Madrid striker Costa has been training with the club for the last three weeks and could make his debut against West Ham on Saturday.
The Brazilian-born Spain international has built a reputation as a tough and combative presence up front, and manager Lage believes training with Costa can be a positive influence on 25-year-old Kilman.
“I want him to put some marks in Max because Max needs that to be a better player,” said Lage. “Max is a kind man, big professional, but he needs to understand that, to arrive to the next level, (what he needs) is training against Diego every day.”
Costa has had plenty of disciplinary problems in his career, but Lage is not concerned, saying: “It’s the first thing he told me. He said to me, ‘I’m a nice guy outside of the pitch, but I’m very nasty inside of the pitch’.
“It’s the kind of players that we want, players with character and personality to help us to win games. Inside of the games there is no friends and you need to fight for the club. I think all the managers want players with that personality.”
Wolves have struggled for goals this season and turned to Costa following injuries to forwards Sasa Kalajdzic and Raul Jimenez.
It seems highly unlikely he will play the full game on Saturday, with Lage saying: “He can start the game or he can finish the game.
“After one week of training I was a little bit concerned about him, but the last two weeks, while I’m watching him training with the team, I’m so happy what he did.
“What is important is to go step by step. He knows how hard it is to play in the Premier League.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here