5 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM WOLVES V IPSWICH

Being from Kent, my Dad and I rarely manage to get up to matches, having to find the scarcely free weekends to make the 7-hour round trip to Molineux and pray there are available tickets. My Dad and I managed to get to the Ipswich and I can assure you, it was not worth the petrol money.

 

The performance was (sadly) predictably limp, the gaping holes that are so apparent to us as fans being resumed once again, a performance managing to make a newly promoted Ipswich side look as though they were prime Barcelona. Attribute the levels to whatever you want, be it manager, coaching staff, the players themselves or the owners, but it was undoubtedly not good enough for a Premier League side. It was a proper culmination of all our frustrations from the year so far: embarrassing defensive organisation; a complete inability to retain possession for more than a mere few minutes at a time; reluctance to take any risks or play with the freedom they did last year (especially a player like Ait-Nouri who used to be playing gorgeous one touch attacking moves and taking on his man now just turning back and playing the safe pass) and obviously the fatal flaws in our set pieces, the masterminds of our own downfall.

At half-time yesterday, there was a commemorative ceremony for the famous 3-2 victory against Honved – banners, game footage and representatives of each of the players from the match which was arguably the greatest day of our club’s illustrious history, a match my Only One Grandad was at. Contrast those scenes with full-time, and you realise just how embarrassing it was.

 

Regardless of how the match went, some of the conduct from our lads was disgusting, sadly noting Cunha and Ait-Nouri. You will have all seen what happened so there is no need to dwell on the situations themselves, but it must be made very apparent to the whole team that the lack of discipline is distasteful in defeat, humiliating for the club and just generally unacceptable.

 

Action from the FA will almost definitely happen anyway, but the club ought to dish out sizeable fines and make it very clear that it won’t be tolerated. Hopefully, new management will also be able to reign in the discipline levels.

I imagine most fans can sympathise when I say – thank god!

 

You would have imagined that after a shockingly poor display and 4-0 loss in a must-win game against the notoriously awful Everton, Fosun would have answered the desperate cries to replace the manager before yet another relegation scrap at home and it the severity of that mistake has been evident with the discordance and fighting that has gone on subsequently. Whilst I’m sure we are all relieved to see him go, I think we can all agree that we would have preferred for the circumstances to be different. I would like to thank him for his service to the club, remembering that he adopted a very poor situation and really turned around a side which would have been otherwise completely doomed. If most managers got a job offer 4 days before the beginning of a Premier League season where you were proposed the following: an excellent manager recently departed making it a very tough act to follow; no money; must sell to buy; best player (Neves) just sold and Old Trafford on the first day, they wouldn’t even entertain it, let alone take it. Alas, Gary took the helm, put on a fantastic performance at Utd and countless others in the beginning of that season (in spite of catastrophic VAR decisions) such as memorable 2-4 and 0-2 away wins at Chelsea and Spurs and that 2-1 win over City at Molineux. He turned the side into a fearless unit, reminiscent of the Nuno times again. So whilst we can be excited for a new era and have every right to be angry with the current state of our club, I still want to remember Gary for his successes and not just his failures because without him, we may well already be in the Championship. Thank you Gaffer. 

Back to the performance from the game. It was undoubtedly the worst Wolves performance I’ve been to see in recent years (and I saw us lose 2-0 to Huddersfield on a school night!)

 

A gentleman stood behind us with his little boy at the match just about summed it up, saying to him ‘if you play like that tomorrow, I’m not letting you back in the car!’

 

We’ll work our way from back to front. Johnstone’s distribution was atrocious, especially considering that was one of his predominant selling points as an alternative to Jose Sa, consistently just gifting away possession with aimless, wayward long balls. The defence too was poor, failing to deal with countless long balls into Delap and giving immense space to the Ipswich wingers on the counter. Doherty was a shadow of his former, marauding self and Ait-Nouri looked equally lost. The midfield which has previously been our most valuable asset looked completely out of their depth, potentially due to missing Joao Gomes to suspension, yet the general performance was very poor, misplaced passes at almost every opportunity.

 

The only spark was Tommy once he came on who offers that outlet, quick switch and a bit of dynamism and passion, who must surely become a staple of the team under whoever takes the reigns. The attacking was a mixed bag really: Cunha was causing problems as he always does and scored with an excellent finish; Strand-Larsen looked a real handful and ran himself into the ground; Bellegarde on the other hand had a disappointing game with plenty of horrible passes and that horrendous finish on a chance that looked harder to miss the target.

 

Once again, the substitute looked the best bet, Guedes was very positive and dynamic when he came on and got an excellent assist for his efforts. Set pieces also must be addressed – whatever feeble zonal marking system seems to be going on needs to be drilled out of the team ASAP, persisting with it despite it’s countless failures is literal madness.

Now we must look forwards. Part of the reason this season has been so frustrating to us I think has been because we know that this group of players are capable of so much more, we’ve seen them do it!

 

I said a few weeks back that they don’t seem to have lost their passion and still seem capable of playing brilliantly at times, compounding for me that the issue is having great players playing in a broken system.

 

Whoever comes in is obviously inheriting a far from ideal situation but I sustain faith that the correct manager can whip these players into shape and get them back to their best. Assessing the squad, there is mountains of talent to be utilised and if it can be put to proper use, I still see us in the Premier League next season.

 

At the current time of writing, Vitor Pereira is the frontrunner for the job, described as experienced, properly disciplined and well respected. All that being true, he could be exactly the right man at the right time to get some the quality out of quality players and cut out all of the nonsense. We must keep faith! COYW