When you’re two up against a Championship side playing their reserves, you’ve got to win.
Ipswich are flying and credit to them for fighting back to deservedly progress. I was envious of the urgency, fluidity and purpose to their play.
But make no mistake, the Tractor Boys were out to pasture after 15 minutes with Wolves looking tidy in their 343 shape – two goals in the bag and impudently stroking the ball around Portman Road.
I was already half plotting this very report, purring over the Doyle and Traore centre mid partnership and the welcome aerial dominance of Santi Bueno.
But then it all just fell apart.
Sloppy possession, loose defending and questionable goalkeeping saw us all the way back to square one before the interval.
Some might say it’s harsh to criticise Dan Bentley but I think Sa would have kept out at least one of those efforts.
I’d hoped for a half time reset but it was Ipswich who came out hungrier and got their reward with a wonder goal.
Wolves couldn’t respond and the inevitable changes that came did little to aid any sort of fightback.
Fraser barely got a kick, Cunha ran around without testing the keeper and Fabio spent more time hugging defenders than he did getting himself in the box. There was no shape or structure to the side at this point meaning an equaliser was fanciful at best.
Santi Bueno should have done better with a glorious headed chance, having already got on the end of one for Toti’s goal. But overall, I thought he showed encouraging signs in what turned out to be a difficult night for the team.
I’d hoped for more from Kalajdzik at the other end but after he setup the opening goal for Hwang, he didn’t have a significant say on the game, albeit with increasingly limited service.
That Doyle and Boubacar partnership in the middle became more strained as Ipswich seized control but I think both of them can feel reasonably good about their efforts, with the latter using those long legs to glide forward on several occasions.
The team as a collective remains a massive worry. Whatever the combination, we’re just not quite good enough in any game when faced with meaningful resistance.
Where are the results coming from?
It already feels like Gary O’Neil is under pressure and it most certainly feels like Saturday is going to be a long old afternoon.
The writing is on the wall for all to see.
O’Neal was busy writing on his clip board when Ipshite scored the winner, embarrassing to watch.
Ipshite reserves 3 Wolves a and b teams 2. His tenure must be indanger if we get nothing out of the next two home games.
What an earth is Forsun next move?
Ipshite? History there?
Clipboard??? A manager/coach with a clipboard. Now there’s a thought……
Are they out of work? (Quick, ring the men in white coats upmand get me committed)
Wolves’ boss Gary O’Neil insisted there wasn’t much between the sides as his Premier League outfit were dumped out of the Carabao Cup by Ipswich Town last night.
What game was he watching? 1st 15 minutes yes, but the rest of the game………What a joke.
It was pathetic, embarrassing, depressing, amateurish and a disgrace to a once wonderful and historic club.
Matt Hobbs said that one of the reasons for appointing GON was “The detail he showed with his tactical work, including against us last year, gives you confidence about the work he and his staff put into every game.” Hasn’t happened much so far has it? I have zero confidence in GON. Hope he proves me wrong but I can’t see it.
Yesterday I couldn’t understand what the subs were supposed to do. Whatever it was it didn’t work. Headless chickens come to mind.
Depressed? Off down the pub for a few beers. I know it will only a temporary respite and I really fear for Saturday. Oh for a Mike Bailey, Kenny Hibbet, Waggy, etc. Sorry for the rant.
Yep we are are in the shit this time – lych Gate Saturday?
At least the beer in Wolves is top of the Premier league
Expensive Mercenaries 2 Ipswich Town Reserves 3.
Possibly best team in the world at Molineux on Saturday. What do we think?
Worst situation at WWFC since the Ellis/Finlayson and Bhatti crises.
I realise that I’m risking the ire of COD here but for us old lags who have been around the football block several times and know all about the personalities involved, do we really think that GON has the expertise to drive us forward and that Shaun Derry as first team coach is the man to take us to the next level in a footballing sense?
Depends which direction next level is.
Cheap to employ and cheap to sack.
He has one remit: Survival.
Where’s Paul Lambert…. oh he’s already here!
Risking my ire mate ? I’m a saft old bugger. I come across all ranting and raving. Take no notice of me mate. I’ve always said on here I give it out I expect to take some back.Not a problem. It’s all about opinions. We all want the Wolves to do well and yes i’m a staunch derfender of Fosuns financial backing so far ( questionable big money signings adide). As for GON. He appears to have lost the fans already and sadly for him this is only going to end one way. Villa could be the one for him as I think everyone is expecting a tanking off Citeh.
