In this weeks BBC Sport article we take a look at Jorgen Strand Larsen
If you want a metaphor for what it feels like to watch Wolves right now, picture Molineux with the lights on but the warmth gone.
Like Hogwarts when the Dementors arrive. They do not need to do much, they just swirl, hover and drain the place of belief until everything feels grey, heavy and inevitable.
That was Brentford at the weekend. They did not so much beat us as wait for the moment we would beat ourselves. And when it came, it felt painfully familiar.
Ten straight top-flight defeats. Seventeen games without a Premier League win this season. Club records tumbling one by one, each more embarrassing than the last. Sixteen points from safety, two points on the board and even Derby’s infamous 11-point season does not feel out of reach any more and not in a good way. That is where we are now, clinging to the hope of not being the worst.
And in the middle of it, one question keeps coming back: why keep starting Jorgen Strand Larsen when his confidence is clearly shot?
This is not about blaming one player for a broken team. If anything, it is about protecting him. He looks devoid of belief. His touches are heavy, his decisions hesitant and the sharpness you need in the box has gone. Keeping a striker in the firing line when the crowd has stopped expecting goals and started expecting mistakes can feel cruel and it can hurt the team as well.
The penalty moment said it all. Fans were calling it before it happened, saying they did not want him to take it, because he would miss. It was a “scared” penalty, placed without conviction and saved comfortably. Even our last roll of the dice felt preordained.
But if Larsen needs taking out of the spotlight, then another question has to be asked just as loudly: what does Tolu Arokodare need to do to get a start, or at least more than a handful of minutes?
Against Arsenal, when Arokodare and Mateus Mane entered the fray, they changed the feel of the game. There was direct running, a bit of chaos and at least a sense that something could happen. I know Arokodare was not fully fit in the summer, but surely he is up to speed by now. Right now, he looks like he is offering more in attack than we are getting, yet he is barely being used.
The least Wolves can do now is act like a club trying to change its story. Bench Larsen. Let him breathe. And give Arokodare real minutes, because we cannot keep doing the same thing and acting surprised when the Dementors return.
