The kindest thing I can say is that I didn’t see this coming.
Brighton are good, but boy, were we bad.
A totally spineless, idiotic performance littered with some of the worst individual errors I’ve ever seen from a Wolves team.
Matheus Nunes can’t have played a worse game of football in his 24 years on earth. He was personally responsible for at least two of the goals and I cannot fathom why Julen Lopetegui kept him on the pitch. It was borderline masochistic.
He was the headline act of this seaside horror show but well supported by a stellar cast including Sa, Collins and Kilman who all chipped in with comical mistakes to contribute to the emphatic scoreline.
I suppose the manager has to take a hefty old dollop of blame for a tactical setup that seemed to create the type of open game that Brighton dream about. Time and again they played through our midfield and exposed our backline with penetrating runs. It probably should have been more.
But even with the best game plan in the world, you can’t account for some of the giveaways his players offered up. They simply have to do better.
Predictably, we couldn’t make anything of the oceans of space they afforded our own attackers on the break with Podence, Neto, Hwang and yes, that man Nunes, all squandering good positions to at least put us on the board.
I would extend credit to Pedro Neto for a typically industrious performance, but it can’t be ignored that his inability to convert good positions into goals has been a problem whenever he’s been fit in this challenging season.
I’m not sure why Matheus Cunha wasn’t used at all having played a key role in our recent successes while the hapless Podence went through his usual routine of running into people and rolling around on the floor.
He is one of a number of players that must be hanging by a thread if Lopetegui is intent on building a more robust, consistent side to compete in the Premier League.
Based on this laughable effort, we’re still a long way off.