There’s little to no time for dwelling on the disappointing performance against Fulham, with a crucial game at the Britannia to negotiate tomorrow evening.
This is our game in hand, our ace in the hole, our chance to leapfrog a few of those sides hovering just above us and move north of the dreaded dotted line.
With no other teams playing, a draw will suffice to see us escape the bottom three but as we all know, you never get an easy game against Tony Pulis’ side.
Stoke themselves aren’t completely out of the mire just yet and will probably need another win to be sure of retaining their Premier League status. They’ll be looking at this fixture as the ideal opportunity to get the job done sooner rather than later.
Their home record is ominously good, with 8 wins on their own ground against four draws and just four defeats. So suffice to say, if they hadn’t been defeated a whopping 12 times on the road, they’d be significantly higher up the table.
You know what you’ll get from the Potters, but sadly that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. They’ll compete for everything, throw a lot of high balls in the box and constantly ask questions of your defence and goalkeeper. The question is, can Wolves cope?
If we assume that Richard Stearman will remain at right-back alongside Christophe Berra and Jody Craddock in the center of defence, we should have enough aerial strength to stand strong against the bombardment. Wayne Hennessy will need to be at his very best, as any flapping could prove costly. He spilled a few crosses against Fulham and I’m not sure we can afford more of the same in this one.
I believe we’ll see the same starting XI that took to the field against Fulham, which means a team of:
Hennessy
Stearman
Craddock
Berra
Ward
Guedioura
Henry
Milijas
O’Hara
Jarvis
Fletcher
Prediction League
Well done to aikiwolf, Rob and Bagsy who all correctly predicted that Saturday’s game would end in a one all draw. Each of you shrewd pundits get the maximum 3 points on offer.
I feel nervous about tomorrow night’s fixture and not at all confident.
I foresee us being under siege for much of the game and suspect we might end up getting worn down by Stoke’s effective brand of direct football.
Whenever we’ve come up against sides away from home who adopt a physical approach i.e. Blackburn and Newcastle, we’ve been swept aside and I fear the same might happen again.
I’ll plump for 3-1 Stoke and hope I’m cursing myself at 10pm tomorrow evening for such reckless negativity.
If you’re going to the match, have a great time and get right behind the lads. It’s always a great atmosphere at the Britannia and the lads will need all the support they can get.
Up The Wolves.
I fancy a 1-1 draw. It’s the minimum we require to climb out of the bottom 3. We’ll probably let in another late goal after leading for the majority of the game. Fletcher to nod home to keep his target of 10 goals this season in tact!
I can’t see us scoring against the Potters. Our only threat is a headed goal and their centre backs are excellent in the air. Hopefully O’Hara can drill one from 30 yards but I doubt it. At best a nil nil draw but it’s unlikely that the clay heads will fail to score against our utterly shite backline. As I was born in Stoke and with family at the game it pains me to say 2-0 to the clay heads.
I can’t see a win. I’d take a draw.
Stoke 0 Wolves 0
Bore draw but a rare clean sheet.
Well at least Fuller won`t be using his pace against our defenders, but I fear Carew and Jones will be too physical for us, so lots of airiel pressure as you would expect. I fear Pennant will have Ward in his pocket, far too tricky and pacey for our cumbersome utility man, so can we get something out of the game.
Possibly if Jarvis pulls his finger out and gets involved, and we play 451, and leave Mancienne covering our back four. This is probably the least likely place for Wolves to win, so maybe they will surprise the fans and themselves by winning 2-1. I`ve not quite finished my bottle of red yet but as ever I`m getting more optimistic by the glass. Then again I`m watching Blackburn v Man City and the camera just panned to MM and clipboard in the stand. Blackburn have the giant Samba playing centre half, oh why oh why haven`t we bought someone like him MM.
Kenwyne Jones is going to eat us alive
Hope he plays Mancienne in front of back four with Guedioura on bench.
Think Stoke will lay siege to our goal but we hang on to win 1-0 with Fletcher on target again.
Mancienne doesn’t actually do anything though, he doesn’t make many tackles and doesn’t show for the ball. There is no point having a defensive player in there just for the sake of it.
