Wolves Blog

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Sand castle

Blog

Not so much a case of being on the beach since April, but more a reminder that our castle was made of sand.

It would melt into the sea, eventually.

Our team (plus one or two other capable replacements) was a cavalry that stormed some of the Premier League’s most feared fortresses in recent times, conquering territories across Europe, but the likes of Saiss, Dendoncker and even Braveheart Raul became weary by the end.

Bruno – marooned by his bosses

For all the Bruno-bashing of late for our latter-season relegation form, it was a chronic lack of reinforcements that was the ultimate reason for a no mans’ land feel to the end of the season. It had nothing to do with the players swapping Pumas for plimsolls, but just a matter of running on empty to eventually stand still. To see so many of our mid-season heroes struggling by the end was a stain on Fosun’s copybook and the players deserved better.

This blog will waste no more time cogitating over the past, other than to say that the manager was shunned in his windows of need and our wretched form was a direct consequence of presumptuous thumb-twiddling as if we could ever keep up our Old Trafford levels for 38 games.

A reminder that Bruno said the following in August 2021:

“I think we need three or four guys (more players) in different positions. I don’t say now the positions. Top players to help us to be competitive, because, see the good example is what happened with Raul last year.

“If you miss Raul, OK we had Fabio who did very well, but we need every time to put all the positions in the competitive (environment). I think we have a good squad, we can improve it, we have one month to work on that and two weeks to work on the pitch to be competitive. That’s the plan.

“They (the club) already know what I want, the profiles.”

A lack of support ever since (contriving to actually weaken the squad in January with *that* braindead Traore decision to strip the side of our one point of attacking difference) has married with some deflating Ask Wolves Q&As to paint a much more pragmatic picture than the dream we brought into back in 2019. That and an impending sale of Ruben Neves to underline the fact that the ‘project’ no longer exists.

Admittedly, it’s a more sobering summer because we got a glimpse of what could have been, and the loss of our wonderkid from Porto will feel as symbolic as will feel sad, with our dreams dissipating for free. Better to have loved and lost and all that, though?

Despite some natives being restless and no evidence to suggest we’ll be as proactive as Bruno has been imploring us to be, I still don’t feel that the future need be too depressing, not if the money yielded from Neves goes straight back into reinforcements.

Whilst hardly an observation to absolve Jeff Shi of full accountability, I remember the Paskins and Peacocks like they were yesterday, so visions of Podence and Palhinha in a Wolves shirt aren’t so bad, are they? And speaking of the latter, would his signing not be a statement of sorts? That we’re not going to go through the motions without a much needed facelift? Irrespective of Jeff’s ill-advised 2019 comments about challenging for European now sound today, I always felt that a Premier League position with a bit to spare was good enough for me.

If we invest in another four or five players of similar quality, then I see no reason why we can’t remain competitive, and if skincare deals and EA Sport signings are rubber stamped in-between, then why not welcome them as we look to squeeze as much dosh as we can from other revenue streams? That’s not a sign of Fosun downing tools, but quite the opposite in a more prudent project, no-matter how unpalatable it is for some.

In response to Jeff’s Q&A and in an attempt to quell concerns amongst the brethren, I have devised a 5-point plan of my own to guarantee more happiness ahead in a new-look project of my own, which aims to infuse our souls with some excitement as we wait to see what actually happens.

1. Sign Palhinha (and don’t stop there)

An early statement of intent is vital, precisely because we haven’t had one in 2yrs or more. With rivals already spending big and paper talk galore about who we’re about to lose, let’s get this deal over the line to send a signal that we won’t be around to make up the numbers next season.

Palhinha – linked to Wolves for over two years

2. Sign a minimum of five additional players

If Bruno wanted up to four in August 2021 only to lose Adama in January and then release Ruddy, Marcal and Saiss, five incomings is the absolute bare minimum. Another combative midfielder is a MUST alongside Palhinha to give us more game changing moments from such areas. (Moutinho and Neves were both our biggest strength and weakness at times last season and as such, we need reinvigoration). A centre forward is also desperately required, featuring one of the following: The ability to play on the shoulder in behind or a brute who can hold the ball up to bring others into play. Preferably both! Andrea Belotti would fit the bill perfectly for the latter role. And then, if Yerson and Toti are still not deemed to be at the levels required defensively, an oven-ready centre-half to finally allow us to play a back four is also an obvious requirement.

