Forget Podence: Wolves ace who won 100% duels is helping to secure Europe for Lage - opinion

Wolverhampton Wanderers extended their excellent start to 2022 with a 2-1 victory over Midlands rivals Leicester City on Sunday evening, climbing back up to seventh place in the Premier League.

The West Midlands club have lost just one of their last eight league games and are still very much in the hunt for European qualification.

Goals from Ruben Neves and Daniel Podence either side of half time and Ademola Lookman’s equaliser for the Foxes secured the victory for Bruno Lage’s side.

However, the Golden Boys will have goalkeeper Jose Sa to thank once again after an excellent display against Brendan Rodgers’ side at Molineux.

According to SofaScore, the 29-year-old made six saves to keep Leicester at bay, as well as one punch and four high claims whilst being Wolves‘ highest rated player with a score of 7.8/10.

Moreover, the Portuguese won his only attempted duel and had a 67% passing accuracy as well as making two clearances.

Although the stopper couldn’t secure his tenth clean sheet of the season, it was another match where the summer signing from Olympiakos ensured Wolves won.

Sa is yet to miss a league game for the Golden Boys since joining from the Greek giants for a fee believed to be around £6.25m which is already looking like a major bargain.

The goalkeeper came in as Rui Patricio’s replacement, after Sa’s fellow countryman joined Serie A side Roma for almost double his fee at €11.5m (£9.5m) proving to be a shrewd piece of business from Fosun.

Throughout his career, Sa has been a solid goalkeeper, keeping 123 clean sheets to date across 290 appearances for Maritimo, Porto, Olympiakos and Wolves, averaging a shut out every 2.36 matches.

It could be argued that the 6 foot 4 ‘keeper doesn’t have much competition and