Hate to say it, but I’m not as confident as my prediction of a point against Fulham. Think Stoke will simply be too big and physical for us. Going to plump for 2-0 to Stoke, but as ever hope I’m proved wrong.
Keep it tight and I reckon Stoke may be disinterested enough to give us a point. I’d take that too, so going for a glorious 0-0.
One a different note I feel very sorry for Hammill. Impressed me in his short run of games, and while I’m a big fan of Guedioura it seems harsh that Hammill now seems behind an unproven Kightly in the pecking order. Would rather have seen Hammill bought on late against Fulham to try and make something happen.
Keeping Hammill off the pitch after he’s impressed straight off is yet another dose of McCarthy logic.
Stoke 1 Wolves 2 (Fletcher, Craddock)
Can’t see us getting anything from this, they have a great home record, we never do well there…… on that basis I will say a nervy 1-0 to the mighty Wanderers! Come on boys you owe us a win!
Stoke 0-2 Wolves. Jarvis skins both fullbacks for fun all night, gets a brace and puts over 20+ world-class crosses to boot. Then, at 5.50am, my alarm clock goes off. No kidding.
Stoke have only won one of their last six home matches against Wolves. I predict 0-0 here.
2-2. Think we might be able to pull a point out the bag from somewhere.
I think Stoke are starting to look a very decent side now. They’ve evolved and developed under Pulis as i was hoping Wolves would under McCarthy. We’ve really got to up our game now because more of what we’ve been getting lately will not be enough. Game in hand yes but a bad defeat would drop us back to bottom. Form means nothing this time of year, all sorts of results can happen, it’s a question of desire and determination. Come on Wolves, one great performance now and we’re half way there. 0-2 please.
Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 – Stoke City 1
Come on bloggers! A bit more positivity please! I know it’s been hard to keep positive after the last 3 games but I can’t take thinking that from now till the end of the season our time in the top flight is going to just fizzle out.
We’re due a performance as we haven’t had one since the Villa. I’m going Stoke 0 – 1 Wolves. Don’t know or care when the goal comes or who scores it. I just want the three points that everyone at the bottom is so desperate for because it catapults you up the table because everyone’s so close together.
UTW!
Anyone know of any links its worth using to try streaming the game from this evening?
If the same Wolves side that ‘turned up’ against Newcastle, Everton and Fulham appears at The Britannia then we’re in for a torrid evening.
We can perhaps put the first two performances down to ‘bad days at the office’. But the Fulham game was immensely frustrating as we sat back in a vain attempt to hold onto a one-goal lead. With little desire to play in the opposition’s half, let alone probe the back four, we inevitably conceded and frittered away two potentially priceless points.
Moving onto tonight’s game, Stoke will try to bully us into submission. Out defence simply isn’t strong enough to sit back and shut them out, so we have to retain possession and attack more than we did on Saturday. Failure to do so will see us remain firmly entrenched in the bottom three come 9.45pm.
Stoke 2 Wolves 0
Stoke 2:0 Wolves.
If Jones is on his game – God help our cr@p defence.
I think we can get a point from this game.
Stoke 1 – 1 Wolves
Cant help but worry about our defence tonight. 3-0 defeat sadly.
Spot on with your prediction mate! Can you predict a Wolves win for the weekend please!
Not at the moment mate. McCarthy must look at himself for some of this. Worst defence in the league and our best defender Kevin Foley cant get in it? Mancienne in midfield? Kightly in front of Hammill?
The Doyle injury has clearly cost us, but why all these changes!? If we play 5 in midfield we need two wingers on the pitch. I dread to imagine what it must have felt like with Ward and Vokes on, only then to see the emergence of the worst of them all, Stephen Hunt enter the fray.
Stoke 1-wolves 2
We can’t play that bad again surely,we’er due a good performance.
Jarvis 1 + 1 off the refs arse. Any body to score will do as long as its
for wolves…Just hope we turn up…
A shambolic first half against Stoke in which we haven’t tested their keeper. The worst part is knowing that likely defeats to Birmingham and Albion will seal our fate.
