Mario Lemina outlines stance amid talk of move away from Wolves

The supporters’ player of the 2023/24 season had a stellar campaign as one of the first names on the teamsheet.

This week, Turkish giants Galatasaray have been linked with a move for the 30-year-old this summer, in the hopes of resigning the player they had on loan in 2019/20.

But Lemina has reiterated his commitment to Wolves ahead of the new season.

He said: “We’ve got such an amazing group. The lads are really good, with good hearts and they showed the togetherness. Even the fans were with me during this tough period.

“I’m really happy to be here and I hope I’m going to stay here for a long time, and I’ll try to give my best so Wolves can be the best Wolves team we can be.

“I’ve been around for a while now, and I’m a more experienced player, I know my football better and I know how I need to manage myself. I haven’t been injured for a while now and I’m really pleased with that.

“I’ve still been improving my football, my leadership, and that was great this year, and everyone was happy with me and I was happy with everyone – that’s what’s been good.”

Lemina helped Wolves fight for Europe last season after a tumultuous summer in which they were backed for relegation.

The midfielder says some of his team-mates used that as motivation, but that he always believed they would do well.

He added: “For some of the staff and for some of the players, it was a motivation. But for myself, I was really confident with the team that we’ve got and we did well.

“We proved to people that we’ve got a good team and if we didn’t have the kind of injuries we did, we know we could have shown even more and a better side. But it is what it is. We need to learn from this situation and be a better team next year.

“We’ve been playing good football, we scored a lot of goals, we tried to defend well and we knew we could have achieved a good position in the league, despite not many people believing in us at the beginning, but that’s why we’re really proud of it.

“Of course, we could have done better, especially if we didn’t have these kinds of injuries, but this is part of football, we need to accept it, and try to work on it so we can be better next year.

“We were all together from the beginning until the end and I was really pleased to play this season with the Wolves and I hope we’re going to continue like that for the next year.”