Wolves Blog

It's a blog. About the Wolves.

Ben Rasmin

Great Expectations

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I’ll let you in on a secret.

I was sceptical when Fosun bought Wolves. While the majority rejoiced, I was privately fretting that our club would become the latest to be rendered a laughing stock by inept owners.

After all, you only need to glance over at St Andrew’s to find an example of what can happen to a club when it falls into the wrong hands.

Mixed messages or clear intentions?

Fast forward five years and, with the Wanderers well established in the Premier League, it’s clear to see my fears were unfounded.

Or were they?

For the first time, it feels as if Fosun’s motives are being doubted by devotees of the old gold.

This inclination was never more prevalent than on transfer deadline day, when Jeff Shi appeared to be channelling the spirit of Dale Winton during a madcap, but ultimately unsuccessful, trolley dash around Jorge Mendes’ bargain bins.

As my fellow Wolves Blogger and namesake put it so poetically in a recent blog post, our failure to land a big-name centre back and/or midfielder was akin to being ghosted by an improbably attractive Tinder match.

In fairness to Jeff, he hasn’t shied away from communicating with fans this summer (albeit it through a paywall on the last occasion). The question, I suppose, is whether we believe what he is saying.

We were told that we needed to sell to buy this summer and, given our modest net spend, that appears to have been the case.

However, frugality in the transfer market doesn’t necessarily explain why the much-needed redevelopment of Molineux has been shelved.

I’m far from an economist, but I’m not sure I entirely buy Jeff’s reasoning for delaying those works. If the board want to grow the club’s fanbase, then surely it needs to cater for those who are sat eagerly on the season ticket waiting list? And surely the debacle with the Graham Hughes stand could have been avoided?

Whatever your take, it’s safe to say that Fosun’s initial ambitions have been considerably scaled back and that in itself leads to a much more prevalent question – should we be disappointed by this?

The success of our first two seasons back in the Premier League was more than a little unexpected. I’m certain that most fans, myself included, would have settled for the comforts of mid-table before we embarked on our return to the top flight.

And, while it’s easy to get a little punch-drunk on the ride to the top, I don’t think it’d be a terrible thing to settle for now. The league is becoming an increasingly closed shop. Wolves aren’t the only aspirational team that will struggle to compete with the financial might of the Manchester clubs, Chelsea, and Liverpool.

Just look at our neighbour’s result at Stamford Bridge last weekend. My old man is a Villa fan (and, I assume, paying for sins in a past life) and reliably informed me that they played well against Chelsea. That may be the case, but the scoreline still read 3-0 at full-time.

Cast your mind back to our opening three results and, at risk of sounding like from Rust Cohle from True Detective, I’m inclined to ask – what’s the point of trying to compete? To what extent could we ever realistically challenge the ‘Super League’ cabal anyway?

Perhaps we ought to ignore Jeff’s dalliances with esports and dodgy Chinese clobber and just carry on kicking back and enjoying the stellar football being served up by Bruno Lage’s charges, and worry about the future when it arrives.

We’ve had it worse.

Wolves 0 Man Utd 1

Blog, Man Utd

I’m sure I’m not the only Wolves fan who assumed we’d be pointless at the end of August.

After all, the fixture list was far from kind. 

Wolves should have been ahead long before the game’s flash point

What I didn’t expect was for the margins of defeat to be so narrow. 

How Bruno Lage’s side have contrived to lose three games they have dominated is the most maddening of mysteries. 

The hardest thing to take about today’s reverse is that it was oh so predictable.

Put simply, you have to take your chances against the top sides when they come. 

Wolves should have put an under-par United to the sword by half-time, but they once again left their shooting boots at home.

Cue a late winner for the visitors, courtesy of some inevitable Mike Dean melodrama and dodgy keeping from Jose Sa. 

On the topic of the foul-that-never-was, if Dean isn’t demoted to the Championship by tomorrow morning then that tells you all you need to know about what is wrong with the standard of officiating in this country.

VAR is there to correct clear and obvious errors, and yet to my knowledge it wasn’t even used to review Pogba’s foul on Neves. 

It’s that sort of double standard that leaves many fans to feel the Premier League is becoming a closed shop. 

That aside, we can’t be too disheartened and need to remember that this month was never going to define our season. 

How we fare against the calibre of opposition that is coming up in September will tell us more about how far the ‘Bruno Ball’ revolution will take us. 

