Wolves 0-2 Crystal Palace: Verdict Thread

[Tony Towner]

It may have been separate for accounting or FFP purposes, but they're linked. If we don't sell jota to Liverpool, then we don't buy Hoever. We managed two fuck ups in one transfer, which is pretty special

I sort of agree, but Hoever wasn't a lob in, we clearly wanted him

 

[Tony Towner]

There was nothing wrong with the team he picked today. Raul needed resting and the WBs were forced upon him.

The issue is the tactics and not changing them after the last 3 games of looking shaky at the back and timid up front.

This is just ridiculous, given the midfield. Numerous people said we'd be overrun and we were. We'd lost that game before kick off

 

[PuntsWolf]

No idea how a front 3 of Neto, Podence and Hwang was going to work, particularly the way they were used.

Neto looked way off it. Podence put in one of his 1/10 games and Hwang is just shite. Thought it might have been Hwang stretching behind down the middle and the other two doing a combination of dropping short and stretching the play.

But with Palace just stopping the ball going through Neves and Moutinho we just had to hoof it a Neto. Terrible.

Fair enough don’t play Raul, as he’s not been very good. But no idea how Fabio hasn’t got a minute with the known limitations of the 3 that started.

 

[sycophantia]

6 home defeats 4 by one goal , two 2 0 . 13 blanks this season . This squad needs rebuilding and has done for a while . Back him or sack him Fosun . We were awful today . Simply awful

Him not being backed has nothing to do with today's performance, its all on him. He was stuck with the WBs today, we would not have signed any WBs anyway. Apart from that the team was almost our first team, we wouldn't have replaced Raul. Conceivably we might have had an option midfield but he never said he wanted one of those anyway.
I was concerned last week when he picked only 5 or 6 first team players when we had other options, today I'm more worried that he doesn't know what he's doing after a decent first half+ of the season, he's got the rest of the season to prove he's got what it takes.

 

[SSB]

Regarding the tactics. I’ve never seen a team utilise so many back heals, dummies, feigns ect in attacking build up play. Especially where 80% don’t actually come to any fruition.

 

[The Bear]

This is just ridiculous, given the midfield. Numerous people said we'd be overrun and we were. We'd lost that game before kick off

Yeah. I was thinking more about the personnel, not the formation in particular.

 

[Mel Evo]

6 home defeats 4 by one goal , two 2 0 . 13 blanks this season . This squad needs rebuilding and has done for a while . Back him or sack him Fosun . We were awful today . Simply awful

Sack him. This squad doesn’t need a complete rebuild, it needs managing correctly.

 

[sycophantia]

This is just ridiculous, given the midfield. Numerous people said we'd be overrun and we were. We'd lost that game before kick off

Bear is partly right about the personnel but playing Hwang wide and Podence centrally was bizarre. He knew what he was getting at WB, but surely has to change the midfield to mitigate that

 

[prawnking]

Sack him. This squad doesn’t need a complete rebuild, it needs managing correctly.

Bit knee-jerk, considering we were not far off a top 6 place a few games back?

This squad has been built to be managed in one specific way, Nuno's way, which Bruno has aped convincingly and pretty effectively so far.

When Nuno tried new things with the squad last year it went tits up, Bruno has avoided trying anything new with the squad this year since those first few games, that all speaks volumes.

Think Lage's honeymoon period is over, but talk of sacking him is a bit trigger happy right now? You think Fosun wouldn't just replace him with someone else fairly malleable anyway?

 

[MARKakaJIM]

This is just ridiculous, given the midfield. Numerous people said we'd be overrun and we were. We'd lost that game before kick off

If the midfield is outnumbered then you have a spare man somewhere else, it's up to them to make themselves available and then you play through them. Never seems to happen at Wolves though, Neves only controls games when other teams let him and without that it's a shit show.

The team isn't brave enough in possession, they don't work hard enough to help one another out when they've got the ball, they quickly run out of options and surrender possession cheaply as a result.

 

[sycophantia]

Yeah crazy talk about sacking him, he's made some mistakes last few games, bad ones, but there have been signs of improvement this season at times but as PK says, the honeymoon period is over, needs to step up now.

 

[Alan]

I don't need a manager who isn't malleable, I need one whose system actually makes the opposing defense work a little.

 

[Del Woppio]

On the tactics/selection. I get he may have been forced into Marcal and Hoever. But to only play a midfield two inside of them was fucking mental, especially against Palace. It was actually braindead. We were never going to build up any meaningful possession with a two man midfield and donkies wingback.

Podence as a false nine? Braindead
Hwang wide? Braindead
Midfield 4? Braindead
Not changing anything until the hour? Braindead

Bruno doesn't get all the blame, because the players were 100% outfought today. They were weak, lazy and cowardly to along with being devoid of creativity and invention.