McCarthy out!!!!!!
Agree McCARTHY OUT!!!!!!!!!!!
I have to agree!
Is Hammill injured? What the fuck has he done wrong to not even make the subs bench? I like Kightly, and Guedoiura. But both have just returned from long lay offs and they walk straight into the team. Leaving Hammill out in the cold. I’m not saying that we’d have won tonight had he played, but it’s these sort of strange decisions that MM makes that I don’t understand.
And what’s happened to O’Hara? I thought he was crap tonight and looked a bit clueless and already thinking about which Prem team he can go out on a season long loan with next season. I don’t think he fancies Doncaster away next season. I can’t blame though, because neither can I.
And as for Jarvis??? No comment………
Sorry to say it but even I’ve lost faith in McCarthy now. I’ve tried defending him for as long as I can but I really think he’s lost it. I knew we were going to lose when I saw the starting line up. I’ll always be grateful for what he’s done but I can’t see him staying after this season.
I hope I’m wrong but I really feel we’re doomed now, unfortunately it’s probably going to be Blues and Albion who hammer the final nails into the coffin.
Couldn’t have summed it up better myself Nick.
Exactly how I feel.
Totally dejected too. We have five days to sort it out before the Birmingham game. One win could change everything but I just can’t see it right now.
Totally agree – although I said he should have been gone in November. Big Sam would have kept us in this league.
Us “Numpties” could see the writing on the wall.
Does anybody know what has happened to Adam Hammill? As much as I love Kightly he just wasn’t at the races today – Hammill offers so much more.
Based on the last 4 performances we will not get out of this and I doubt we’ll get more than 2 more points.
After impressing me in one season only I dont particularly rate Kightly Jed – but he is a fave of Mick so he gets a game even when only half fit. McCarthy was all over him like a tramp on chips when he returned to fitness – the “saviour of our season”, “give us that spark”, “lift the crowd” b*llocks.
Hammill must be wishing he had gone somewhere else, but probably knows he will be in for Jarvis once we go fown and he is sold.
More fool any side who gets out their chequebook for Jarvis given the way he’s [not] performing. The single decent cross we’ve had in the last 360 minutes of football was from Karl Henry on the opposite flank – and, hey presto, we scored (Hello? Cause and effect, anybody?)
I agree with Clive: let’s see some newer blood for the remaining games. Hammill (on the right) and Mujangi Bia (on the left) should be the wingers in a 4-5-1. They can’t do any worse than Jarvo and Kites last night.
Possibly the worst performance I have ever seen. And anyone who says they wouldn’t want to watch stoke play is either stupid or just a sadomasochist. Gloriously efficient at defending,in strength and power to make the late dean Richards proud. Walters and Pennant more direct and creative than anything we have, and Jones more scary than Freddy Kruger at an Elm Street hoe down.
How, in a game we couldn’t lose, we ended up with Ward & Vokes up front is anyone’s guess. SEB and BCI were better than that 3yrs ago!
And to think Mick has refused to pick the same team that beat villa ever since that game (injuries to Doyle and elokobi withstanding)…bad managers create problems,good ones solve them.
Mick has 4games to solve problems hes had for years. Left back, christophe Berra, and now Adam Hammill who he evidently hates.
Very sad evening, which Mick labelled ‘unfathomable’!
You’ve got four games to fucking fathom it!
Spineless, clueless, rudderless. And that’s just the manager. Don’t get me started on the vegetables.
Absolutely fuckin terrible. It’s Stoke City for fucks sake, not easy these days, but still Stoke City. That’s all I can muster at the moment. Agree with what’s said above. How the hell are that pile of wasters gonna get anything from Blues? Brighton, Donny and Barnsley here we come
And I have no idea on that performance how we will beat Brighton, Donny or Donny either!
The only feeling of slight satisfaction I have, is seeing all of you agreeing with what I’ve been saying nearly all season.
The hugely disappointing thing is that I’ve been proved right, and would gladly have taken as many eggs on my face as possible.
What to say?
Not probably the worst first half ever from a Wolves team, but definitely the worst.