But we certainly can’t afford to keep squandering gilt-edged chances like the ones Trincao and Saiss missed today. 

Hopefully our new South Korean forward will add some panache up top. Hee-Chan’s signing is a welcome one but I still think we need to add a top-class centre back if we’re really to kick on.

All eyes will be on Jeff and co. over the next few days, with it certainly feeling as if our success this season hinges on what we do on the transfer front. 

Memories of Nuno

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My first Wolves game was a dreary home defeat to Coventry back in 2004. 

Over the following years, the club always seemed to be one step from disaster. This was certainly true of our managers, who were only ever a bad run of form away from having their futures become the main talking point on Radio WM. 

Unique bond – will we ever see his like again?

Mick McCarthy and Kenny Jackett both had good reigns, but neither managed to capture the imagination of the entire Molineux fanbase. 

Nuno changed all that. From his first day on the job, you sensed that things were going to be taking a turn for the better. 

If his calm, philosophical demeanour was completely out of keeping with his predecessors, the football his team served up was positively extra-terrestrial. 

Five at the back and pace in attack. That was our mantra for four years that, while not unprecedented, was befitting of the Wolves of yesteryear.

Trips to Wembley, European ventures and wins against the ‘Big Six’ are the obvious recollections, but the really gratifying moments were often the most understated. 

That sun-soaked Championship opener in which we played Middlesbrough off the park. Our first half masterclass away at Bournemouth and the barnstorming comeback against Southampton last season.

These results are nothing to gloat about, but if you were there you know just how defining they felt. As the man himself so beautifully put it, dreaming is for free and his tenure dared us to do so again. 

This season was an ugly one to watch, but there were always mitigating circumstances to contend with. Poor recruitment and rotten luck with injuries being chief among them.

Nuno deserved the chance to go again next term and Fosun will have to go some way to remove the sour taste his departure has left. 

Whoever the replacement is, he will be backed by the majority of supporters. But I seriously doubt whether they – or any other Wolves manager – will ever forge a bond with us like Nuno did.

Thanks for the memories gaffer. 

Wolves 2 West Ham 3

Blog, West Ham

If it hadn’t been so entertaining for the neutrals, this game could have made for a useful summary of our season.

Blighted before kick-off by news of another injury to a key player, the opening 45 soon became a brutal exposition of the shortcomings of our squad.

Early damage – Lingard ran without challenge

Watching a ragtag defence and listless midfield pairing chase Jesse Lingard’s shadow was another nadir in this most forgettable of seasons.

Follow that up with a fight back that was almost enough to paper over the cracks, and you’ve got a pretty clear picture of where we’re at right now.

There is enough talent in this Wolves team to steer clear of danger, but it’s obvious that serious investment is needed to return it to the heights of the last two seasons.

I’d like to think that tonight’s aberration of a first half will be enough for Nuno to abort his four at the back experiment, but if it isn’t then we simply cannot afford to attempt it again with our current defensive options.

Coady and Saiss are both fine players but they were made to look like veterans of the Dog and Duck tonight. Perhaps one of them could adapt alongside a specialist centre half, but Michail Antonio made it abundantly clear that they can’t be trusted as a pairing.

Similarly, Neves and Dendoncker showed that they do not possess the dynamism required to collectively man a post-Moutinho midfield. Both have their qualities – and will surely continue to be key players – but were too easily overran by a Hammers side that was made to look more than the sum of its parts.   

Throw in a loanee centre forward that never looks like scoring into the mix and you can see why we’re experiencing the problems that we are.

The question for us and, more importantly, the owners is – how much of this can be construed as a result of this most freakish of seasons?

For example, Willian Jose’s aforementioned struggles are a minor irritant when considered as part of the bigger picture of Fosun’s oft-discussed ‘project’. Raul will hopefully return as good as ever while Fabio Silva continues to hone his potential.  

But the inability or refusal to recruit a centre half over the last three transfer windows has to be viewed as a failing on the recruitment team’s behalf. Why was the awful Jesus Vallejo deemed the only one worth signing? And why are prospects like Sanderson and, to a lesser extent, Kilman not given a chance to stake a claim?   

My hope is that Jeff and co. will learn from the difficulties of this campaign and make a concerted effort to strengthen the spine of the XI in the summer.

Do that and, on the evidence of some of our attacking play tonight, we can realistically hope for much, much better next term. Our first goal alone shows we are capable of blowing teams away when we really turn it on.

