Raul Jimenez delighted with ‘special’ first home goal since head injury

Wolves sit seventh in the Premier League after beating Everton.

Raul Jimenez scored his first goal at Molineux for over a year. (Nick Potts/PA) (PA Wire)

Wolves star Raul Jimenez revealed his delight after an emotional first goal at Molineux since returning from a life-threatening head injury.

The 30-year-old scored the game-clinching second as Wolves beat Everton 2-1 on Monday.

He cashed in on Ben Godfrey’s wretched backpass to chip Jordan Pickford just four minutes after Max Kilman had given Wolves a first-half lead.

It was also Jimenez’s 50th goal for Wolves following the serious head injury after a collision with David Luiz at Arsenal in November 2020.

He said: “It feels really, really good to be back on the scoresheet here at home. We suffered more in the second-half, but a few times it happens.

“We believed until the end we’d win this hard game and we go up in the table.

“It’s really special. Since the first day I made a connection with this team, this club, these people, so it’s really exciting for me to be here, to be making history, and being part of this great club.”

Wolves moved up to seventh in the Premier League after a fourth win in five games to stake their claim for a return to Europe, having reached the Europa League quarter-finals in 2020.

Jimenez told the club’s official site: “Everything is possible. We have to dream big, and we have to go match by match, game by game, but we have to keep going with this confidence, being brave.

“It doesn’t matter who we face, we have to do our game, having the ball, we have to go everywhere and try to do our game.”

Alex Iwobi pulled a second-half goal back for the Toffees but Rafa Benitez’s side have now lost their last three games ahead of Sunday’s visit of Tottenham.

“The first half cost us,” Andros Townsend told the club’s official site.

“We were too passive. Because we conceded a lot of goals in the last game, we were focused on being compact and being difficult to play through but we couldn’t get close to them and their danger players  – (Joao) Moutinho and (Ruben) Neves had too much time on the ball.

“Although we corrected that in the second half, we left ourselves way too much to do.

“In the Premier League, being 2-0 down away from home is always going to be a tall order and even though we created enough chances to do it, unfortunately, we couldn’t find the back of the net for a second time.”