Wolverhampton Wanderers secured a hugely important three points on Saturday afternoon as they beat West Ham 1-0 at Molineux to leapfrog David Moyes' side and move out of the relegation places.

Daniel Podence earned the Old Gold a hard-fought win as he smashed the ball past Lukasz Fabianski for the only goal of the game, while Ruben Neves and Rayan Ait-Nouri were both denied by the woodwork as Julen Lopetegui's side were extremely unfortunate not to score a second.

However, the Midlands club showed some of their defensive steel from the first half of last season as they held on to a clean sheet, with Wolves now looking up the table rather than over their shoulder at the relegation places.

While Podence will grab the headlines after his goal, it was arguably Max Kilman who was Wolves' star performer at Molineux.

As per Sofascore, the centre-back would earn a superb 8.1 rating for his performance at Molineux, which ranked him as the best player on the pitch from both sides.

The 25-year-old produced a mammoth performance to keep West Ham's frontline of Gianluca Scamacca and Michail Antonio quiet in the final stages, contributing a remarkable eight clearances, five tackles and three interceptions during the 90 minutes.

Considering he has averaged 4.5 clearances, 1.2 tackles and 1.1 blocks per game in the Premier League so far this campaign, via WhoScored, it is clear just how impressive he was in the win against the Hammers.

WhoScored has also awarded the former Futsal star a 6.68 average rating for the league campaign thus far but his 7.98 rating from them was ranked as his best performance of the season, so he certainly deserves the plaudits for his part in the win.

Wolves needed to be strong defensively against West Ham's two physical striker options and Kilman was certainly that, as he won all five of his ground duels in the game, and five out of his eight aerial duels, with an overall success rate of 77%.

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He was also consistent with his passing, registering an 86% success rate which again was an improvement on his 83% average in the Premier League so far this campaign.

If the English titan can continue to produce performances such as that during the remainder of the season, then Lopetegui's side shouldn't have to worry too much about the threat of relegation.