Crystal Palace

Up until recently, the only blessing I could take from this tortuous season was the fact that whoever printed three incongruous words on the inside of our replica shirts did so where nobody could see them.

Better never stops.

Until Julen Lopetegui oversaw his first game on Boxing Day, a half-arsed squad of no hopers hadn’t bothered to get started. Twenty-seven points later, featuring three consecutive home wins and we’re positively racing towards safety.

These three priceless points were testament to a team who never stopped from the first minute to the last against an extremely impressive Crystal Palace side who had us on the ropes for long periods. That they didn’t blow the house down after lengthy spells of pressure was down to our own huffing and puffing in an admirable team effort that was barely recognisable a matter of months ago.

A far cry from Jonny and Neves playing centre backs at West Ham or the reverse fixture against Palace, when players couldn’t be bothered to track back or even mark their men. This win shows how far we’ve come under a manager who has worked miracles, whilst simultaneously reminding us that timing is everything.

Were it not for the gift of an unprecedented winter World Cup break, the chance to bang some heads together and the opportunity to recruit some new ones, we would surely have been cut adrift by this stage of the season. Fixtures against a beleaguered Frank Lampard (Everton) and a bereft Nathan Jones (Southampton) would also be taken like medicine. But neither of those wins, nor this one against Palace, would have been possible without some good old fashioned hard yakka.

It was more Big Mick shift than precision-peak Nuno and we were all the better for it against an Eagles side that never stopped attacking. Some crucial blocks, interceptions and a couple of fine Jose Sa saves kept Palace at bay, with one brilliant tip over the bar at the North Bank end evoking Darren Pitcher flashbacks, as the ball arrowed towards the same space where a stanchion used to perch.

Twenty-eight years since that FA Cup replay and there would be no repeat of that scoreline, even if this modern-day Palace side impressed me more than Chris Armstrong and company.

Tonight belonged to the good guys, with admirable levels of perspiration from every player worth its weight in gold, typified by Diego Costa’s tireless running from the front and Craig Dawson’s understated ruthlessness at the back. In between them, the best player to pull on a Wolves shirt since the days of Graham Taylor shone in ways reserved only for him. In slamming home the injury time penalty, torrents of adoration poured from the South Bank like waves, as if we knew it might be the last time we could tell him.

As the ball hit the South Bank net, redemption for this maligned squad would be complete.

Better late than never.

It’s annoying we didn’t even get a point at Leicester.

That would have reframed this game about the possibility of overtaking Palace and looking up the table.

Instead we’re still tentatively looking over our shoulders hoping a couple of those teams don’t gather some results.

At least we kick off before all of the other relegation contenders so it’s an opportunity to create the last bit of daylight we need to all but end any lingering doubts.

Palace

Well done to Roy Hodgson. Whatever he has or hasn’t done since coming back the results have been outstanding.

They might be annoyed they couldn’t get the win over Everton but I think they’ve got enough points on the board to survive now.

What’s even more impressive is that they’ve done it all without Wilfred Zaha, wiping away the idea that they’re reliant on one man to sustain their top flight existence.

He’ll be moving on in the summer I imagine but in Eze and Olise they have enough pace and trickery to compensate. It will be interesting to see who they entrust to lead them next season.

I did think we were a touch unlucky to lose at Selhurst Park earlier in the season. There was a sliding doors moment when Ruben’s free kick came back off the post with us already a goal up. We melted in the second half though so you couldn’t begrudge them the victory.

Wolves

I would just start the same team we went with against Leicester, assuming everyone is fit. I thought they did perfectly well until the changes came from half time onwards.

If others come into the side, I just hope we stick to the narrower shape because we look less one dimensional attacking through the middle of the pitch.

Our home form has been pretty good since Lopetegui came in and we need that to continue in the next three games at Molineux as they represent the best opportunity to get the result or results we need.

Predictions

Well done to PeteRobbo for being the only person to predict the correct scoreline against Leicester.

Rich is back to being 4 points clear at the top of the overall table at the end of Gameweek 31.

As always, if you’d like to join in with the Prediction League this season, it’s simple – just leave your prediction in the comment section below using the boxes provided. Then repeat for every preview article throughout the season, making sure you always use the same email address to make your prediction. Your email is what ties you to your overall score.

You can read my prediction for the game in the comment section below.

I extracted a couple of positives from Tuesday night.

Not only did Adama score by getting in at the back post – a space none of our wingers ever attack – but I thought he looked motivated for the first time in ages.

Diego Costa fluffed a big chance but his forward play, particularly in the first half was excellent. He held it up, bullied defenders and brought others into the game. Exactly what we need.

Boubacar also did what we needed before going off – covering ground and cutting off passes. It’s clear he’s nowhere near the technical level of the others but he gives us something we’re lacking.

And of course Bueno was excellent. Tested defensively but kept at it and produced meaningful end product and played with a high level of intensity.

Despite melting away in the second half, we can take these things into Sunday and believe that victory is possible.

Leicester

The Foxes don’t have any problems as an attacking unit. They know how to create chances and have 17 goals already.

The 24 conceded is the problem but they come into this game following back-to-back cleansheets suggesting Brendan Rodgers might have found some solutions.