3. Keep Adama and MGW

You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone and it feels that way with both of the above. Adama’s exit reminded us of our inability to play up the pitch or even transition from defence to attack in the first place. If he is still hellbent on leaving then let him, but only after one last season with us. He can then walk away with our blessing in a manner similar to Kenny Miller to Celtic when Jez Moxey showed rare benevolence to do likewise in the hope of salvaging a play-off place back in the day. Traore is our one insurance policy against relegation, purely because he can yield 15 points on his own through moments of magic, irrespective of what does or doesn’t happen in-between. Without any evidence to suggest we will embark on a summer shopping spree, such an insurance is worth its weight in old gold. Player husbandry is needed here, as of now.

Adama – should never have left in January

The same goes for MGW, who clearly dazzled for Sheffield United. When an entire fan base is universally smitten with a player, then you know they can’t be wrong. Again, he’s our asset so why would we give him away at the very moment that 15yrs of careful development bears fruit? ‘Golden Tit’ springs to mind. He is ours, he’s a point of difference that we don’t currently have and someone somewhere needs to earn their corn by reassuring him that he’s integral. Over to you Jeff?

4. Loan out Fabio Silva

It’s not that I don’t have time for him, and there have been signs of improvement, but hasn’t Gibbs-White’s loan proved the value of the loan system in the first place? It’s hardly Silva’s fault, but the £35m millstone around his neck is a really unfortunate juxta-position when we’re now in an era of austerity. What’s more, he’s not what we need in the here and now. What’s needed in the here and now is a box-fresh striker ready to hit the net from the get-go. Say what you like about Fabio (and call me a bald da), but he doesn’t fit that category. Let him roam at his own speed like MGW did and let him come back invigorated. He is yet young and another season flitting in and out won’t do anyone any good, least of all him.

5. Trust in Jorge

Let’s not throw the baby out with bathwater over the summer and let’s remember who got the likes of Neves through the door in the first place. I wholeheartedly advocate a scouring of non-Mendes talent, as to be solely dependent on the super-agent is folly. But let’s not consign the relationship to the dustbin because he’s a self-serving tycoon who is using us like he does the rest of his cartel. Getting relegated is inconceivable and Jorge Mendes is another insurance policy that we won’t. Risk / reward will always exist, but isn’t that the case with any signing that’s ever been made?

Wolves remain the team that Jorge built

Granted, he’s the kingmaker that will probably reduce point 3 to rubble, but if we’re aligning ourselves more with Barcelona and the like, it can only benefit us, as a club of that stature don’t generally deal in duds. What’s more, do we really trust Scott Sellars to do anything well, other to deny he’s ever made blatant mistakes?

So there you are. A five point plan to bring merriment to add foundations to our castle, which cannot be built on sand this summer.

Wolves 0 Crystal Palace 2

Blog, Crystal Palace

Thoughts of Crystal Palace at home invariably bring on the cold sweats if you’re a football fan of my vintage.

Misery for all involved

If it wasn’t Chris Armstrong wedging one in the stanchion, it’d be Bruce Dyer taking the pegs out the North Bank net. If Iain Dowie wasn’t bicycle-kicking my FA Cup dreams into obliteration, then Darren Pitcher would be pile-driving from 30-yards to make his own manager guffaw in disbelief.

For those not present for our latest Eagle-assault, this one was arguably the worst of the lot, because unlike those indelible, individual moments above, this was a collective shellacking from one-to-eleven (barring the magnificent Sa), with every Palace player superior to a Wolves one in speed, strength, aggression and acumen. For every individual battle, we came off a sobering second-best.

Such was the gulf between the sides that it shifted our own aspirations from top-six swingers to top-half imposters within the space of 90 minutes.

If Vieira’s bigger, stronger boys weren’t giving our deferential lads twisted blood on the pitch, they were giving us nightmares in the stands as the old memories of Neves and Moutinho being overrun in midfield – the like of which we thought we’d airbrushed – came flooding back.

We’d also forgotten the name ‘Sven Botman’ because we’d convinced ourselves that playing a back 4 wasn’t necessary anyway (despite it being integral in Bruno’s preferred formation), thanks to the form of Coady, Saiss and Kilman.

And up front, we’d come around to a new way of thinking that didn’t involve signing a striker of any repute because, well, goalscorers were overrated anyway and Fabio Silva was coming of age.

All those misgivings came flooding back in a ruthless dismantling of a Bruno-constructed façade that was so convincing for a time that some fans actually argued that investment wasn’t necessary. This ‘bald da’ knew better though, as usual.

If this mismatch wasn’t the most sobering sight since we returned to the Premier League in 2018, only *that* Huddersfield Town horror show in our first season trumps it, as it not only served to dent our own remote hopes of Europe but smash the barometer we’d been gazing into all season, leaving us with an empty space to cross-reference any success or failure with in future.

