By Tom Bason
November 30 2013

Wolves today slipped to defeat at Peterborough United's London Road. Posh captain Michael Bostwick secured the victory with a late driven freekick.  

- Wolves were unchanged from the side that beat Tranmere Rovers 2-0 on Tuesday night. In what is possibly Wolves biggest game of the season so far, Kenny Jackett's selection was unsurprising, with only the absence of Matt Doherty (injured in training yesterday) raising any eyebrows. This meant a central midfield partnership of Kevin McDonald and David Edwards as Jackett continues to search for a two-man partnership that allows him to play his favoured strike force: Kevin Doyle and Leigh Griffiths. On the flanks were Bakary Sako and Michael Jacobs. As I've been away, this is the first time I'd seen Jacobs, but from his rave reviews against Tranmere, I had high hopes. 

- Peterborough's formation was one of the more interesting I've seen this season. With the magnificently named Britt Assombalonga suspended, Darren Ferguson played Lee Tomlin upfront, with Kyle Vassell and Tyrone Barnett on the flanks. Tomlin isn't really a striker, and was effectively playing as a 'false nine', with his starting position much deeper than a typical forward. Tomlin clearly had instructions to drop deeper and link play, with Richard Stearman and Danny Batth happy to keep their position and let him go. As Tomlin dropped deep, Barnett and Vassell had space to move into, and continually made runs from outside to in, going their starting position on the flanks and moving into the penalty area. The narrowness of Peterborough's wide men in theory should have given Sam Ricketts and Scott Golbourne an awful lot of space to move in to, but despite neither being picked up when they moved forward, they weren't able to have any real effect in an offensive position. 

- The central midfield lottery saw Edwards and McDonald paired together, and I thought they actually did very well. Generally, Edwards sat a little deeper, using his energy to sweep any loose balls in the midfield area. This gave McDonald more freedom to be the player who created from the central area. I've been frustrated by McDonald this season, and I was talking to a Sheffield United fan last week who thought the same. He has undoubted ability (in fact I'd be surprised if there were many technically better players in the division), but as yet he hasn't dominated a game. But I thought he was absolutely excellent for 75 minutes today. He used the ball extremely intelligently, being ice cool under pressure and always finding a release ball, generally to the flanks. Peterborough's midfield couldn't deal with his constant probing, and if anyone was going to create something, it was him. Hopefully he can start to provide these sorts of performances on a more regular basis, and add a couple more goals to his game. During the last 15 minutes, as we were chasing the game, his influence dwindled. I'm not 100% sure whether this was due to fatigue or our propensity to hit the ball long when chasing a game, but the team suffered as he drifted out of the game. 

- If Edwards and McDonald were generally impressive in the middle of the park, Sako and Jacobs were the opposite. Sako had one of 'those' games, where virtually nothing he tried came off. He was shooting from angles when he should be crossing, losing the ball easily and at one moment attempted a bizarre overhead kick in the centre circle, back into our half. We know we're going to get these performances every so often - unfortunately he didn't have a moment of genius to make up for the rest of the crap. But Jacobs was the one I wanted to see. My first thought was that he bears a striking resemblance to James Henry. Then I saw him play and the resemblance ended. I thought he was woeful today, one of the worst performances I've seen from a Wolves player in a long time. When he tried to run with the ball, he seemed to have no idea how to stop and invariably ran into a Peterborough defender. When he crossed the ball it was under hit, when he shot it was off target. The only thing of note he did in the 90 minutes was a decent clipped cross which Griffiths headed over. Given the reviews I've read of him so far, I'm more than prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt (and remember that my first impressions of Henry were less than favourable), but he was not good today. I felt a little sorry for both the wingers at times as they both spent a long time playing on their 'wrong' sides (Sako on the right and Jacobs on the left). This meant we had a lack of width and no real penetration down the flanks. 

- The winning goal came late on, from a set piece. It looked a definite foul by Stearman for the award of the free kick, but they way it went in annoyed me. From my angle, I was right behind the line of the ball as it was hit into the bottom corner. Before Michael Bostwick struck the ball, it was clear that Carl Ikeme had his positioning wrong. With the ball being so close to the edge of the area, there was no way that the ball was going to go up and over the wall, and so Ikeme should have been further towards his far post. There was a massive gap in which to hit the ball, and it was no surprise to see the ball end up in the goal. Is this the first goal that Ikeme has been at fault for this season? He's been our player of the season so far for me, but at some point Wayne Hennessey is going to start knocking on the door. 

- Kenny Jackett's substitutions today were interesting. He had already taken Kevin Doyle off for Bjorn Sigurðarson, which was a questionable decision in itself particularly considering we are not playing for two weeks. If Ikeme has been our best player this season, then Doyle is arguably our most important. He is the player who knits the team together, and when we have played any other pairing of Sigurðarson, Griffiths and Jake Cassidy, there have been big gaps between the midfield and forwards. And, after Peterborough had taken the lead, Jackett's immediate decision was to take off our leading scorer for a striker who is yet to score for the club. To be chasing an equaliser with our most effective two strikers on the bench seemed strange to me. Even more so when you consider just how far Griffiths and Doyle are ahead of CasSiggy™. CasSiggy have massively failed to perform so far this season, and I don't think any Wolves fan would really have backed them to get an equaliser today. The other substitution saw Zeli Ismail introduced for Michael Jacobs - I fully agreed with this change. 

- Sometimes, you can lose a match and be worried about what it means. This wasn't one of those. I thought there were a lot of positives to take away, not least McDonald's performance. I don't have the stats to hand, but I don't remember Ikeme making a save and had Sako had his good head on, we could easily have won. But the result does add to two noticeable trends. Firstly, we still have a penchant for conceding late goals. I don't know whether this is physical or mental, but it has happened too many times this season to be a coincidence. Secondly, this was another game against one of the better sides in the division that we've failed to win. Our record against the top-6 is P3 D2 L1: our record against top-12 sides is P8 W3 D3 L2. At some point we need to start winning sides against the better teams in the division.