Chelsea 2 - 0 Wolves: The Verdict

[Deutsch Wolf]

If you want my two penn'orth (and who doesn't)...

We weren't objectively bad in any of the 9 games. Because I know objectively bad.

Nothing in the games vs Arsenal or Chelsea until the first goal. In fact should have been in front vs Arsenal. But a deflection here, a fake free kick there, you can find yourself chasing a game and this lot have a lot more experience than us in managing those affairs (that said, should still have gone 1-1 vs Arsenal).

Sucker punch vs Sheff Utd, we didn't deserve that. Nor did we deserve to win. Don't think we deserved to win vs Burnley and though you can call it harsh, don't go waving your arms around in the box (or the other errors that led to that situation that we don't normally make).

We won the rest and quite easily.

Rui has never been overworked in any of these games.

I can't call that disappointing in all honesty. You might, you must have much higher standards than I do which to be fair, is not the highest of bars. I own a Martine McCutcheon album.

Right, I need to go to bed. Take care.

 

[VanWolfie]

If you want my two penn'orth (and who doesn't)...

We weren't objectively bad in any of the 9 games. Because I know objectively bad.

Nothing in the games vs Arsenal or Chelsea until the first goal. In fact should have been in front vs Arsenal. But a deflection here, a fake free kick there, you can find yourself chasing a game and this lot have a lot more experience than us in managing those affairs (that said, should still have gone 1-1 vs Arsenal).

Sucker punch vs Sheff Utd, we didn't deserve that. Nor did we deserve to win. Don't think we deserved to win vs Burnley and though you can call it harsh, don't go waving your arms around in the box (or the other errors that led to that situation that we don't normally make).

We won the rest and quite easily.

Rui has never been overworked in any of these games.

I can't call that disappointing in all honesty. You might, you must have much higher standards than I do which to be fair, is not the highest of bars. I own a Martine McCutcheon album.

Right, I need to go to bed. Take care.

I agree with your analysis. For me two incidents stand out that could have changed our end position. If Adama had scored against Arsenal, I don't think Arsenal would have won. Indeed, the momentum was with Wolves and the likelihood of a second goal was probably with us not Arsenal. The second incident was Dean's abominable decision to penalize Doherty against Burnley and rob us of two points. It made me remember the time he was banned for betting some seasons back. No fault can be attributed to any Wolves player for a referee's madness. That also goes for the Chelsea game and Attwell. BTW, I retracted my comments about Attwell's improvement about two minutes after thet outrageous decision to give Chelsea the first goal.

That said, I do believe that this will ultimately turn out to be a benefit for Wolves in the long-run (provided we keep the team and Nuno together). My example her is the Leeds team in the late 60s and 70s. They had almost five years of knocking at the door disappointments before they finally succeeded. When they did, they dominated football for a long time. I can forsee the same thing happening with Wolves. We must be patient.

 

[PuntsWolf]

It’s quite obvious where the divide is on the forum.

If we play a game where We defend solidly but don’t look like scoring then half see this as bad, half see it as solid but unspectacular.

You could use that description for Most the games. Although sheff Utd I did think we looked like scoring first half but this disappeared second half. Burnley we were knocking without ever really looking like scoring, but did score and never looked like conceding until last 5 mins. Arsenal we didn’t do much but gave away a goal from nothing and then missed a sitter, Chelsea we offered nothing but only conceded from a refs decision.

 

[Charlie Wolf]

There was a great tweet posted on my timeline yesterday that sums it up nicely.



It was accompanied by a screenshot of the table at 32 games when we were level on points with Utd, 5 points ahead of Sheff Utd, 6 points ahead of Arsenal and 7 points ahead of Spurs.

I genuinely don't get why people get so precious about some of the comments on here. It's ok to appreciate where we have come from, but to also acknowledge our short comings. That doesn't make anyone "entitled". It's the same after every single game and is extremely tedious to read through - no offence.

As for yesterday, Raul and Jota have completely lost the connection they had from pre-lockdown and I wouldn't be starting Jota in the EL. I also wouldn't be playing Traore at RWB again. Raul understandably needs a bloody good rest, but he isn't going to get one. Going in to the EL games I would like to see Podence-Raul-Traore as the front three.

The recruitment over this summer has to be spot on, because there's no way this squad can carry us through another 45+ game season next year with next to no break. No excuses from Jeff & co this time around. Otherwise with other clubs strengthening (Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs etc), we could well find ourselves slipping back in to that midtable group of clubs. Which again, isn't a disaster - but we obviously all want to keep moving forwards if we can.

