Dull as ditchwater FC

[AndyWolves]

I’m glad there has been some good debate - my post was intended to be provocative - no doubt that Nuno is the man, but I just want him to be a bit more adventurous with the players we have.

To play devils advocate, Nuno hasn't been adventurous in any of his previous clubs. I hope he can develop and bring this into the team though

 

[sycophantia]

If not RAN we must start Marcal.

did Marcal offer much more than Saiss in an attacking sense? not sure he did, personally don't mind which plays if RAN doesn't

 

[sycophantia]

To play devils advocate, Nuno hasn't been adventurous in any of his previous clubs. I hope he can develop and bring this into the team though

This is true but I don't think Nuno had as much free rein or time as he does at Wolves

 

[YoungWolf]

I don't quite subscribe to the first bit:

Deserved to beat Sheff Utd, Fulham and Leeds. And we did.

Deserved to beat Newcastle, didn't thanks to the only shot on target they had in the entire second half.

Didn't deserve anything vs City although created enough in the second half that we could have nicked something.

Deserved to get battered by West Ham, got away with 0-4, we were awful.

Don't care about the League Cup.

I think if anything we're slightly below what our performances have merited, basically thanks to that poxy wall and ridiculous free kick award.

By 'got away with it' I mean we've come against some teams who are a bit shit or had a shit start (Newcastle, Fulham, Sheffield United) whilst not being in peak condition ourselves. Leeds was an excellent win, though we had some good fortune too.

My issue is that currently we are not creating enough, consistently. If we don't improve in that area results will be harder to maintain in the long run. As I say though, I think that will come in the next month or so.

 

[prawnking]

To play devils advocate, Nuno hasn't been adventurous in any of his previous clubs. I hope he can develop and bring this into the team though

They only had him for 1-2 years though so just 'Nuno mk I'.

Like I said earlier, I think he will evolve this season along with the team

I think we're lucky to have him, but at the same time he's lucky to have us (and Fosun)

 

[Deleted Cyber]

Looking at the league games since lockdown these are the ones I think we played and in brackets our shots on target. I omitted the league cup farce.

West Ham 0 Wolves 2 (6)
Wolves 1 Bournemouth 0 (2)
Burnley 1 Wolves 1 (5)
Villa 0 Wolves 1 (2)
Wolves 0 Arsenal 2 (1)
Wolves 2 Palace 0 (5)
Sheff United 1 Wolves 0 (1)
Wolves 3 Everton 0 (7)*
Sheff United 0 Wolves 2 (4)
West Ham 4 Wolves 0 (2)
Wolves 1 Man City 3 (1)
Wolves 1 Fulham 0 (5)
Leeds 0 Wolves 1 (4)
Wolves 1 Newcastle 1 (3)

8 wins 2 draws 4 defeats losing both games to big six teams

48 shots on target in 14 games. 3.5 per game. 17 goals, 1.2 per game.. Not setting the world on fire to say the least.

 

[Tredman]

did Marcal offer much more than Saiss in an attacking sense? not sure he did, personally don't mind which plays if RAN doesn't

Not in the limited amount of time he had yesterday no, but against Sheff Utd absolutely.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

We beat Everton 3-0 and Palace 2-0 too.

 

[Deleted Cyber]

We beat Everton 3-0 and Palace 2-0 too.

I will add them cheers

 

[YoungWolf]

I think since lockdown we have played 15 (league) and got 26 points? Is pretty solid tbf and I think if that is us not at our best it's quite encouraging.

 

[Banjo]

I think there's a very real risk in trying to win games by not conceding if we aren't creating and scoring more chances. We seem to be in a position, whether by accident or by design, where we're playing to win 1-0.

Now, unlike (for example) under McCarthy, I'm generally pretty confident in our defence, such that I expect us to win if we go 1-0 up. However, we really should be creating and scoring more in games where we dominate the ball (such as yesterday) in order to protect against a defensive aberration (such as yesterday).

