WOLVES (HOME)
No wins in 11, or just two defeats in 11? Is the plastic pint pot half full, or half empty?
‘When a bad run isn’t a bad run… the underrated value of a succession of draws’ reflected Andy Naylor after the Southampton game. ‘Brighton have not tasted victory since September and have drawn nine of their past 11 matches, but a refusal to go quietly means they continue to build momentum’ was The Guardian’s view.
Momentum? Are we heading in the right direction? Can a long winless run ever be anything other than bad news? Maybe I need a history lesson on this, but when you haven’t won a game since September, and you’re slowly but surely sliding down the league table, I dread to think what destination these people have in mind for us.
Yes we played very well against Leeds, no question. And we were the better team for the majority of the West Ham game. And a last-minute equaliser at Southampton is always going to be a moment to savour. But despite some bright spots, that’s another three opportunities for a win passed up.
Can we expect something a little better on Wednesday night? Well, I’d like to think there’s some cause for optimism (despite the Covid cases, and the injuries). Firstly, it’s Wolves. We rarely lose to Wolves, and that’s just that. And secondly, they’re tracking somewhere near us on the form table, and have scored just one goal in their last six games. Raul Jimenez is suspended. Connor Coady is a really shit centre half. And if we can just find a way of utilising Lamptey to man-mark Adama Traoré we should, broadly speaking, be covered.
I’d certainly rather be playing Wolves than Spurs with a centre-back pairing of Dan Burn and Joel Veltman. Or Burn, Veltman plus Haydon Roberts if that’s the way we go on the night. Playing Spurs with a patched-up defence looked like the perfect storm to me. Under Conte, they seem to have morphed into a high-grade Nuno Espirito Santo era Wolves - low block, prey on mistakes, counter at pace with Son Kane and Moura running riot - which is ironic seeing as Conte replaced Nuno Espirito Santo in the Spurs dugout, and Wolves, with their one goal in six games approach, seem to have developed into something Nuno Espirito Santo’s predecessor at Spurs, Jose Mourino, would be proud to call his own.
Their current boss (Bruno Lage) is one of those interchangeable smart young Euro managers mid-sized outfits now turn to instead of the British Managers Lunch Club membership list. Marco Silva, Jan Siewert, Claude Puel, Daniel Farke, any of about 12 recent Watford managers, those people. His destination is the Assistant Manager’s role at Sporting after guiding Wolves to a 13th place finish. I’m sure language helps these Euro bosses in the recruitment process, that and age. I picture upper-middle-aged CEOs lured into a honey trap of youthful promise, beautiful Italian shoes and an irresistibly exotic palette of words like gegenpress, doble pivote, cuatro cuatro dos and drei fünf zwei. You’re hired son. When you have Mark Hughes sitting in the next room, well it’s easy to understand why Marco Silva, despite achieving almost nothing as a manager, is still picking up the decent gigs.
So we have ultra-low scorers versus the team who have managed just a single goal from open play at home all season. One goal. Wow! Nobody could accuse the architects of the all-passing-no-scoring-performance-art-project of lacking ambition. The single-home-victory-in-a-calendar-year exhibit was a fabulous piece of performance art addressing the meaninglessness of playing football inside an empty stadium. Then we had the three-home-victories-across-three-consecutive-calendar-years phase of the project, delivered in an experimental digital medium, exploring lockdown-induced distortions around our sense of time and space. And now we have no-goals-from-open-play, an immersive experience, offering us the opportunity to fully inhabit Graham’s world for 90 minutes twice a month. Audacious it most certainly is. It’s not my place to offer advice, but if the people behind the project are looking for a grand dénouement they could do worse than ceremonially burning £30m in used bank notes - the money allocated for a new striker in the upcoming transfer window - on the Amex pitch at half-time on Wednesday night. Could even get Jurgen Locadia to light the match. So, I’m thinking a repeat of last season’s 3-3 draw looks unlikely.
Yet another 0-0 draw? An unfortunate 1-1? Or might the cork finally pop and we get the chance to celebrate a 1-0 home victory.
If it does end 0-0, are we allowed to boo? What if we play really well, lots of beautiful passing football, but lose 1-0? How about a convincing 3-0 defeat? Chaotic 4-2 defeat? 5-0 humiliation? Perhaps GPott could save us all from future embarrassment by setting out the threshold for booing in his programme notes. I’m sure somebody with such a glittering CV as Graham Potter felt as uncomfortable as he looked when highlighting our nouveau riche status after the Leeds game.
Our Premier League record against Wolves reads played six, won one, lost one, drawn four. One defeat in six, or just one win in six? Is that plastic pint pot half full or half empty? Fuck it, despite the injuries and Covid issues, I’m going for a win. We thrive on adversity, so maybe just maybe a patched-up team, a sense of injustice, and a nice crisp evening under the Amex lights (plus the new work from home directive… I can’t be the only one feels comfortable heading to the pub at 4.30 on a work from home day?), are just the ingredients we need to finally end this long run without a victory.