The optimists will point to an eighth place in the table and time to stem the tide. The realists will look at the seven point gap between us and Crystal Palace and wonder how the hell it’s there, when they’ve been so superior in every facet of the game for 180 collective minutes.

As another sporting saying goes, styles make fights, and the nagging suspicion was that Palace were all wrong for us from the moment the teamsheets were handed in, not least after bullying us all over Selhurst Park with similar set-ups in November.

Any fears were justified, as they boxed us into submission from the get-go, with an extra man in midfield making us look like the insipid side many of us feared we were turning into.

Our wing backs weren’t dynamic, our midfield suffocated into surrender and our front three so meek and deferential that if it was an actual boxing match, the referee would have stopped them after 10 minutes. And the back three – our bedrock for so much of this season – are crumbling under the strain of it all.

The end result was one of chickens-coming-home-to-roost proportions after it was deemed Bruno could work with a weaker squad than the paper-thin one he was begging to be strengthened back in August, because it was too weak before he even joined.

Seven-successive windows of inactivity and it took an upwardly mobile Palace side to finally shatter the glass we were looking through. It was a Bruno-inspired miracle that we held out until March.

But it could be a whole lot worse. It could have been 4 like it was in ’95 for a start.

We’re safe on 40pts, we could have been watching Chris Armstrong rearrange the woodwork and it is, after all, only a game.

Chequered Flag

Blog, Uncategorized

Goosebumps one minute and wayward thumps the next, Adama Traore is an enigma that none of us will forget.

Like him or not – there will never be another

Spray-on kit, peroxide flash of light and 0-60 speeds like a 911, he was impossible to ignore from the moment he arrived.

He was a Porsche Carrera when motoring from deep and so often a Ford Capri at the vital moment, misfiring unfathomably / unluckily <delete as appropriate> with the onion bag beckoning.

I’m going to miss Adama Traore massively, precisely for that maddening ability to endear and infuriate in equal measure. If he was like Forrest Gump then it wasn’t so much his blistering running, but more the fact you never knew what you were going to get next.

A skill-set like his has surely never been seen in old gold before, nor has a pretty unassuming bloke polarised opinion quite like he, with some of my most placid of friends spewing bile-filled hate whenever his name was mentioned. The genuine anger, in my opinion, was as misplaced as a whole heap of his crosses.

Should he not have been embraced more for fashioning such opportunities in the first place, or ruining regimented formations simply by his presence? For some, that was never enough and on a goals / assists ratio, I understand.

I just loved Adama Traore and I’m going to bloody miss him. His willingness to try things when his confidence must have been low (from constant reminders of his outputs) took repeated levels of bravery / stupidity <delete as appropriate>. And in this safety first world we struggle to make sense of, Traore was the perfect antidote, never opting for the easy option and always doing something to get us out of our seats. For the years of McIndoe, Forde, Saville, Rowe and co, watching our incredible hulk in action was like medicine for my soul.

As cult heroes go, he is etched in my top three, sandwiched between Steve Bull and Chris Iwelumo, precisely because he was never scared to put himself about like those two other heroes of mine either.

I’ve never heard audible gasps quite like the ones when our number 37 either embarked on a run or entered the fray from the bench with those big bursting jumps onto the pitch. It was just a shame his outputs so frequently failed to match the expectation.

With his contract dwindling down and his boyhood club beckoning, it was clearly time to let go. And using a ‘Moneyball’ approach to the game, I get it. His stats just didn’t stack up. But from a gut feel, you sense he might just raise his outputs to ‘half decent’ and there’s a highlights reel thicker than his biceps. I guess that’s the unique weighing scales that so many managers keep putting him on. For the second time in his career, he’s tipping the balance in Barcelona.

I’ve no doubt that a career defining moment is up ahead for Adama Traore and it’s sad we won’t see it in a Wolves shirt. In keeping with the Adama anomaly, a Ronnie Rosenthal miss is as likely as a solo strike in the Maracana. And isn’t that the joy of the Beautiful Game right there?

Either way, life always was a box a chocolates with our Adama and for all those orange cream moments – and occasional peanut cracknell in between – I thank him for tingling the taste buds.

Leeds Utd 1 Wolves 1

Blog, Leeds

As a first father and son away day together, an Elland Road experience with the boy was something I’ll remember forever.

Nelson – a mistake waiting to happen

As a game of football against Leeds United, it was a quite wretched performance that I can’t erase from my memory quickly enough.

It’s a funny old game, football. Despite the cruel timing of the equaliser in the final seconds, it still felt like a relief to be taking home a point, having been completely outplayed from the moment we scored.

