Wolves now know exactly how to survive relegation battle after brutal late loss to Man City
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The dust hasn’t really settled over Molineux just yet, and it may take a while for everyone involved to get over the VAR intervention that allowed Manchester City’s late, late goal – a belated strike which condemned Wolverhampton Wanderers to their seventh defeat in eight games.
Plenty of questions are being asked about the laws and the process that led to the decision to let John Stones’ goal stand, but the real question has nothing to do with whether Bernardo Silva was interfering with play or whether his shove on José Sá amounted to a foul – the real question is: How the hell did Wolves wind up here in the first place?
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Hide AdFor the first year of Gary O’Neil’s reign, every sign pointed to positive progress. Wolves finished 14th in the 2023/24 season despite a chaotic summer which saw manager Julen Lopetegui depart along with key players like Rúben Neves and Mathues Nunes amid serious concerns over the state of the club’s finances. By the end of the year, all of that was forgotten – O’Neil had created a compact, rugged and balanced side which looked competitive throughout the campaign. Now, with just one point on the board after eight matches, Wolves are rock bottom and there is suddenly rather a lot of worry to go around.
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Those sympathetic to O’Neil (and there are plenty who remain patient, even as the mutterings about change start to gather pace in the less upbeat quarters of the Black Country) would point to the abominably hard fixture list they’ve endured so far – by the time they play Brighton & Hove Albion next weekend, they will have faced the entirety of the current top six. That, certainly, is a factor, but there are still several serious concerns about the level of performance, regardless of the quality of the opposition.
Wolves have shipped 23 goals so far this season, nearly three per game and five more than any other team in the Premier League. When matched up with Brentford before the October international break – the lowest-ranked side they’ve faced thus far – they lost 5-3 as their back line collapsed in a heap. They didn’t necessarily have the sturdiest defence in the division last season, but it wasn’t this bad, and until O’Neil can find a way to sort it out, results seem unlikely to improve.
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Hide AdThe left side of the defence has been especially problematic, largely because of the very attacking role given to Rayan Aït-Nouri – notionally a left-back but really more of an attacking threat that any kind of defender. With the Algerian international up field for large portions of the game, Wolves have often found themselves either outnumbered or disorganised down that flank.
That was especially evident against Brentford. Two of the Bees’ five goals came directly from crosses swept in from wide right, while Keane Lewis-Potter should have added another from a near identical move and Bryan Mbeumo was given acres of room on several occasions down that side.
The plan appeared to be for Toti Gomes to come across to plug the holes left behind by Aït-Nouri, with midfielder André Trindade dropping back to fill that gap in turn. That washing machine of positional play was left vulnerable to counter-attacks and quick passes, however, and seldom worked very well.
But while the defeat to Manchester City may have been immensely frustrating – jeers rained down from the stands after the final whistle, presumably aimed more at the officials than the players or manager – it did offer a blueprint for the rest of the season which could fix the problem.
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Hide AdO’Neil switched away from a back four and instead opted to go with a three-man defence. Again, Aït-Nouri’s role was even more aggressive than might have been expected from the teamsheet – he played as a winger, in effect – and once again Toti was the man covering, playing as a left-back rather than as the central defender many might have expected when they saw the line-up, and once again André dropped back to supplement the defence.
But this time, with Craig Dawson acting as the extra man in defence, it worked far better. The gaps left by Aït-Nouri’s adventurous forays forward were much smaller and instead of looking porous, the Wolves defence denied space and largely restricted their lofty opponents to ambitious pot-shots. Erling Haaland was a non-factor.
There was, perhaps, some cost going forward, but Wolves look sharp on the break and have poachers up front who are able to find space and score from sharp counter-attacks, as neatly demonstrated by Jørgen Strand Larsen’s well-taken opening goal.
Sunday’s game may not have put any sorely-needed points on the board and it may have done little to improve VAR’s approval ratings, but it did provide a sighting of a tougher, sterner Wolves side who wouldn’t ship five goals to Brentford and who probably won’t fail to win any of their next eight games. With a relative easing of the fixture list in sight, the knowledge that a better version of this team exists could be psychologically essential in that dressing room.
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Hide AdThe key for O’Neil is making sure that both the tactical make-up of Sunday’s performance and the sense of backs-against-the-wall togetherness that accompanied it wasn’t a one-off. A trip to the Amex Stadium awaits and that’s the kind of place where better teams than Wolves have been battered. Keep it tight and competitive, however, and they might just have their heads up high enough to start picking up the points they desperately need.
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