Wolves have been yearning for Halloween for quite a while. The thinking goes that with October out of the way, there follows a month of mellow fruitfulness, with games against Southampton, Fulham, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth. That is when the points will begin to roll in — surely demonstrating that Wolverhampton Wanderers’ present position in the Premier League is misleading and the consequence partly of bad luck on the pitch and partly an extraordinarily hostile early fixture list.
Wolves host Manchester City on Sunday afternoon (how they must have been looking forward to that!) while situated near the bottom of the league with only one point from seven games. That solitary point came in a creditable draw with a fairly buoyant Nottingham Forest side in late August. On paper their fixtures have indeed been on the tough side, having faced (and been beaten by) Liverpool, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Arsenal and a rather out-of-sorts Newcastle United. But then, by the same token, even Brentford managed to put five past them.
In pretty much every game they have played they have, sporadically at least, looked a neat, incisive and able team, moving the ball from defence to attack with admirable speed and accuracy. They can be very pleasing on the eye and they usually score goals. It is this which has contributed to the general view that they are in a false position and that things will soon “turn around”. That and the fact that everybody rather likes O’Neil, a good “sarf Lunnun” lad whose hangdog appearances on Match of the Day after every successive crushing defeat — often wrought from the jaws of victory — never fail to evoke a degree of sympathy.
The Problem is Defense
The problem is a little deeper than a difficult fixture list, though. Their primary problem is that they have a shocking, dilatory defence. They have conceded a remarkable 21 goals this season, an average of three per game. That is a nailed-on relegation stat. To survive in the top division you need a strong and well-drilled defence — Wolves’ defence is neither of those things. But there’s worse. They have an appalling record for conceding from set pieces, from the dead ball — worse than any side in the division. Oh, and they also concede more penalties than anybody else. Wolves fans may worry about whether their team have the right balance in midfield and wish that their finishing was a little better, but the problem is defence, defence, defence.
Lack of Organization
Is it a case of incapable individuals? Possibly. I do not entirely grasp what bountiful benefits the Gabonese defensive midfielder Mario Lemina brings to the side, for example — and he has been pretty much ever-present. But it is more than that, surely. A vulnerability from set pieces speaks of a lack of organisation on the training field. Any forward who fancies a free header this season can be guaranteed at least one per game against Wolves. The marking from corners and free kicks has been at times criminally negligent. Further, they track back with sluggishness and dither when required to clear their lines. This is all about organisation, isn’t it?
A Lack of Resilience
There’s one more thing. If you manage to score a goal against Wolves, you will almost certainly score two. As soon as they concede you can see the air escaping, with great rapidity, from their sails. They collapse. And from the bench there comes no plan B, no notion of how to rescue a game that is quickly drifting away from them. You watch their capitulation to Villa a few weeks back. They roasted Villa for half an hour or so. But as soon as Villa got themselves level, it was game over. Wolves kind of ceased to exist as a viable entity. I hate to point this out, but O’Neil has a 33 per cent win rate over his time at Wolves — and that is by some margin his best record as a head coach. At Bournemouth it was below 30 per cent.
Can Wolves Turn Things Around?
All that being said, I do hope he wreaks some sort of change in his side — a decent central defender in January wouldn’t go amiss, would it? — and proves me wrong. Quite apart from having a fondness for the bloke there are many more teams in my lengthy queue of “Premier League Teams I Can’t Stand” who I would prefer to go down. Keep an eye on Crystal Palace, for example. I say this not out of the usual parochial loathing, but “The Eagles” seem to me already gone, and as a consequence of similar problems to those that have afflicted Wolves. Further, Palace have not suffered anywhere near so injurious a fixture list. Fingers crossed!
The Premier League matchup between Wolves and Crystal Palace at Molineux Stadium is scheduled to commence in the United States at 1:30PM ET on Saturday, November 2, 2024. Dimers.com's comprehensive preview of the Wolves vs. Crystal Palace matchup includes our prediction, picks and the latest betting odds. Before making any Wolves vs. Crystal Palace picks, be sure to check out the latest Premier League predictions and betting advice from Dimers Pro. Using powerful machine learning and statistical analysis, we have simulated the result of the Premier League match between Wolves and Crystal Palace 10,000 times as part of our Premier League predictions coverage. Our leading predictive model currently indicates a 36.7% chance of Wolves winning, a 38.5% chance for Crystal Palace, and a 24.8% chance of a draw.