After tonight’s result, I guess that, in reality, we are definitely a Championship quality side.
Nothing else to be said is there?
Thank you for your balanced report. You have highlighted some positives rather than just jump on the sack the manager bandwagon that appears to be gathering pace.
I still think Gary is finding out about the players he has at his disposal. Not really surorusibg wuth only 6 weeks in the job and new players just in the door. Tonight will have helped him greatly but by the time Villa leave the Molineux it will likely be too late.
If that is the case they better get the next one right and he better have a more show biz profile to please the masses.
Ipswich Town reserves, gave us a two goal start, and then whupped us. There was no fluke about the result. Our team, after the first 20 minutes, was clueless.
The side was unbalanced, and for the most part played without any shape or method. A gaggle of individuals who looked as though they`d first met just before the game. Worse yet, we had no leaders on the field, no one driving us forward. The whole performance was outright embarrassing.
It seems to me that GON simply does not have the experience or fundamental ability to set up a team to win games. Avery torrid time is in prospect if he remains in charge.
There can be no doubt that WWFC IS in big time trouble which, If prompt remedial action is not quickly forthcoming, can only lead to an inevitable conclusion.
Some will say that this is an over-reaction
I say this is realism.
We are a championship quality side now and relegation is what Fosun richly deserve .
For my own part scoring more goals and winning more games in the championship looks quite appealing at this point .
No but at least we won some games .How many will we win this season ?
We’re in a right mess what is Silva doing hugging their defenders we have to play with more pace and passion sarabia not strong enough for premier Cunha just disappointing for that money and haven’t we wasted some we could concede a lot of goals v man city waggy Taylor
I’d never be like Silva, even if I was playing with my mates on a Sunday morning before going to the pub. Embarrassing to the point of cringeworthy.
Hope he gets a backside kicking off GON
Don`t be presumptuous Telford. You`re talking about Shi`s blue eyed boy who can never do anything wrong!
And to think we`re paying 4.1million a year to watch this clown make a fool of himself ! In my opinion, Silva and Cunha might well play for the rest of the season without scoring another goal between them
Just got home after travelling from London to the match. A good start but as soon as Ipswich scored heads went down on our side and it felt like we were already losing. The two points I want to make are that firstly although I am not his greatest fan, Sa would have saved at least two of the goals if not all three and secondly that Ipswich actually look a very decent side in good form but confidence is a very valuable commodity in this game.
So these are the players who are the back up to the starting 11 in the Prem. Don’t bother. A squad denied its quality and depth in order to bolster Fosuns’ bank balance ( oh sorry FFP ). Decided a few weeks ago that my money would stay in my bank balance especially this coming Saturday as I don’t want to be part of a 5 or 6 goal drubbing and leaving after 65 minutes as the Brighton game panned out. A club currently with no direction and no heart which is heading only 1 way. Matk Robbins at Coventry to get us back up.
A fine summation of what was a tough watch, Thomas !
I didn’t expect us to win anyway but I could have done without the torment of a 2 goal lead to then arrive at that outcome.
On a night when positives were hard to come by, I console myself with the knowledge that when GON took over the reins at Bournemouth, he was at least already familiar with the players, surroundings etc.
So on that basis he does deserve to be cut at least a little slack.
If you remove the “l” from the last word you have what GON deserves.
We need to stop this GON has only had 6 weeks with the team crap
If he was any good where was the new manager bounce ?
6 weeks should be plenty of time
Worryingly he seems to have no idea on changes when other teams change their formation
At least the Bentley or Sa question has gone away
The Shi/Fabio love in seems to constrain him to be picked religiously
I agree. How long does he think it will take for his apparently overly complex ideas to be absorbed by the players?
Could Jeff please check the receipt. We did buy the right Fabio Silva, didn’t we? The generational talent? Was there another one? Switch selling is the oldest trick in the book.
Asking for a friend.
In the position Wolves are, I’m nonplussed tbh regarding losing this game.
Way too much expectancy and pressure to stay in the Premier league basically kills the desire to want more matches in either Cup.
Let’s concentrate on the league.