That’s a bloody great post. Spot on

 

[sycophantia]

It’s quite obvious where the divide is on the forum.

If we play a game where We defend solidly but don’t look like scoring then half see this as bad, half see it as solid but unspectacular.

You could use that description for Most the games. Although sheff Utd I did think we looked like scoring first half but this disappeared second half. Burnley we were knocking without ever really looking like scoring, but did score and never looked like conceding until last 5 mins. Arsenal we didn’t do much but gave away a goal from nothing and then missed a sitter, Chelsea we offered nothing but only conceded from a refs decision.

Think the divide is quite varied, I agree with pretty much all you say here, although I am feeling a bit disappointed we didn't make 6th, not disappointed with the team/coach, just with not quite improving on last seasons position. We all want to improve every season don't we? Don't think its wrong to discuss on a forum how we approach that

 

[PuntsWolf]

Think the divide is quite varied, I agree with pretty much all you say here, although I am feeling a bit disappointed we didn't make 6th, not disappointed with the team/coach, just with not quite improving on last seasons position. We all want to improve every season don't we? Don't think its wrong to discuss on a forum how we approach that

I think everyone (broadly) is singing from the same hymn sheet. Just how people voice that opinion is different.

 

[sycophantia]

If you want my two penn'orth (and who doesn't)...

We weren't objectively bad in any of the 9 games. Because I know objectively bad.

Nothing in the games vs Arsenal or Chelsea until the first goal. In fact should have been in front vs Arsenal. But a deflection here, a fake free kick there, you can find yourself chasing a game and this lot have a lot more experience than us in managing those affairs (that said, should still have gone 1-1 vs Arsenal).

Sucker punch vs Sheff Utd, we didn't deserve that. Nor did we deserve to win. Don't think we deserved to win vs Burnley and though you can call it harsh, don't go waving your arms around in the box (or the other errors that led to that situation that we don't normally make).

We won the rest and quite easily.

Rui has never been overworked in any of these games.

I can't call that disappointing in all honesty. You might, you must have much higher standards than I do which to be fair, is not the highest of bars. I own a Martine McCutcheon album.

Right, I need to go to bed. Take care.

I agree with most of this, although yes we were untroubled by Arsenal and Chelsea for most of the first halves but its our reaction to going behind that I thought could be better. I suppose its a problem with our lack of goals (for a top half team) which I've no doubt Nuno is trying to address....I'm not expecting it to happen overnight. I love Nuno, he is a tactical genius but I do think he has a tendency to panic in situations like Sunday, made changes that for me made us unbalanced in attack. I've no doubts he'll improve us still further in the future.....we have come a long way in a short time

 

[The Bion]

Tbh this season was always going to be interesting since we'd had 2 years of nearly unchecked growth prior.

Mid/lower end Championship -> win Championship -> finish 7th, qualify for Europe and FA Cup Semi was (and remains) a huge upswing - I'm not sure anyone in Europe improved as much as we did over that period.

To keep that kind of progress up was always going to be an enormous ask, especially with the Europa on top - but people can and will get carried away (and I fully include myself in this) when we were within touching distance of CL, which would be the next logical step to keep up *that level* of progress.

Obviously, we didn't quite make it, though we *have* still made progress, just not to the level of the last 2 years - the upward curve has flattened a bit, basically (Europa League pending!) This:

We do want more as that's human nature, but reality is that the nearer the pinnacle you get then the steeper the climb.

is absolutely correct. Nuno has probably taken us as high as he realistically can with what he's had to work with to date. That isn't to be sniffed at. We're now playing catchup with teams who have years upon years of high end investment - we can compete due to good coaching, recruitment etc but realistically we are punching up, and will be for some time. If we manage to break through and get to the CL one year, that doesn't guarantee us staying there, either - Everton made it one year under Moyes then flamed out and never made it again.

Staying still might be the new moving upwards, at least for a couple years. If we invest wisely and continue to coach the players to a high standard, we should still see gains and improvements, but the huge improvements we made before are probably not going to happen again for a good while if we stay where we are. Compared to where we've been the majority of my lifetime, that's ok with me (at least it is once a couple days have passed )

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Everton didn’t make the CL. They lost in the qualifying round when fourth had to go through that.

 

[The Bion]

True - I stand corrected.

Broader point though, they 'made it' one year in terms of how high they finished in the league and never got back there again

 

[WarwickWolf]

Improvement is never going to be exponential. There's bound to be a levelling out where improvements are incremental.