• 4-0 in Molineux. Narration and statistics

RCD Espanyol fell with a crash in his visit to Wolverhampton in the first leg of the 16th of the Europa League, victim of a triplet of Diogo Jota. The lousy second part of Abelardo's team, plagued with errors in the vicinity of his arc, was taken advantage of by the team of Nuno Espírito Santo, who was able to redeem himself from his recent bad results in the Premier League.

Diogo Jota, three times, and Ruben Neves once again overcame very lazy, too lazy, defending Espanyol. In the 4-0, for example, Jota was jogging diagonally towards the edge of the area, without being barely disturbed, to shoot at pleasure. And, in the first and third goal, the brands of Víctor Sánchez and Víctor Gómez did nothing but touch the ball to help Diogo Jota sing his goals.

This 4-0 will hurt a Espanyol who already sensed that he would not prioritize the European competition, since his fight is in LaLiga, where he occupies the last position. But, with many rotations and especially a passive attitude, the blue and white team takes a moral blow.

Direct route to the goal

Beyond Andrés Prieto, who could not do much more, the best and perhaps only visiting player who was able to go out with his head high was Wu Lei. Precisely with his head, the Chinese had the best chances of a Espanyol that went from more to less until it was sunk.

Already in the first quarter of an hour, with the internships of the forced Adama Traoré, the Wolves found the direct path to the arch by the right wing. But it was Moutinho who focused so that Raúl Jiménez combed and Diogo Jota, attentive, flew to, with the help of Víctor Sánchez, inaugurate the scoreboard.

Half an hour later came the clearest chance of Espanyol, in a gift from Rui Patrício that Ferreyra did not take advantage of. After a bad clearance, the blue and white striker failed to beat a goalkeeper on his back, who corrected his previous mistake with a good hand.

'Hat-trick' and sentence

That action hurt Espanyol, but more 2-0 in the 55th minute, after Wu Lei brushed the draw. Ruben Neves took advantage of a bad 'perico' reject to Adama center to control with the chest and shoot, despite the distance, Andrés Prieto. Unstoppable.

And after another warning, with Wu Lei's wet gunpowder, came the third. Another goal of beautiful invoice for the Wolves, second of Diogo Jota, that culminated a braided play with an oriented control and a shot with the right hand that also tripped in Víctor Gómez.

But he still had to celebrate his hat-trick. He received on the left wing, drew a diagonal without anyone getting in the way or bothering him, and shot at ease from outside the area to almost sentence the tie.

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