Very disappointed in the way we played for three quarters of the game – just no style or coherence whatsoever. O’Neill and Derry were bang average Championship players in their time and that’s the level they’re taking us to now.
This morning O’Neill or one of the coaching staff must order Silva to stop hugging defenders and start kicking them or start squeezing their testicles …… or preferably both!!
Hugging defenders? Don’t get me started! Takes me back.
Season before last I think, I commented when Silva was heavily brought down just outside the penalty area. He got immediately, he was very caring and helped the West Ham player up and sort of hugged him. I said at the time that the likes of Roy Keane would have stamped on the bastard for bringing him down where he did.
To be a successful centre forward you need to be a bit of a bad boy. Bit like Diego Costa in his prime. Fabio Silva is closer to being a bloody male nurse than a proper centre forward. Frankly, he runs around like an eager puppy and is about as dangerous. Maybe his best option is in a second-tier European league? In the championship, with his transfer fee and wages, the hackles would rise and he would be massacred.
It’s a fatal flaw in a chief executive (Jeff) to be unable to admit to mistakes. Hopefully the Fosun owner Guo Cuanchang will wield the knife in Jeff’s chest before it is too late.
After the very pleasant surprise of storming into a 2-0 lead last night, there was an air of inevitability about the result once Ipswich equalised. Watching from the stands with my cousin he questioned who the skipper was last night and the reality was you couldn’t tell. As well as GON’s lack of managerial experience/ expertise, one of our many problems is there is simply no leadership in this team. We badly need a Conor Coady type presence to galvanise and organise what is increasingly becoming a rabble of a team.
I have no axe to grind with GON, but I suspect he won’t be in situ for long……if fosun are determined to hold onto pl status whilst they are trying to sell the club, they will need to make a decision ahead of the January window as that will represent their last roll of the dice. The only comfort for GON is that we are not a well run club and in all likelihood we probably aren’t thinking that far ahead. Like JL prophesied last season, this team won’t avoid the drop again without major investment which because of past incompetence in the transfer market has not and will not materialise in the timescale of this season.
If we do get relegated and swap places with the likes of Ipswich, I certainly won’t be blaming GON, he has a bang ordinary squad at a club increasingly resembling a basket case with the useless Jeff Shi at the helm.
This will be a long old season for sure……..
Sutton I agree with much of what you say. We certainly have a very average squad, but the real issue is that a half decent coach would get far more out of them.
GON seems incapable of setting up a team to win games. His sides are unbalanced, and we play with no set system or method. It appears that too many players don`t even understand what it is they`re supposed to be doing.
If we are to avoid the drop, we certainly need a coach in charge who can properly organize a team and set it up to make it difficult for others to beat us
GON is not that man.
But the problem is that even if he leaves, the club is being run in such farcical manner, that there`s little possibility that a worthy replacement will be found. After all, given the known gross incompetence of Shi, what decent coach would want to sacrifice his reputation by joining us ?
2 goals up early worked like sleeping pills. Toti made moore mistakes than he makes a whole season, and Doyle started to copy him. Seems unfit. Hwang keeps falling over in agony, and makes too many tactical errors. Bueno, strong in the air, but at the moment far too slow for PM. Sarabia do not like physical games. Castro and Doherty lack matches. The same for Sasa. Traore by far MOTM for me.
Excellent post.
Not easy to extract positive’s when 2-0 up against a Championship team and are still out of the cup, but they were as good as we were ultimately poor.
It’s not last night’s result in isolation that worries me. Premier League survival is the priority this season, again.
It’s the context.
A smattering of great spells of football in some games that have yielded zero points.
The loss of a big time manager who has been replaced by one at the beginning of his journey.
The necessity to sell sell sell in the Summer. What appear to be decent acquisitions at the very end of the window, but no time to develop the team, or our identity.
An unsurprising run of poor results piling early and unwanted pressure on a manager and players trying to find their feet.
We are the Premier League equivalent of Bambi on ice and ironically the wolves have our scent.
You look forward to our next game. Realistically even the most optimistic supporter would be hard pressed to say we will get anything out of it.
I believe GON needs and deserves more time. He’s not the cause of our predicament, but with 7 games in the next 8 weeks, we will be a third of the way through the season and Wolves will have a decision to make, having had enough time to reasonably assess whether GON can keep us up.
