By Tom Bason
January 20 2013

Yesterday, Wolves drew 0-0 in a dire match at Sheffield Wednesday to continue Dean Saunders run without a win / unbeaten start* as Wolves manager.

- Dean Saunders made one change from last week's draw with Blackburn Rovers; leading scorer Sylvan Ebanks-Blake returning to the starting line-up ahead of Jake Cassidy. Despite both Słavomir Peszko and Jamie O'Hara impressing as subs against Blackburn, both remained on the bench meaning that again we basically fielded seven defensive players; a back-4 plus Karl Henry, David Davis and Kevin Foley in midfield. 

- As a result of the negative midfield, the first half was awful. Words cannot express how bad it was, or we were - far worse than anything I saw under Ståle Solbakken. Every time any of our players got the ball, it was lumped up in the general direction of the forwards. On the rare occasion the ball arrived anywhere near Doyle or Ebanks-Blake, they failed to really hold on to it, and possession was lost. To enforce the point on just how reliant on playing long balls we were, twice Bakary Sako collected the ball on the left wing, just inside Wednesday's half, and both times his first thought was to ping it long, aiming for the striker. 

- I really can't emphasize enough just how poor we were in the first half, both going forward and defensively. Christophe Berra in particular did not have a good first half, constantly losing his individual battles and giving the ball away. Saying that, the plan for when we had the ball at the back appeared to be to give the ball to Berra and he'd knock it forward, so I'd defend him if anyone could pluck his woeful pass completion rates out of the air. And even Carl Ikeme got the jitters. Now, given the amount of times players slipped over while kicking the ball, I'm assuming the surface wasn't great. But, twice within about 10 minutes his poor kicking very nearly cost us dear. The first was fired into the face of Wednesday striker Michail Antonio and could easily have rebounded into the goal. The second was worse, scuffing his clearance along the ground into midfield, and perhaps fortunate that the Wednesday player's attempted lob was poor and drifted wide.

- Just before halftime, Saunders made his first tactical change as Wolves manager, switching to 4-5-1, with Doyle pulled out wide. I assume he will have been wanting to solidify the midfield, and this worked to an extent. Obviously, a midfield three of Davis, Foley and Henry is going to be combative, but as you'd expect, there was a lack of creativity and nous in there. If you're playing a three man central midfield, it really needs someone to get forward in support of the forward, which didn't happen. In fact, we ended up with all three of our offensive players isolated; this was shown clearly at one point in the second half, when Stephen Ward hit a long ball towards Doyle, too high for him to control on his chest and too powerful for him to use his head to control the ball. All Doyle could really do was head the ball towards the Wednesday goal because there wasn't another Wolves player within 30 yards of him.

- I hoped the introduction of Jamie O'Hara in the second half would give us a little bit of drive from midfield, but O'Hara seemed to be playing as the deepest midfielder with Henry pushing on. O'Hara added a bit more energy to the midfield, but his passing was poor and more often than not gave the ball away. Saying that, O'Hara's introduction did coincide with a slight improvement in performance, although I'm not 100% sure as to how much this was coincidence. Elsewhere, Ebanks-Blake was withdrawn for Jake Cassidy, who didn't really improve the team. He ran about a bit, and was perhaps slightly unfortunate that the ball didn't drop more kindly to him in the penalty area but didn't really add anything.

- The third substitution saw Słavomir Peszko come on for Sako. This was not a game for Sako - he didn't play well, but equally he was never given the chance to do anything. Perhaps the idea was for a hard working three man midfield to give Sako the platform to work his magic, but at no point did Sako ever really receive the ball in a position where he could inflict any damage. In fact, on numerous occasions the ball was lumped forward for him to challenge in the air. Now, Sako may be decent in the air, and he won his fair share of challenges, but this definitely isn't playing to his strength. But, once again the introduction of Peszko made an instant improvement to the team and he is a player we have definitely missed over the last couple of months. I very much hope is selected to play against Blackpool next week. 

- So, it was a dire performance and game, compounded by Coventry Blaze's weak loss to Sheffield Steelers that night. Still, at least there was a nice punch up in that one. There was far more excitement in those 30 seconds at the hockey than in 90 minutes of some of the worst football I’ve seen in my life.

*Delete as applicable

Sheffield Wednesday 0-0 Wolves

Discussion started by Wolves , 20/01/2013 20:06

Wolves
20/01/2013 20:06

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013:01:26:20:50:13 by toomb.

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Risca TM
21/01/2013 10:21

Can we blame the weather or the pitch? Or anything else?

It is very depressing to read about the return of all that lump it forward stuff. Still, I suppose the players will be less confused about what to do when in possession now.

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toomb
21/01/2013 10:54

Perhaps the weather/state of the pitch could have contributed to it - both keepers slipped while kicking the ball clear.

But, it looked to me like the first thought for every player was to knock it long - when even Sako is doing this, it suggests it's being ingrained in them.

I look forward to Saturday's game to see if it was a one off, or whether this will be a more permanent style of play



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Risca TM
21/01/2013 17:43

@toomb - ok, I'll hold the tears back for now...

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