Alas, for the time being we need to focus on getting to 40 points and bidding adieu to this dreary campaign. The news of Jonny’s injury was another bitter pill to swallow, and it seems only right to sign off by wishing him the best of luck in his latest recovery. With any luck, the next time he graces the Molineux turf we’ll all be there to serenade him. 

Brighton 3 Wolves 3

Blog, Brighton

At the interval, you’d be forgiven for thinking 2021 was going to usher in a bright new era.

One where Wolves shrug age-old jinxes off with zero fuss.

Saiss again

But that horror show of a second-half suggests we’ve got a long way to go to get back to the standards we’ve set over the last two seasons. 

The good news is that we have three quality players that will (hopefully) return to the first team before too long, as well as Jonny and Raul to come later.

Any side would struggle without players of the quality that are currently sat on our treatment table, but injuries are part and parcel of football. 

And that’s why, for the second season running, you have to question our recruitment.

Many of the young cubs we have seen this season look promising, but they simply can’t be considered adequate cover for our big guns.

Exemplifying this is marquee signing Fabio Silva, who was so ineffective tonight that you’d be forgiven for thinking we were playing with 10 men. 

I’ve praised the lad before so I’m not going to do a U-turn when he most needs our support, but it’s clear to see that he needs a new arrival to come in this month and take him out the spotlight. 

Talk of Diego Costa will doubtlessly rumble on and he certainly fits the bill of what we need, though I’d be shocked if Fosun forked out for a stopgap signing of his age.

Origi maybe?

Whoever it is, they need to have the physical attributes needed to bring our wide players into the game. 

Neto and particularly Adama offered plenty tonight, with the latter laying it on a plate for  Otasowie at the death.  

But with Silva incapable of competing against Brighton’s towering and far more experienced defenders, our wide player’s moments of brilliance were all too fleeting. 

As for the defence, Nuno needs to resist the temptation to tinker with four at the back for now. 

Our defending was shambolic at times and that seems needless when our players have been drilled into a system that has worked so well for us over the years.

If we were scoring at will then perhaps it would be a gamble worth taking, but we’re not and so it seems sensible to go back to basics and focus on grinding out results that will move us up the table. 

One positive is that this was a darn sight more entertaining than our last encounter with Brighton, though not quite as easy on the heart.

Wolves 1 Tottenham 1

Blog, Tottenham

Perspective is a quality I have long considered as being essential to a healthy state of mind.

It’s certainly come in handy in my time watching Wolves.

Romain to the rescue

And while it’s not something that’s ever in boundless supply, it certainly stuck with me throughout tonight’s game.

Spurs were not so long ago being touted as title contenders, having appeared to master the darks arts that are synonymous with all of Jose Mourinho’s most successful teams.

But tonight, against a Wolves team bereft of several key players, they spent the entire game (bar the opening 90 seconds) with their backs to the wall.

Make no mistake about it, we could and should have won this game.

Even before Fabio Silva’s glaring miss at the death, we had enough of the ball to put the game to bed.

It would certainly be easy to rue this result as a missed opportunity but, when considered in the wider context of what has so far been a stop-start season, I think we can take a lot of pride from it.

Sky’s banal commentary reminded us time and time again that this is a Wolves team devoid of its talismanic top scorer, but one glimpse at the Molineux executive boxes was enough to remind you that it is not just Raul we’re missing.

Take players of Boly, Dendoncker and Jonny’s quality out of any Premier League team and you’d see a marked downturn in fortunes, and so it has proved for us.

What’s more, many of our summer recruits are simply not ready to make the sort of immediate impact that you need when replacing or deputising for key players.

Silva has shown plenty of promise to date but only the most blinkered of supporters would argue that he’s an adequate replacement for a player of Jimenez’s quality.

Crucially, ever player is contributing and fighting for the cause. And while that’s the case, we’ll continue to be a difficult team to beat. Even the much maligned Semedo was on form tonight, offering renewed hope that he can come good over time. 

To perform so well against one of the league’s strongest sides with such a disjointed team is something for Nuno to be proud of. He will know that we are not quite as formidable as we were this time last season, but this result hopefully gives us something to build on as we head into the new year.

Talk will inevitably turn to the January window, but I think the current crop showed enough tonight to suggest that there is not much between us and the teams currently vying for a top-sixth berth. 

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