If not, there’ll be little choice but to part ways, or accept the probability of relegation, unless of course he manages to turn things around.
Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
UTW
I was thinking if the poor results continue, then a decision will have to be made, but when? It would be best, if merited, to decide well before the new window opens so the new manager can bring in a couple of new faces. Of course, there may be no funds available for transfers in January! Who knows? But I feel after the Man C. game, 5-6 more games maximum, before a serious analysis is undertaken, and decision made!
Wonder if the tea lady at Molineux can make a decent brew. If she can she must be the only person at the club doing a decent job.
Sorry, but 3 years ago on here “I told you so” and regrettably I was right. Fred Carno’s doesn’t even get near it.
The problems start at the very top and how our owners have done nothing can only indicate that they have completely lost interest or treat us as a very low priority indeed.
Only seen the highlights so can’t really comment… apart from…
I don’t think that Mr O’Neill has long left at Molineux. You have to feel sorry for him. He was never going to turn the job down, but he was dealt a pretty poor hand by Jeff.
Wrong manager, wrong time.
Matt Doherty has GOT to start games. He is an integral part of what little attacking flair we have at the moment.
Bentley has not done his case any favours. I was a goalkeeper for many years in the Bristol Downs Premier League (not the greatest level by any means) and I would have been mightily disappointed if I had not saved two, possibly all three, of the Ipswich goals.
The money the PMDG’er and I have saved this coming weekend, by not travelling to Wolverhampton and selling our tickets back to the club, will buy enough bottles of beer, wine and brandy to keep us both inebriated for the foreseeable future.
With any luck, the Manchester City game and it’s likely result will be expunged permanently from our memories.
Talking of memories, didn’t we have a really good coach, and team, a couple of years back?
Or did I just have a dream?
I think somebody did.
In this thread someone mentioned Silva being too nice, and he needs to be more like Diago Costa. Sadly, I can’t see him having a personality transplant into being a growling terrier.
But I wish we still had Costa. Don’t say he didn’t score enough, neither do this lot. Don’t say he’s old, and he’s slow. He was no worse than what we have. At least he tried and brought some fire with his performances.
A 12 hour round trip from Dorset, as getting an away ticket these days is like winning lottery ticket. Fair play to the 2000 who also went. First 20 minutes, we moved the ball well, looked like being a good away day. But, just like that we completely screwed it up. I have no idea what is going on. Players hot tailed it down the tunnel sharpish. Still, look on the bright side, tis only Citeh up next.
I’m trying hard not to judge GON on our worrying start to the season, due to his short hands on time, but it is beginning to be difficult not to see discrepancies in his setup and performance of the defence for a start. I don’t just mean the out and out defenders. All over the pitch the opposition were given freedom and space to express themselves fully. This was particularly so down the centre in front of the back line.
I thought Doyle and Doc looked a class above anything else on the pitch. Toti, whom I’ve lauded, had a ‘mare Cunha looked disheartened from the minute he came on.
Despite our occasional brilliant play, I think we are in trouble as our inability as a team to defend worsens, imo, from game to game.
Julen stayed on to make sure we were better prepared for the season and we looked pretty good to start with. I think going for the cheap option of management teamis going to bite Jeff or Fosun, whichever is making the decisions, on the bum.
I shall drive my 340 mile round trip in trepidation on Saturday. Prove me wrong, lads, if only through a good performance throughout the game with us knowing how to set up and cover for each other in defending. The result is foregone. Or is it? It’s a funny old game after all.
Their second goal was well off side and the linesman, yes, linesman was well in position looking across to see it. Just cus you’re paranoid, it does not mean that they’re not out to get you.
In the end Ipswich deserved the win unfortunately…
Outclassed by Luton
Out thought by our own Rob Edwards.
Out cast by VAR
Out smarted by Ipswich who were league one 7 months ago.
What are we gonna do now!
5-4-1, 5-3-2,6-4
Most experienced 1X.
Sa
Doherty, kilman,Dawson,Toti,Jonny
Lemina, Gomes, +1
Whang, Neto
Defend and hope to play on the break.
Everyone expected us to be at the bottom of the table due to the schedule early on so it’s not as bad as everyone thinks.
Unfortunately, my sports package doesn’t include cup games and my stream went down immediately after the second Ipswich goal. It did look like it may have been offside though.
