Hwang Hee-chan gets another one as Wolves draw with Aston Villa

Football

Published: 09 Oct. 2023, 11:33 Updated: 09 Oct. 2023, 17:35

Hwang Hee-chan gets another one as Wolves draw with Aston Villa

Wolverhampton Wanderers' Hwang Hee-chan celebrates scoring his side's first goal during a Premier League match against Aston Villa at Molineux in Wolverhampton, England on Sunday. [AP/YONHAP]

Wolverhampton Wanderers midfielder Hwang Hee-chan has tied his single-season Premier League scoring record in just eight games, tapping in his fifth goal of the season as Wolves drew 1-1 with Aston Villa on Sunday.

Hwang teamed up with Pedro Neto for the 53rd minute goal, the Portuguese midfielder taking a solo run down the wing and firing a cross in for Hwang to expertly turn into the goal.

Villa tied things up quickly, Pau Torres getting one back just two minutes later to tie the score at 1-1, where it would stay until the final whistle.

The rest of the game was a heated affair. Wolves and Villa are just 19 kilometers down the road from each other, making for a midlands derby that can often be a very unfriendly fixture.

Wolves’ Mario Lemina saw red in stoppage time at the end of the game on two yellow cards, and Villa manager Unai Emery did not hang around to shake hands with Wolves’ Gary O’Neil when the final whistle blew.

Emery perhaps struggling with the stress of the game the most, vacillating wildly between screaming at his own players for every little mistake and telling everybody else to calm down whenever things became heated on the pitch. He admitted after the game that he was “a bit frustrated,” but maintained that he would have shook O’Neil’s hand.

While the draw may be a disappointing result for 14th-place Wolves, especially considering they beat Manchester City last week, it is another solid result for Hwang.

Hwang has scored in five of eight games so far this season, including last week against Man City, two weeks before that against Liverpool on Sept. 16, against Crystal Palace on Sept. 3 and Brighton on Aug. 19.

Those five goals match his Premier League single season record, achieve back in the 2021-22 season when he arrived in Wolves on loan, got off to a very fast start and then hit a huge slump throughout the tail end of that season and the start of the next one.

Last season, plagued by the end of that slump, a revolving door of managers and injuries, Hwang managed just three league goals.

Korean footballers Son Heung-min and Hwang Hee-chan sit at Nos. 2 and 4 on the official Premier League goal scorer ranking for the 2023-24 season, according to the Premier League website on Monday. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Those five goals this season also see Hwang tied for fourth on the Premier League goal scorer table, just one goal behind national team teammate and Tottenham Hotspur captain Son Heung-min, who has six goals and is tied for second. City’s Erling Haaland leads the league with eight goals.

“Channy [Hwang] knows to arrive at the goal,” O’Neil said on Sunday. “We’ve worked lot with him, and he’s obviously got, he’s obviously got a lovely knack himself, but we’ve worked lot on making sure we arrive with bodies in the goal.”

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]