I think there is considerable scope for improvement and I'm not panicking yet for reasons already done to death (late finish to last season plus no pre-season for (i) new signings to bed in, or (ii) new style of play to be fully imparted to the squad).

The front three looks better with each game. I thought Podence was excellent yesterday and was let down by not having a proper LWB playing alongside him. Saiss shouldn't play LWB again - he didn't let us down in the previous two games, but on at least two occasions yesterday, he cocked up in the final third. It's not his fault - he's not wide attacker - but we've got other options in Marcal and RAN and we should use them.

I do think we'd be less ditch/dish water had we not had such a battering at West Ham. It's natural for a manager to be cautious off the back of such a result, and we've almost responded to it with three wins in a row. But I do have to agree that it's not been very pleasing on the eye of late. The lack of atmosphere and not being able to go to matches definitely plays its part, though - it still doesn't feel very 'real'.

 

[Dinowolf]

I'm not 'bored' by dull play, but frustrated at our poor finishing.

If we scored more goals, games would be more exciting, and yesterday was atypical with 16 shots and only 3 on target.

 

[BGreenWolf]

I'm just a little baffled by the timing of this thread, because yesterday was easily the most entertaining 90 minutes of football we've played thus far this season.

I get that we should have scored more, and conceding an equaliser at the death to a team as useless as Newcastle is a kick in the teeth, but many times we moved the ball with flair and purpose yesterday, and strung together a lot of play that was very easy on the eye.

 

[PuntsWolf]

A few areas ive looked at from the tactical camera on MOTD.


Here you can see we’ve got the ball relatively unpressured in a good position. Now Neto is out on the wing and Semedo is deep. Ideally Neto should be in the centre offering a pass in the middle of the pitch where they can either give and go, turn and drive at the defence or commit people, pass it out wide to Semedo who can either get a shot in or cross across the face with Neto, Podence, Raul, Donck and possibly the LWB all getting in the box.
Instead it’s all to easy to play against pushing us round the outside where it either needs to go backwards or a cross to no one in the box.



another situation here where Traore has it out wide. He doesn’t get a cross in in this instance but 90% of the time he will. But we only commit two men to the box with the other 4 just hanging outside. Liverpool scored two goals this weekend without even having to move. Simply by having men in the box the defenders made mistakes leaving guys free. Mane missed but then they had 2 queuing up for the rebound. Jota didn’t even have to jump for his. About as free a header as you can get from a standing start in the 6 yard box.


Finally, Podence receiving the ball in a decent position with the opportunity to attack. Again we’ve got 6 men behind the ball. Semedo is actually taking up a good position here and a ball out here would have been a good opportunity for him to work a chance but even still we’d probably only have Neto and Raul in the box. We’re being a possession based team but still in this instance we are trying to be very direct. With 3 at the back, Saiss not very far ahead of Kilman and Donck and Neves dropping deep there no chance of getting men in the box with so many players behind the ball and playing so directly with Podence/Neto/Raul just getting the ball and running rather than working opportunities.

It’s all very safe. By not taking risks you are purely relying on moments of magic to win you games (Raul scoring on his own, Adama picking out the one man in the box, set pieces) rather than creating chances by overloads and forcing mistakes.

 

[Sniffer]

Apart from the result from yesterday, other things that annoyed me were....
1) Raul not squaring to Podence who was in a better situation about 10 yards out in the first half.
2) Traore doing nothing when he was on the pitch - The right hand side didn't improve when he came on it went backwards. Semedo at one stage was running into acres of space and Traore effectively stopped the momentum forward by taking the ball from a static position.
3) I won't look again but I could have sworn that the free kick that they scored from should have been from the corner of the box not 5 yards closer to the centre.

