By Tom Bason
September 14 2013

Somehow, Wolves managed to escape with all three points after a poor performance against Swindon Town. Wolves took a 2-0 lead into the break, through goals from Scott Golbourne and Kevin Doyle. But Swindon dominated the second half, finally making the breakthrough as substitute Danny N'Guessan halved the deficit late on. Kevin Foley appeared to have wrapped up the win in injury time, but there was still time for Ryan Mason to ensure a few nervy moments for the Wolves fans.

- Kenny Jackett made two changes from the Port Vale match before the international break, with Bakary Sako returning to the side in place of Zeli Ismail, and Richard Stearman left out. This resulted in a slightly shuffled pack, as Sam Ricketts took up his favoured place in the centre of midfield and Scott Golbourne reverted to left back. Lee Evans, who had impressed as a substitute at Vale Park was given a start as Wolves played a diamond in midfield. Upfront, Kevin Doyle and Leigh Griffiths continued their fledgling partnership. 

- So, that diamond midfield. First of all, let me say I'm not a massive fan of a diamond midfield. I think it takes a certain type of player to be able to play one of those 2 men in the middle, and I don't think Sako or Evans have the required skill set for this position. The best player I can think of off the top of my head for this position is Ramires of Chelsea. A player with decent defensive and offensive abilities, but who also has both the physical ability to shuttle from the centre out to the right, but also the positioning sense to be able to play it. Evans certainly doesn't have the physical capabilities, while I don't think Sako has the mental capabilities to properly play this role. In fact, this is really a formation with that requires four specialist positions, and David Davis isn't really a 'snotter' yet, while I don't think Kevin McDonald is suited to play that far forward. I wrote after the Walsall Johnstone's Paint Trophy game that I think that McDonald will be more effective when breaking from deeper (see his run against Crawley for an example), and I've seen nothing today to change my mind.

- The midfield didn't really work - Davis generally stayed deep but didn't have his best game with the ball, giving the ball away too often in dangerous positions. On the right, Evans didn't really seem to be comfortable. He's a nice passer of the ball, and playing closer to the touchline seemed to cut off his angles, limiting his range of passing. He doesn't have the pace to really trouble a defence, and instead was relying on the movement of others to create his space. Apparently, Sako was playing on the other side, but he seemed to have license to play wherever the hell he wanted. He played much of the first half playing in the centre, infuriatingly often getting the ball deep in our half - a mistake waiting to happen. That said, he did play three very nice passes from a central position inside the opening 30 minutes; the first gained him an assist for Golbourne's fluky goal, and the third should have resulted in a goal for Griffiths after his excellent first touch created the shooting opportunity. 

- At half time, we switched to a more orthodox 4-4-2 formation, with Lee Evans playing on the right hand side. This change moved most of the midfield into more suitable roles (to be honest, if Evans is not suited to play on the right of a diamond in the middle, he has less chance of being successful playing on the right of a flat-4) but really didn’t help the team. The midfield didn’t seem to be able to keep possession (initially not helped by having the best passer in the team stuck on the flank, but this didn’t change once Evans was moved back inside), and put the defence under an awful lot of pressure through consistently losing the ball in dangerous positions. And when we didn’t have the ball, the midfield were poor. Davis put in a couple of tackles, and I counted McDonald swinging his boot in the general area of the ball/opponent at least five times, but no midfielder did the basics of defence. There were large gaps between the midfield and defence, and it was so easy for Swindon’s midfield to run beyond the midfield into this space. There were at least four good chances missed by Swindon players today, in addition to the two they did manage to score

- Saying that, the defence itself was pretty ordinary as well. Considering the two centre-backs were the captain and vice-captain, players you would expect to have a modicum of organisational ability, it was a shambles at times. But, perhaps the defence was worst when it did have the ball. Even Golbourne’s goal was effectively a misplaced pass, and the defence constantly put the midfield under pressure. Davis especially was getting a fair amount of stick for losing the ball, but he was often receiving the ball under pressure in the first place, with his back to the opposition goal and only able to play the ball in one direction – backwards. Admittedly, a lack of movement from the midfield didn’t help, but the balls played in to them were poor. I’d say that Stearman is probably the best passer we have in defence, and we missed him on the ball today. I don’t think Sam Ricketts is as good on the ball as he thinks he is, while Danny Batth’s stock ball is letting the ball almost run away from him, before clipping an aimless pass down the touchline. We haven’t had a defender comfortable on the ball since Michael Mancienne left (a player I always rated above very highly, and I maintain is the best defender we’ve had since Joleon Lescott left). So basically, the defence put the midfield under pressure when we had the ball, and the midfield returned the favour when we didn’t.

- I think today may have been the first time Jackett has made a defensive substitution to try and sure things up, introducing Kevin Foley for Bakary Sako. Fellow substitute Ismail moved across to the left and Foley sat on the right. I’ve been a big fan of Foley since he signed, but he’s obviously lost his way, perhaps in part due to his versatility and never being able to nail down a regular place in the Premier League. I thought he could have been brought on earlier today and sat in front of the back-4. Evans and McDonald were fairly useless in protecting the defence, and I thought that Foley’s defensive knowhow and calmness when in possession would have benefitted the team. I certainly wasn’t convinced that effectively taking off a defensive midfielder (Davis) for a winger (Ismail) was the right move, although I assume that at 2-0 with half an hour to go, Jackett thought the game was wrapped up. Ironically, Foley contributed far more than Ismail did going forward; Ismail seemed to run into a defender every time he got the ball, but Foley finished nicely to seemingly confirm all three points in injury time.

- I was pleased Doyle got his first goal of the season. He deserves a lot of credit for the way he has represented both himself and the club this summer, and has looked a cut above most of his opposition. Interestingly (or probably not that interesting), he seems to have lost his near post duties when defending at a corner. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen Doyle head away a near post corner, but instead it Kevin McDonald has this duty. I can’t say I’ve really taken note of McDonald’s heading ability, but Wikipedia tells me he’s 6’1, giving him perhaps a vital inch of Doyle in this situation. Incidentally, McDonald was perhaps slightly unfortunate to be cautioned for kicking the ball away. He was the third Wolves player to do this, but both Griffiths and Matt Doherty managed to escape with long chats from referee Gary Sutton.

- Kenny Jackett appears to be happy to concede possession and yardage to ‘inferior’ teams, in the knowledge that we have the firepower upfront. In games where we take a lead, Jackett seems to be content with the opposition having the ball, and relying on the likes of Sako, Doyle and Griffiths on the break to extend that lead. That has meant that in the last two home games, we have been holding on at the end – and most worryingly we haven’t held on well. Crawley scored in injury time and today Swindon scored in the 85^th and 91^st minutes (in addition to the 85^th minute equaliser Walsall scored in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy). In both of the league games, the other team deserved at least a point and we have effectively relied on a fortunate injury time penalty, goalkeeping penalty shootout heroics and a first goal since 2010 for a player brought on to defend. At some point, this is going to come back and bite us.