Anyway, Gary said he wanted to improve the players when he got here and it doesn’t really seem as though he has. Maybe he should improve his strategy and play to the players’ strengths rather than to his preferred style and see what happens.
I haven’t written on here for a long time, mostly cos I’m still pissed off at the debacle of Nuno’s dismissal, and the eye-gouging, comedy of errors that continued to follow.
Nuno had a recipe which gave us two 7th place finishes in a row, an FA cup semi, and an Europa League quarter. The recipe was simple: keep the back door shut (played 5 at the back), be fast on the counter (Jota, Neto, Adama), be sharp and clinical in front of goal (Jota, Raul) and play as a pack (close family). The pack was chosen wisely, and Nuno groomed them well in his philosophy before unleashing them. The football they played was a joy to watch; “liquid” football, some were calling it; “samba” football by others. The big 6 feared us and we claimed many a scalp.
Then Fosun started selling and broke the pattern. What they referred to as “the Project” quickly manifested into a player trafficking business model. Bring unproven players in, groom and show them in the EPL shopping window, and sell them for a profit to the highest bidder. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, if that is the way to grow a sustaining club business, but you have to keep the pipeline of good players coming in to replace the ones you sell.
But they didn’t. They broke the family. They wouldn’t support Nuno with the needed quality replacements, parted with him and brought in a cheap imitation of a clown to take his place. Wasted a ton of money on prima donnas who never wanted to play for Wolves. We had a collection of overpaid mercenaries in place of the pack. It almost all went tits up last year but we were saved by the World Cup, and a marquis signing of arguably one of the most decorated and capable managers in the world. Seemed like lessons were being learned from mistakes made. The season was saved and it looked like Fosun would rebuild an even better pack around a ferocious leader to restart where they left off with Nuno.
But no. Nothing was learned. The team had been struggling to score for 2-3 seasons, and what’s the first thing they do? Renew Semedo’s contract. WTF!!! The guy who’s only scored 1 goal in all his time at the club. What’s the next thing they do? They sign a lower division goalkeeper. We’re really solving the goal scoring problem now! They tell JLo they have no more readies, they piss him off and he left (was fired, whatever). I mean who hires a Formula 1 driver to drive a Prius? The lessons weren’t learned at all. They dashed into Aldi, got themselves a go-kart driver out of a job, gave him the Prius and asked him to go race BMWs.
Sorry guys, berate me all you want if this sounds negative, but I’ve seen enough already. We can keep up the smoke and mirrors about VAR all we want, but the real elephant in the room, we all know, is that we no longer have an EPL quality TEAM. Our only hope is that 3 other teams are worse than us. And after losing a 2-0 lead to the Ipswich reserves, I highly doubt it.
Dreaming is for free, the wise man told us. Trouble is, so are nightmares.
The fairy-tale has turned into an embarrassing, humiliating, horror show.
Come on Fosun, what you’re doing now isn’t working. Fix it. Restore the magic you brought.
Go Wolves!
I tend to agree with you from the apparent evidence, but cannot understand how, in the long term, Fosun expect to continue being successful with a model which will only attract mercenaries, whether players or agents. It will fail at some point, I believe.
I never bought into the demonisation of Lopetegui personally : others do and I cannot castigate them as such because none of us knows what really went on behind closed doors, what promises were made and whether FFP was an unforeseen, late difficulty to suddenly arrive as yet.
Now GON is trying to place the blame on Julen but I don’t buy that. In my seventy years of support I have not seen better movement and interplay, closing down as a team than what Julen had achieved by the start of this season against good European opposition. Some of this was still apparent early on but seems, to me, to be dissipating rapidly. Defensively we are now playing as uncoordinated individuals to my eyes; this was not so half a dozen games ago and also under Nuño.
The shifting of the blame from GON is a ‘tell’ for me and I’m rapidly moving towards a view that… No, I promised myself to give him ten games.
We still have many decent right minded players and we have to continue to support and back the team despite my personal, heavy reservations.
If we get flack, it is only from others who love the club as much as ourselves , but, just view events differently. Such is life…
Agreed. It must have been clear to Fosun that JLo is only interested in CL level of management. He’s not going to waste his time managing relegation battlers for. a career. So why did they pay through the nose to get him if they weren’t ready to invest?
