by What happens when you play the Premier League’s slowest starters against the club who scored in the first minute of their last three games? For Wolves, the first 60 seconds against Brentford on Saturday carry their own curious quantum of danger. Which in no way means that things get easier for them afterwards.
It has become common to attribute Wolves’ start to the season – they are bottom of the table with just one point – to the cruelty of the match computer. Their first six games came against Arsenal, Chelsea, Nottingham Forest, Newcastle, Aston Villa and Liverpool, with Manchester City and Brighton looming over them.
Related: Premier League: 10 things to watch this weekend
The underlying numbers are also more encouraging than the rankings suggest. While Wolves have scored the most goals of any Premier League team, in the long term, more sustainable, in terms of goals conceded without penalties, they are 11th. Meetings resume significantly in November and December. Perhaps this is why Gary O’Neil’s position on the board seems to cause so little concern.
These are the crumbs of comfort the Wolves can cling to as they contemplate their worst start to the season. But running a football club has never been a simple exercise in logic and numbers. Sentiment also matters, and while the results are a short-term phenomenon, the broader unease felt by many Wolves fans is not.
We got a glimpse of this in the final minutes of Liverpool’s recent match, as Wolves – 2-1 down and chasing an equalizer – patiently passed the ball out to the back, to the obvious frustration of the home crowd. Molineux. “Stop it, honestly,” urged Gary Neville on Sky Sports. “It’s so frustrating. Many teams have forgotten the essence of football: putting the ball in the feet of the most talented players.
The best Wolves teams of recent years were always in a hurry: technically competent when they needed to be, solid when they needed to be, but with a strong sense of goal and a clear idea of where the ball should be. Nowadays, the vision is a little more obscure. The speed of accumulation has been a constant complaint. Wolves were third in shots created from quick counterattacks last season and 11th this season, despite playing against the type of teams that should be conducive to counterattacking.
But it’s at the rear where the most pressing problems seem to lie. Conviction and morale seem to be to blame: individual errors, collective fainting, an unfortunate habit of calming down under pressure. Seven goals conceded in the last 20 minutes of the match demonstrate a slightly frayed mentality. This is where the Wolves’ short- and long-term issues seem most aligned.
The decision not to replace Maximilian Kilman, sold to West Ham for £40 million in the summer, appears to be a failed gamble. Yerson Mosquera’s brilliant start to the season has been abruptly interrupted by a knee injury which could rule him out until next summer. Craig Dawson and Toti Gomes have already missed games this season. Although the club’s sporting director, Matt Hobbs, recently said that signing a fifth centre-back was never in the cards, for many fans this strategy appears to sum up the dilemma of modern Wolves: a club increasingly trying to do the same thing with less.
As an illustration, let’s look at Wolves’ 2022-23 XI, in terms of number of minutes played: José Sá; Nélson Semedo, Nathan Collins, Kilman, Hugo Bueno; Ruben Neves, João Moutinho; Adama Traoré, Matheus Nunes, Daniel Podence; Diego Costa. Of them, only Semedo is still in the team, although Sá is also at the club.
That’s a frankly incredible level of upheaval in just two seasons. While this is partly due to the natural turnover of a mid-table club, this instability is also partly the result of choices made over the years: the explicit decision to establish Wolves as a center for the exchange of talents.
During the good years, it worked wonderfully: Neves, Moutinho, Raúl Jiménez, Diogo Jota, Pedro Neto, the European nights, the famous triumphs. But the growing domestic difficulties of the club’s Chinese owners, Fosun, inevitably forced belt-tightening. The use of Jorge Mendes’ Gestifute agency has been reduced, but equally the new signings have not been of anywhere near the same quality as the players replaced. O’Neil would have been frustrated by the lack of investment this summer, as Julen Lopetegui was before him.
In a recent interview with the Telegraph, chairman Jeff Shi said Wolves were not at risk of breaching regulations around profitability and sustainability. If we take this literally, it implies that Wolves’ new era of austerity is a deliberate strategy by Fosun: an attempt to maintain Premier League status with as little expenditure as possible, perhaps even trying to manage the football club. to make a profit in order to plug holes elsewhere in the business.
Perhaps this makes sense as a business strategy. But as a sports model it looks particularly sad. Not to mention that making survival your primary goal leaves you vulnerable to short-term solutions. Maybe O’Neil is paying for the current predicament with his job. Maybe the next guy will benefit from a light fixture change. Maybe the series will stay on tour for a few more months.
Maybe the wolves are staying awake. You could certainly make the case that there are at least three worse teams. But in the long term, it is difficult to identify a glimmer of hope in a club that seems increasingly hollowed out by forces beyond its control. In an indirect and inadvertent way, Neville was right: Wolves have forgotten the essence of football. Time is running out for them to rediscover it.
