By Tom Bason
December 14 2013

Wolves today suffered a second straight defeat, going down 2-0 to MK Dons. On loan Patrick Bamford gave MK Dons the lead, before a long range screamer from Ben Reeves doubled the lead, with Wolves unable to respond.

- It felt like an absolute age since my last match at Molineux, against Stevenage (although I've made the trips to Peterborough and Stourbridge since). Anyway, Kenny Jackett made one change from the defeat to Peterborough, with fit again James Henry replacing Michael Jacobs, who didn't make a good first impression on me at London Road. But Jackett's most interesting decision came in leaving out Björn Sigurðarson, who wasn't in the match day squad. Now, I don't always buy too much into whom Jackett leaves out; he very much goes for a horses for courses selection, rather than a 'next cab off the rank' approach. But still, to be left out while two players without a league goal for club between them sit on the bench must be galling. We probably need one anyway, but if Sigurðarson is disappearing in January, a new striker must be top of Kenny's Christmas list. 

- So, Wolves played the usual 4-4-2 formation, with Kevin Doyle playing just off Leigh Griffiths. One notable aspect of Jackett's tactics is how one of the wingers always seems to have license to roam, often being James Henry. Today, he seemed to play everywhere but the right wing, and early on the rotation of the front four created two decent chances. Firstly, Carl Ikeme hit a long ball looking for Leigh Griffiths in behind. The defender won the header, but the ball fell to Bakary Sako. Sako moved forward before squaring to Henry in the inside left channel, who hit a left footed effort that was tipped over by goalkeeper David Martin. Secondly, Griffiths drifted to the right, cutting inside on his left foot to cross to Doyle. Doyle controlled the ball in the penalty area with his back to goal, before laying it off for Sako to shoot from the right hand side of the area. Neither led to goals, but were a nice example of the movement and problems our forwards should be causing. 

- MK Dons played a 4-2-3-1 formation, and were very impressive, with former Wolves midfielders Stephen Gleeson and Darren Potter as the central pairing. Both played very well, moving the ball quite quickly into the front men and the onrushing fullbacks. But the pick of MK Dons’ players was Patrick Bamford upfront, on loan from Chelsea. I thought he was absolutely superb, particularly in the way he was always available to receive the ball. This meant that when MK Dons’ defences wanted to bypass the midfield, they didn’t need to play hopeful long balls; instead they could slide passes into Bamford’s feet, and whether it was Danny Batth or Richard Stearman with him, he invariably controlled the ball and laid it off. He gave MK Dons the lead with a smart finish on his weaker foot after a nice through ball from another loanee, Samir Carruthers from Aston Villa.

- I’m not going to go as far to say that the difference between the two sides was the forward, but the difference between the two was palpable. This was easily the worst performance I’ve seen Leigh Griffiths give, he was absolutely awful in the first half and I wasn’t surprised at all to see him hauled off at half time. He looked completely off the pace, summed up by a fresh air kick after Scott Golbourne had been released down the left and did very well to pick Griffiths out with his cut back. It was good to see Liam McAlinden come on and he did reasonably well, but it again confirmed my earlier belief that we need strengthening in this area. I’d far rather McAlinden has stayed at Shrewsbury and was playing regularly with us bringing someone else in to sit on the bench.

- The other half time substitution was slightly more surprising, as Jacobs replaced Sako. I was surprised Sako was taken off as I thought he was our most potent threat in the first half. He set up Henry’s chance, almost set up one for Griffiths and put in two more dangerous balls in the dying moments of the first half. And, I’ve already mentioned that Jacobs didn’t impress me against Peterborough, and I wasn't impressed again. He seems to do a lot of running down blind alleys, always seeming to want to beat the extra man when a pass is possibly the better option. I certainly don’t think he’s a better option than Sako, who while frustrating at times is capable of those bits of magic that no-one else in this league can create. But, the rest of the midfield didn’t exactly help Jacobs; it was all over the place. He and Henry spent much of the time tucked in, but without Ricketts and Golbourne creating the sort of width we really needed. The midfield was generally too slow at moving the ball, often allowing the MK Dons defenders too much time to get back into position. I’d have been tempted to bring Jack Price on, as I think he was one of the few players we have who can raise the tempo of the game. We were massively lacking a leader in the middle, something we’ve not really had since we had three of them under Dave Jones.

 - This season we’ve gone behind in four league games, and in only one have we managed to get something out of the game (the victory at Bradford City). This is slightly worrying, as in none of the other defeats against Walsall or Peterborough have we really looked like equalising. Whether this is an indication of the lack of options we have off the bench (and finishing the last two games with Cassidy, Sigurðarson and McAlinden upfront supports this), or whether the blame should lie on Jackett’s inability to change the course of a match, I’m not really sure. But generally, when we find ourselves going into the latter stages of a game, we tend to look more like conceding than we do scoring ourselves. 

 - Saying all of this, we’ve played worse this season and lost. We actually looked reasonably decent going forward – Henry blazed over an almost identical opportunity to the one from which Bamford scored, Griffiths and Edwards both swung at fresh air when they should have done better, McAlinden had two decent efforts (one wide, one too close to the keeper), Henry had an effort tipped over, Doyle put a shot from inside the box straight at the keeper. I’m not saying these were glorious chances, but I’m struggling to remember us having quite so many efforts in a long time. I certainly didn’t think it was so bad that we deserved to be booed off. Remember, Leyton Orient is the only team in the country with a better point per game record than we have this season. We’ve not played really well all season, and are in the top-2 purely because we have better individuals than pretty much every other team in the league. It takes time for a team to gel – look at the Premier League big guns who changed managers at the start of the season. Have Manchester United, Chelsea or Manchester City truly adapted to their new managers yet? In fact, the team I’d be tempted to liken us to most is QPR. Relegated, but with a lot of players who should have been ‘too good to go down’, and have added new players over the summer. In terms of individual talent, QPR should have won every game this season. But football doesn’t work like that. No team has ever won promotion before Christmas, and we are in a fantastic position to push on in the New Year. But, next week’s trip to Rotherham is turning into a game we need to win. Fail to get anything out of that, and that’s three defeats in a row, and a blip has the potential to turn into a crisis. The Christmas period was crucial last season; years hoping we can get a better set of results this time around.