How can we make the last four teams we’ve “played”, mediocre at best, look like world beaters?
Not one player can hold up his head and say that he has proudly worn the old gold. Not fuckin’ one!!!
We need to start playing all the other squad members who aren’t getting a kick, shit, even put USA up front, and drop the whole lot of those who were on the pitch tonight.
One of those nights where I was ashamed to be a Wolves fan.
And how many times did we see McDickhead and his faithful tonto staring gormlessly into space, absolutely fuckin’ clueless.
A disgrace, a shambles, totally inept and spineless, the fuckin’ lot of them.
We are not mathematically down, yet, but anyone who comes on here with anything positive to say about that shit is positively delusional.
Hell, if Nick and Louie have lost the faith then we really bollixed!!
Hang your fuckin’ heads in shame, Wolves team, the likes of The Doog and Billy Wright will be turning in their graves with embarrassment.
FOMM
Good job they had one eye on the cup or it would have been moyder. We were shocking. Karl Henry made a lovely preamble to the game saying it would be “Ugly and Dirty”. Is he completely fuckin stupid? That was Tony Puliss’ team talk sorted out. Ugly? Yes we were. Dirty? No. We were outclassed. Everywhere.
So that’s our game in hand out the way and it’s a straight out gunfight with the rest of the bunch. I don’t fancy us at all now. Our “form” has gone, the recent team line ups are “unfathomable” and we can’t buy a result.
My faith in MM has all but gone. I’m holding out until the end of the season but yes, I must agree it looks like the end of the road for our Mick. Makes me a bit sad really cus I like the bloke as it happens and he’s been great here.
Let’s see what Morgan does at the end of the season. Would he trust MM with another £18m if we stay up…?
Those who have lambasted the ‘anti-McCarthy brigade’ as not true supporters maybe get it now. Mick is just a bloke from Barnsley with absolutely no connection with Wolves except a period when he has been well paid to manage the team. He did very well in getting us promoted and has made a complete pig’s ear in the next stage of establishing us as a premier outfit, something his CV could have predicted. Suggesting we should stay loyal to paid managers in gratitude for past services is as ‘unfathomable’ to me as some of Mick’s team selections. The shirt and the supporters, as i have often said, are the only constants at a football club and they are the ones i care about. The sadness is it’s too late to do any thing about it for this season. If, by some miracle, we do stay up it should not stop Morgan from making the right decision for next year. I don’t think i can stand any more of dear old Mick, never mind how ‘nice’ he is.
Here, here – and after the last three games he has sounded like a broken man.
“They were up for it in the dressing room and during the warm up” – f*ck off Mick, you’re an idiot!
Hennessey
Stearman
Craddock
Berra
Mancienne
Kightly
O Hara
Henry
Jarvis
Ward
Fletcher
£33.5 million well spent over the last two seasons.
The fans who supported him for getting us promoted with a budget of £14m cannot moan when we are watching this team struggle in the championship. They backed this utter joke and when we are looking to appoint a manager when in the championship, we won’t attract anything like the calibre as you would as a premiership club.
Shame on Morgan, Moxey and those morons who thought just because McCarthy got us up with a big budget, he deserves to take us down.
McCarthy said: “Doyle’s injured, Sylvan’s injured, Fletcher had to come off, so good old ‘Wardy’ went up front and did it manfully and is maybe not appreciated as much as he should be for it.”
You cant resist it can you McCarthy – you tw@t!
I thought we actually played quite well agianst stoke.McCarthy is the right man for the job, if we go down he`ll bring us back. He`s a lovely man and I like his northern accent as well.
Are you on this planet???
I knew this would happen when i saw Doyle get carried off for Ireland anyone with a bit of sense could see it was a blow to lose him but could also see it should just be a straight swop putting Fletcher in his place but this is mick he has to completely dismantle a midfield that had gone 5 games unbeaten creating chances and looking comfortable together with a good understanding of where each other was he has now changed 4 times in 4 different games and they look as confused as him is it any coincidence that in them 4 games we’ve hardly threatened and shipped 11 goals he should admit he’s fucked up and put the midfield back the way it was but we all know that won’t happen fomm