James Maddison missed their win over Leeds last night through suspension but he’ll be back on Sunday. With 5 goals to his name and some impressive performances in a struggling team he’s still asking the question of Gareth Southgate.

He’s not the only threat of course and Vardy, Barnes, Dewsbury Hall and Tielemens are all dangerous.

My feeling is they’re in a false position because they have that combination of good footballers and a clear idea about how they want to play. I know a lot of their supporters think the manager needs replacing but I think they should ride it out.

Wolves

The search for a new head coach has been a disaster – not much else to say on that point. Steve Davis at least seems like a reasonably safe pair of hands on early evidence.

The team that started at Palace would be the way I’d go. Prior to Nelson getting caught under the ball they were going along nicely.

In the first half, I saw higher pressing and good energy in the midfield and I think that’s an essential ingredient in this switch to a back four.

Gamble

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Predictions

Well done to Wokingham Welsh Wolf and MILDENHALL WOLF for getting the score correct in midweek and picking up a maximum.

PeteRobbo and Rich share the lead again at the top of the overall table at the end of Gameweek 11.

As always, if you’d like to join in with the Prediction League this season, it’s simple – just leave your prediction in the comment section below using the boxes provided. Then repeat for every preview article throughout the season, making sure you always use the same email address to make your prediction. Your email is what ties you to your overall score.

You can read my prediction for the game in the comment section below.

Up The Wolves!

There’s clear deficiencies in this Wolves side – namely a complete lack of cutting edge in the final third, and avoidable defensive errors.

A relegation battle is very much on the cards.

Climbing up the table will only happen by ensuring the sumptuous and clinical nature of the move leading up to Adama’s goal becomes the norm rather than the exception.

That said, there’s enough in the Forest and Palace games to suggest there’s some character and fight left in the dressing room. A more fluid build-up play in the defensive and middle thirds has retuned too; although we still have a tendency of carelessly giving the ball away, and being overpowered amidst a physical battle.

Heck, we’ve even started to press, thanks to a 34-year-old Diego Costa leading the way in the intensity stakes. If only he was the Costa of old in terms of finishing.

And that’s the crux of the issue. Hesitation and/or poor decision-making means clearcut chances are at a premium, but even when they are laid on a plate, lines are fluffed. Put simply, where are the goals coming from?

At least we can marvel at Hugo Bueno’s duck-to-water debut. He’s already nailed down the left back spot by showing Jonny and Ait-Nouri how to both defend properly and drive forward purposefully with the ball.

Adama is another who is turning heads (pardon the pun). He’s the one person making a difference in the final third – I don’t think I’ve seen him score with his bonce before! You only have to look at Guedes’ impact (or lack of) to see how much we missed Adama in those last 30 minutes.

Who would have thought a few weeks ago that we’d be pinning our hopes on some of the old Adama magic during a relegation battle?

And that’s before I get onto the Supermarket Sweep nature of the new managerial process. To be fair, Rylan might have a shout of being on the shortlist when you look at the current options.

Winning was all that mattered on Saturday.

It would have been nice if the performance had inspired a bit more confidence, but perhaps the confidence of the team will be boosted by the victory.

No other team in the bottom half of the table managed to get 3 points, so it was a dream weekend in that respect.

Midtable anonymity awaits if they can conjure up another result, but that won’t be easy under the floodlights at Selhurst Park.

Crystal Palace

The Eagles come into the game just a point ahead of Wolves albeit having played a game less. They’ve scored 6 more goals though and generally looked a more solid outfit.

When you consider they’ve already tackled Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, it’s actually been a very presentable start.

Wins against Leeds and Villa have kept them huddled in the mid-table scrum and now they’ll be looking to climb with a more palatable sequence of games ahead.

Wilfred Zaha remains their talisman and his 4 goals match our entire team’s tally in one of the more humiliating statistics that will be trotted out tomorrow night.

Eze, Edouard and Ayew are other familiar threats and we’ll need a good defensive performance to keep them all out.

Wolves

Will Steve Davis change a winning side? There are compelling reasons to suggest he might.

Toti had a few erratic moments but I didn’t think he let us down in either of the two games he’s featured. That being said, I would restore Collins to the team even though one could argue Toti’s superior athleticism might come in handy against Zaha.

We do need to neutralise their winger and therefore I would bring Nelson into the team to match his pace in one-on-one situations and get Boubacar into the midfield to help cut off the supply line.

Can Diego Costa play two games in quick succession yet? He’s still lacking a bit of zip, which will hopefully come if he can build up more minutes. Neither Guedes nor Hwang feel like compelling alternatives.

Prediction

Well done to Ryan, Cannock Wolf, DancesWithWolves, Aquilador, Lord Twix, Nuno don’t…, Desert Wolf, Liz, Woodend wolf and vicsmith for all collecting a maximum with a spot-on prediction against Forest.

Rich has the outright lead again at the top of the overall table at the end of Gameweek 10.

As always, if you’d like to join in with the Prediction League this season, it’s simple – just leave your prediction in the comment section below using the boxes provided. Then repeat for every preview article throughout the season, making sure you always use the same email address to make your prediction. Your email is what ties you to your overall score.

You can read my prediction for the game in the comment section below.

Up The Wolves!

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

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.