And when the Wolves fans politely enquired about Leeds’ famous atmosphere, a grand old stadium rolled its eyes, took a collective intake of breath and started blowing the ball into the net – through an incongruous ‘champions of Europe’ song that still makes little sense.

Watching Wolves makes little sense either, who were magnificent for the first three fixtures we lost, only to pick up 13pts from six games when looking like a pale imitation.

While my Bovril runneth over when watching the lad immerse himself in the experience, the team played as if it was a sinking, tethered ship, spending the entire afternoon plugging leaks until they could stem the tide no more.

But to keep making the same mistakes and expecting a different outcome is stupidity in itself, encapsulated by Nelson Semedo when giving the referee a decision to make at the death. The same Semedo who Bruno moved from the right to the left to deal with a problem that Ait Nouri couldn’t cope with. The same Semedo whose Wolves career has been blighted with moments like these.

View from the away end

That’s not to scapegoat him, but he has glaring defensive weaknesses, as does Ait Nouri on the other side. In the middle of the park, Moutinho can’t turn back the clock, never mind against an extra man in midfield. Dendoncker alongside him is of little use when he’s so terrible in possession (his hospital pass to Kilman which earned the defender a booking summed up his afternoon).

And we all know about the deficiencies in the centre of defence, with a lack of mobility prohibiting Bruno from playing two centre halves. In this game though, Coady, Saiss and Kilman were all fantastic. The best I’ve seen Saiss play for a long time, too. A word too for Sa, who looks a serious goalkeeper and an upgrade on Patricio.

Then up front, Adama remains the frustrating enigma that he’s always been, seemingly not participating in the game whilst Raul was doing the work of two men on his own. Whether it was Leeds’ Cooper and co making Traore tackles a badge of honour I don’t know, but he just didn’t turn up and he simply has to be better than he was. While Hwang offered positives – most notably his fourth goal in six games – he is still finding his feet too, making Jimenez’ task all the more unenviable.

In short, they’re all Nuno’s players (bar Sar and Hwang) and expecting them to dominate games in a new age of swashbuckling football is as unfair as it is unlikely.

So at a raucous old stadium on a Saturday afternoon, I drank it all in with my son for the first time away from home.

I’ll forget about the football itself, as I’ve seen all that before.

Wolves 2 Newcastle 1

Blog, Newcastle

A bit like my cocker spaniel Jake, it’s hard not to love these Wolves.

Everything they do is with the best intentions, but you never feel you can relax when you’re watching for fear that they’ll do something unfathomably stupid.

Expert finish #2

This was a spectacle that induced plenty of smiles, mingled with a similar amount of head shaking as we threatened to curl out a turd on our own doorstep.

Like the dog, we’re eager to please and show boundless levels of enthusiasm, but it’s all a bit madcap at times and unnecessarily naive.

A win is a win though, and this was a thoroughly enjoyable one for prolonged passages of play. Being transfixed on the action from start-to-finish certainly makes a welcome change from the dying embers of Nuno’s reign, which rivalled the gundog class at Crufts in terms of sporting spectacle.

It was Hwang who was the most obedient of all, scoring two fine goals via Raul, who is looking much more like his old self. The South Korean was our coolest operator on the day, typified by his sumptuous finishes on both left and right feet.

After his opener – and our first home league goal of the season – we looked fluid, able and deft, refusing to sit back like the days of old and sticking it to the Magpies in the hope of scoring again. We deserved a second when Trincao missed a glorious chance from Hwang’s cross, smacking the ball against the bar when it looked easier to score.

Within a few minutes, Trincao lost the ball needlessly (from memory) and we go all cocker spaniel again and insist on being stupid. Sa made a block, the ball was half cleared to Neves and Moutinho, but instead of clearing our lines, they bone-headedly gave it back to Newcastle and Hendrick hammered home from distance. Sa’s perplexing game of playing dead in goal – only to jump back across to try and save before then feigning injury once conceding – was a moment to sum up the game. It’s hard to know what goes on in their heads sometimes.

Thankfully, Hwang was brilliantly behaved again to score a splendid second to consign the obligatory 1-1 to the dustbin, from some sensational Jimenez interplay. Hwang’s sharp movement, direct approach and turn of pace evoked memories of Jota, which will continue to fade with more of this.

It should really have been plain sailing from there, owing to the fact that Newcastle looked so toothless and we’re a team full of international players who should be better equipped to deal with such scenarios.

But it was a dog’s dinner.

Compounded by a genuinely terrible refereeing performance, we kept reverting to spaniel.