I enjoyed our forward play yesterday but can understand the frustrations from others that its not creating chances. Podence looks superb and, as others have alluded too, when he, Neto and Jimenez get on the same wavelength I think that they'll be fantastic. I don't think we're dull and think we'll get better once Nuno has more time on the training ground with them, which he's had precious little to date. Also I'm looking forward to seeing if RAN, Vithana and Silva can improve us further as the season progresses.

 

[Jinky]

I think since lockdown we have played 15 (league) and got 26 points? Is pretty solid tbf and I think if that is us not at our best it's quite encouraging.

Going into Monday’s game, we’d kept 12 clean sheets in 19 league games since the start of February — the most of any team in that period.

We’d also taken 32 points from 17 games since February 23, placing us third in the league table during that time, behind only Liverpool and Manchester United. And no Premier League team has won more games than our 10 since February 23.

Considering we missed out on Europe since then and our performances are being described as “dull”, those statistics are quite surprising.

 

[Deleted Cyber]

Going into Monday’s game, we’d kept 12 clean sheets in 19 league games since the start of February — the most of any team in that period.

We’d also taken 32 points from 17 games since February 23, placing us third in the league table during that time, behind only Liverpool and Manchester United. And no Premier League team has won more games than our 10 since February 23.

Considering we missed out on Europe since then and our performances are being described as “dull”, those statistics are quite surprising.

Of those games we were really good against an insipid Everton , Good for 20 minutes against Sheffield united away this season, Decent at West ham away and lively at times against Newcastle. We stank against Arsenal and West Ham this season and were played off the park first half by City. The other games were much of a muchness and those games we didn't win was where poor game management and lack of creation cost us points.(and Mike fucking Dean)

 

[Boozad]

Sorry, but we are ugly - winning isn’t everything - a bit of style would be nice - time to let the handbrake off.

Feel so apathetic watching this ultra-cautious approach to the beautiful game.

Can totally see why someone would have this point of view at the moment. I think the main thing we’re missing at the moment is the killer fast counters we used to launch, we’re still defending how we did in our first season up (it’s very rare we concede a lot of goals) but the counters aren’t there. And again I think that’s more down to other teams doing their homework and knowing where we excel.

I said it about Doherty but last year he didn’t have anywhere near as much space as he did in our first season up, then he had the freedom of the right and would constantly show up in dangerous areas unmarked, that was closed down last season and I think that’s why Nuno has changed it up as Semedo can obviously offer more in those tighter spaces. But that point carries over to our general style of play.

It’s well known we struggle to break teams down who sit deep and offer little to nothing going forwards, no change there as yesterday’s game proved, and I understand why it’s hard to get through teams who have nine men within twenty yards of their goal for most of the game. Our downfall is countering teams who are pushing up on us. We don’t seem to have the outlets and movement we did have as teams are closing those spaces and stopping us doing what we do best.

I think this definitely is a transition and while we’re trying to learn it and make it work it looks laboured, we’re building slower than what we used to and trying to move forwards as a team as opposed to two or three breaking quickly. I’ve got full confidence in Nuno to get us there but it won’t happen overnight and I think the rewards when we do click will be well worth the wait. RAN could be key as Saiss was hindering us yesterday through no fault of his own, hopefully he gets games sooner rather than later.

 

[sycophantia]

Not in the limited amount of time he had yesterday no, but against Sheff Utd absolutely.

Hmm, not sure about that, don't remember him hardly crossing the half way line against Sheff U, don't get me wrong I thought he was excellent defensively and maybe he will be more attacking in future.......still like to see RAN though

 

[Norman Deeley]

That tactical analysis above is spot on. We simply must get more men in the box. I love Neves and by God he's scored some wonderful goals, but he is not quick. Hopefully Vitinha can break into the team at some point.
This has been a great discussion - one of the best on here. What's undeniable is that we're near the bottom of the xG table and - while 10 pts is about right for the games so far - that simply has to improve.
And it's absolutely valid to question Nuno: he's 46 - generally not an age where men are much receptive to new ways of thinking