I don’t blame GON either. At this stage it doesn’t matter who they bring in as manager. They’ll just be rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. They need to be ready to rebuild. But who will come now?
GoWolves.
A man after my own heart who tells it as it is rather than the many on here who see everything through their gold tinted glasses in complete contrast to eg. the E&S comments column where condemnation of the current crisis is virtually universal.
Nuno’s departure was criminal as was that of Lopetegui and both were very shoddily treated after performing miracles I now think were more in spite of rather than because of the clueless (football wise) clowns in Shanghai and their even more clueless henchman on the ground.
I now suspect their strategy from the get go was much more about trading players and picking up spin offs from “associates” rather than building a football club to scale the heights in a super stadium as was originally shouted from the rooftops.
Well it’s blowing up in their faces and is likely to find us back where we were when they picked us up for a song or worse.
What you sew, so you shall reap Guo & co.
And if it were to go belly up don’t be surprised if loans etc. from Fosun are covered by debentures or other perfectly legal protective mechanisms to ensure their priority over assets.
Whatever – please give us our football club back. Like many before you you are merely custodians of a wonderful cultural and sporting institution and your tenure is proving to be a long term disappointment to say the least.
And stick with us GW we need more realists on this site. But don’t expect to be popular!
PJB, nobody knows for sure what is in Fosun’s minds, but I’d like to think their intentions are good. Just their understanding of football is lacking and unfortunately don’t seem to learn fast from mistakes. Let’s face it, running a football club is really expensive. I think they underestimated how much., panicked, and made many mistakes. They overspent on the wrong players for the wrong managers. Teams need stability and incremental improvements to succeed. They need time to gel and build confidence around strong leadership. Fosun need to invest into their vision of success. I’m not sure they know what it is yet.
But GW they mainly overspent on Mendes/ Gestitute players and coaches where they get a payback from other associates as they move on around different clubs; it’s a running licence to print money on multiple transfers, current and moving forward. Costa, Cav, Patricio, Doc, Jota, Silva, Nunes, Semedo, Patricio, Ait-Noori, Neto to name but a few plus Zenga, Nuno, Lage and Lopetegui. It’s a self perpetuating money making machine probably also involving their part ownership of Portugal’s largest bank. This spider’s web is spun well beyond the boundaries of WV1. Not even mentioned Grasshoppers and the Gnomes of Zurich.
Nice work if you can get it but you need to be in the PL – hence the irrational panic.
It wasn’t always bad PJB. Remember, this started working really well for Wolves. I mean, let’s get real, do you think Wolves, a struggling Championship team, would have attracted Portugese international stars like Patricio, Moutinho and co? None of this would have happened without the likes of Mendez and his relationship with Fosun. The initial crop of players you mention above all worked well for Wolves. After that it all went kind of weird getting players like Jesus, who was totally inept in EPL, and the money spent on Fabio, Semedo, and some of the players that followed, but I think to some extent what was missing was that discipline and vision of Nuno to gel these players as a team, and the perplexing inability to find a goal scorer the team needed so badly after Raul’s unfortunate incident.
Again, I don’t think any conspiracy is necessarily at play here. Just a serious of very bad decisions. Whether it’s Jeff or higher up, who knows. But the latest hiring and firing of Lopetegui and the fire sale that followed is just totally non-sensical.
We’ll see what happens next. I have my predictions. Decisions have consequences. The Ipswich game is a glaring reminder of that.
The guy whose head is on the block should be Jeff. As I said before, it’s a fatal flaw for a chief executive to be unable to admit to a mistake. I’m with GoWolves on the blame game. We fouled up twice, big time. We had the greatest coach in decades in Nuno. He could have taken us into the Champions League. Then, we bloody well did it again with Lopetegui. Twice! Unforgiveable. Now we have a novice in charge in GON, heaven help us. Hopefully he will grow into the job and learn as he goes. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up by comparing ourselves with Newcastle, that’s a sovereign wealth club, enough said, but we should compare ourselves with Brighton. We were in that race once, and we blinked, twice.
GW success to fosun is a big figure in the plus column in the accounts nothing more
That can be said about the majority of Premier League Club owners… and a good proportion of the players too I shouldn’t wonder.
Spot on Go wolves.
Nuno had a dream.