Both full backs typified this observation with lots of good intentions, but much madness in between. Joao Moutinho was arguably a bigger culprit, hacking down a Newcastle player on the edge of the box the one minute, and passing the ball backwards 50yds the next, when we’re trying to get up the pitch. For a player of his ability and experience, his decision making is regularly poor. Trincao was another, selling players short with basic passes and inviting pressure through craziness.

By the end, it was one of the doziest attempts to close out a game of football that I have ever seen.

But see it out we did and as we clapped them off the pitch, it was impossible not to smile, shake your head and give them a proverbial pat on the back.

Woof woof!

Wolves 0 Brentford 2

Blog, Brentford

An errant doggie-bag drifted across the steps the steps of WV6 on 65 minutes, landing upon its resting place.

It wrapped itself around the base of a Row Q seat, beneath the trainers of an impotent old soul, who honestly thought he’d seen the back of days like these.

Down and out

“We’re making them look like Real Madrid!,” he shrieked.

Moments later, the linesman on the far side indulged our pathetic attempts to hit the net by keeping the flag down until we had found it, with Brentford backing off in benevolence, thus allowing us our little moment. Max Kilman missed.

It was ever thus.

Bruno-ball, as far as I can make out, is a team full of players with good intentions who are literally incapable of scoring goals in open play or otherwise, with just one tap in goal all to show from our players in 450 minutes of trying. In other words, a steaming pile of turd that the doggie bag was inexorably floating towards, until it was rudely interrupted.

Another interpretation is a team in dire need of three or four new signings to banish any threat of relegation.

Funny that, as Bruno Lage said (on August 6): “I think we need three or four guys (more players) in different positions. I don’t say now the positions. Top players to help us to be competitive, because, see the good example is what happened with Raul last year.

“I think we have a good squad, we can improve it, we have one month to work on that and two weeks to work on the pitch to be competitive. That’s the plan.”

In short, back me or we’ll be making Brentford look like Galacticos in front of our own fans, who we haven’t scored in front of all season. The wait goes on and most worrying of all when compared to Spurs and Man Utd, this performance was genuinely dire.

To criticise the head coach after this horror-show would therefore be missing the point completely; Nuno said the squad was too small before he was sacked and Bruno has said the same since he came in. It’s smaller now than at any point in four years.

The mad-panic to sign Kieffer Moore at 10pm on deadline day is probably the most damning commentary of this squad, which has no track record of scoring goals aside from Raul, who is a pale imitation of his former self since his miraculous return. That’s not a criticism, but just a statement of fact as he shuffles around the field at least two yards off the pace in both body and mind. It’s tragic to see and he needs help. It should be a sight to make Jeff Shi hang his head in shame. Quite how we’re pinning our hopes on a striker who was close to death a year ago is a question that only he can answer. That a £35 million ‘generational talent’ cannot be trusted in his place raises further questions that Jeff must hope we’re stupid enough not to ask.

(Roll the Insta footage from Compton on Thursday morning, as we score goals galore in uncontested Dudley/Cradley scenarios that we’re somehow supposed to get excited about. The social media team doth protest too much).

The sight of Raul hurling his headband into touch with 10mins left told us all we needed to know about the way he’s feeling right now.

If he’s not scoring – which he barely threatens these days – then who is going to lighten the load in his absence? Traore has proved beyond reasonable doubt that he’s utterly useless in front of goal, while Trincao looks more like a feather in the breeze, traversing here and there with underlying beauty until he floats away when dispossessed. Joao and Neves might chip in with a goal or two a piece over 38 games, while nobody will ever score from a set-play while Moutinho is over the dead balls, as he’s literally incapable of crossing them past the front post. His deliveries, for far too long, are genuinely shameful.

With Ivan Toney and Mbeumo the very antithesis of anything we have in our squad, then we can expect little more than the hiding we got today, which could have been more, but for profligacy in front of goal. The subsequent timewasting was the worst I have ever seen in 35yrs of attending home games, but only a by-product of what we brought upon ourselves.

Watching those two Bees against our leaden-footed back three was a sight for sore eyes, and one that was etched into our retinas when entering the final throes of the transfer window. We all knew that spectacles like this were inevitable. Fosun wouldn’t know 2004 or 2012 because they weren’t there, but new signings were imperative in order to avoid a dice with danger at the lower reaches of the Premier League.

There’s only so many performances Bruno can get from this lot and he’s used up four already. That 3pts is all we have to show is a worry at best.

At worst, a 0-2 defeat at home to the likes of Brentford is all we can realistically expect for the foreseeable, thanks to a thumb-twiddling transfer window of doggie-bag proportions.

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