The Bolton boss celebrated with his players in front of 2,200 travelling supporters at Molineux after goals from Atsuki Ito, Sam Dalby and Josh Sheehan supplied a deserved win against one of the Championship’s promotion favourites.
Schumacher acknowledged the debt owed to keeper Gavin Bazunu for a brilliant one-handed save to deny Adam Armstrong with the game tied at 1-1 but felt his side were well worth three points on the night.
“It was a really good performance and it needed to be because we’re coming to a top team, a really difficult place to come, I think it’s their first defeat at home this season.
“It needed everybody to play to the very best of their ability and the energy to be at the top level. I felt it wasn’t quite at the top level on Saturday, we didn’t perform as well as we could with certain individuals and as a team we could have done a little bit better. But tonight we were excellent, no against a really good opponent.
“We had to defend at times, needed our goalkeeper to make a huge save at a key moment in the game, which is what you need at this level. But we did really well to score three goals away from home, it’s super pleasing and to get three points is massive.”
Schumacher made good on his pledge to take the game to Wolves, making it back-to-back away wins in the Championship for the first time since August 2018.
“I’ve said all along, I think it’s our best way,” he said of playing on the front foot. “I feel as though the players enjoy doing that, it suits them to try and be positive and try and pass the ball through the lines and create opportunities.
“The move for Sam Iling-Junior’s chance, he should have scored, but that is what they’re capable of if they stick to the plan and are confident. Now sometimes you’ll make mistakes trying to play that way and lose the ball in dangerous areas, but it’s the way I say, I feel as though it gives us our best chance of scoring and creating chances, so that’s how we’ll go about it.
“Our history this year away from home has been really good. All the performances have been actually okay away from home. We took the game to everybody and to have back-to-back away wins in a Championship is excellent.
“Hopefully we can continue to do that and play with that confidence.”
Wolves came into the game at the end of the first half and threatened to run away with it once Jean-Ricner Bellegarde had put them level five minutes after the restart.
“After we scored it kind of kicked them into life a bit and some of their really good players got going,” he said.
“In the second half I think we gave the ball away in bad areas. I remember Theo (Bair) giving one away and Sam Iling-Junior giving one away. It sort of gave them a little bit of incentive and, as you say, we had to really defend.
“They got themselves on level terms and it would have been easy for us to completely lose our heads and come away from the gameplan. But the lads never, they stayed nice and calm, stayed composed, gradually got ourselves back into the game a bit of a foothold by starting to pass the ball again. But then we needed Gavin Bazunu to make a huge save and it was one of the best saves I’ve seen live because against Adam Armstrong, who’s probably the best finisher in the Championship, for him to produce that save at that moment was huge.
“And then a few moments later we go down the other end and get ourselves in front from a really well-worked goal ourselves. It was a huge turning point.”
Josh Sheehan’s sublime 30-yard finish to make it 3-1 was like icing on the cake for Wanderers and capped off a wonderful individual performance from the Wales international.
“He’s been like that for 10 games,” Schumacher added. “I think the level really suits him. There’s more football players, there’s less direct playing second balls, which obviously you get in League One.
“Because he’s a really good footballer and he sort of epitomises what I said at the very start, how we’ve got to play. For us to do well and we’ve got a player of him who’s a full international, we might as well try and pass the ball. So he’s doing really well and his goal was excellent.
“It seemed to take an age to go in, but it went literally right in the top corner. Very similar position from when he scored away at Wigan last year. And give us that two-goal cushion that we probably really needed, because with only a one-goal advantage going into that last 10 minutes, it would have been even more difficult to see it out.”