Ah, football. It’s the hope that kills you innit.
It took season long pack leaders and likely looking title winners Arsenal all the way into the 70th minute and an extremely unfortunate own goal to break the deadlock against bottom of the league Wolverhampton Wanderers. We haven’t had a lot to be proud of, but tonight the lads gave us something to cling on to.
The Good
The only team to have reached half time without conceding a goal at the Emirates this season before this evening was Man City – before plucky Wolves turned up and spoiled the party, albeit only for an hour and 10 minutes.
We once again came away with no points but there were plenty of positives to take from the performance tonight.
- The defensive shape
- The organisation
- Putting in the “hard yards”
- The shit housery
- Willing to throw their head where it hurts
- Fighting all the way until the final whistle
All fantastic from Wolves tonight. I’ve said before, Wolves fans can take a loss, what they can’t take is players not giving it their all – you cannot throw that accusation at them this evening in any way at all.
Rob Edwards and his new coaches did a great job at getting the lads defensively organised and at least there is a small flicker of hope for the rest of the season. Making yourselves hard to beat is the starting point for any new manager coming into a club fighting relegation, and it does feel like Edwards is making strides in that regard, game by game. If only we could perform like this for 38 games a season instead of once in a blue moon – we absolutely wouldn’t be anywhere near the bottom 3.
Secondly, the away fans. What a credit to this football club. For 2,943 away fans to make the journey down to North London ten days before Christmas Eve, in the freezing cold weather and still sing their hearts out for the lads who have so far delivered just the two points all season – as the infamous song goes, Wanderers will never die, we’ll keep the gold flag flying high.
There’s a lot at this football club that has gone wrong this season, but the fanbase will never let our football club down. Massive respect to everyone who travelled this evening. Legends the lot of ya.
The Bad
It feels strange looking for a negative after that performance, but for the sake of the article, here goes. For all the excellent defensive work, and there was plenty on show this evening – Wolves unfortunately still look incredibly bereft of any real creativity and the lack of goals this season is what will eventually be what sends us into the Championship. Just three shots all game and a lowly 29% possession, it’s not hard to see why Wolves sit so cut adrift at the bottom of the table. If we are to avoid breaking an unwanted Premier League record of the lowest points total in history, we desperately need to add some firepower to the forward line in January. We simply must do something about this next month, or face truly embarrassing consequences.
Finally, it’s been the season from hell so far and there has been hardly anything to look forward to, but there have been some positives so far under Rob Edwards’ tenure, mainly our record in first halves.
At half time under Edwards so far, Wolves have been;
- 0-0 v Crystal Palace
- 0-0 v Aston Villa
- 0-0 Nottingham Forest
- 1-1 Man United
- 0-0 Arsenal
Now granted, we aren’t scoring many, but if games were finished after 45 minutes, we’d have an extra 5 points on the board. As it is, and unfortunately for Edwards and his players, football has lasted over 90 minutes since the beginning of time and so he still has nil points after his first five in charge of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Today aside, which we were so, so unlucky to lose – I’m not sure what exactly is going wrong from 46-90+ minutes, but that is what Edwards and his staff will be paid to fix.
We have generally looked a quite competent team for the majority of our first 45 minutes under Edwards, but then any good work seems to fall apart in the second half. Is it confidence? Nervousness? Fitness? Or is it just a general lack of Premier League quality to see a game out.
It feels like fine margins at the moment, whilst we have been terrible at times, I still don’t think we’re quite as bad as our points total suggests, and recent performances have been much improved, even if our points tally seems infinitely stuck on “2”.
Whatever it is, Edwards must rectify this ASAP if we are to have any hope of avoiding that record low 11 points total we are all so desperate to avoid.