And I'm not blaming him, it's not the kids fault and it's a side point - but we must be the only club in world football that routinely go behind and need a goal, but don't bring on our record signing. Staggering waste of resource.

On the blow up in the press conference - given the rumours about Hpever's training, I'd imagine there's been plenty of private conversations. Keep doing it and a public bollocking is inevitable and deserved. Coady also said something jokey about RAN being a poor trainer the other day on soccer AM, seemingly there's a big issue with the attitude of our young players.

 

[Tony Towner]

Bit knee-jerk, considering we were not far off a top 6 place a few games back?

This squad has been built to be managed in one specific way, Nuno's way, which Bruno has aped convincingly and pretty effectively so far.

When Nuno tried new things with the squad last year it went tits up, Bruno has avoided trying anything new with the squad this year since those first few games, that all speaks volumes.

Think Lage's honeymoon period is over, but talk of sacking him is a bit trigger happy right now? You think Fosun wouldn't just replace him with someone else fairly malleable anyway?

Agree with this re sacking, but today wasn't new things, it was clearly never going to work things. If he'd gone 4 at the back and things had unravelled then you could look at that as a failed experiment, today was just setting yourself up to fail

 

[sycophantia]

If the midfield is outnumbered then you have a spare man somewhere else, it's up to them to make themselves available and then you play through them. Never seems to happen at Wolves though, Neves only controls games when other teams let him and without that it's a shit show.

The team isn't brave enough in possession, they don't work hard enough to help one another out when they've got the ball, they quickly run out of options and surrender possession cheaply as a result.

This is all true but its up to the manager/coach to pick the right players and coach them to do it.

 

[Tony Towner]

If the midfield is outnumbered then you have a spare man somewhere else, it's up to them to make themselves available and then you play through them. Never seems to happen at Wolves though, Neves only controls games when other teams let him and without that it's a shit show.

The team isn't brave enough in possession, they don't work hard enough to help one another out when they've got the ball, they quickly run out of options and surrender possession cheaply as a result.

So you don't do it because it ends like this see Brentford, Villa, Palace x2, Norwich in the league as examples

 

[MARKakaJIM]

No idea how a front 3 of Neto, Podence and Hwang was going to work, particularly the way they were used.

Neto looked way off it. Podence put in one of his 1/10 games and Hwang is just shite. Thought it might have been Hwang stretching behind down the middle and the other two doing a combination of dropping short and stretching the play.

But with Palace just stopping the ball going through Neves and Moutinho we just had to hoof it a Neto. Terrible.

Fair enough don’t play Raul, as he’s not been very good. But no idea how Fabio hasn’t got a minute with the known limitations of the 3 that started.

Could see a theory with Hwang central stretching the play like you say with runs in behind, that should create a space for Neto and Podence to drop into but the latter is obviously very hit and miss with his success rate when gets on the ball there.

I think if you put Fabio in there then he comes short but Kouyate can probably cover him off for the most part whilst their other two midfielders covered Neves and Moutinho.

If the wide forwards were dropping short then it would help overcome Palace's extra man in the middle and give their fullback a decision to make, which maybe opens up more space for the wingbacks if they decided to follow them. Gives you options to negate the difficulty in playing in to the midfield two but didn't look like any of that was happening from what I saw of them game, just being moping around doing little of anything.

 

[sycophantia]

On the tactics/selection. I get he may have been forced into Marcal and Hoever. But to only play a midfield two inside of them was fucking mental, especially against Palace. It was actually braindead. We were never going to build up any meaningful possession with a two man midfield and donkies wingback.

Podence as a false nine? Braindead
Hwang wide? Braindead
Midfield 4? Braindead
Not changing anything until the hour? Braindead

Bruno doesn't get all the blame, because the players were 100% outfought today. They were weak, lazy and cowardly to along with being devoid of creativity and invention.

And I'm not blaming him, it's not the kids fault and it's a side point - but we must be the only club in world football that routinely go behind and need a goal, but don't bring on our record signing. Staggering waste of resource.

On the blow up in the press conference - given the rumours about Hpever's training, I'd imagine there's been plenty of private conversations. Keep doing it and a public bollocking is inevitable and deserved. Coady also said something jokey about RAN being a poor trainer the other day on soccer AM, seemingly there's a big issue with the attitude of our young players.

If he's that angry with Hoever in training and his attitude, then fuck him off to the u23s, don't pick him in an important game.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

If we go behind then we lose, it's that simple. Tactically awful and he chose to play Marçal and Hoever, like he chose Dendoncker and Trincao last week.

If he left tomorrow I'd shed exactly zero tears about it.

 

[jd1981]

Sacking talk after today is very knee jerk but if form and performances continue along a similar trajectory until the end of the season then pressure at the start of next season will be huge.
The narrative of he’s been chucked under the bus by the board and the squad can only play one way is actually an indictment on himself if things go southwards.
Case of wait until the end of the season and make a full judgement then.
Having Neto, Raul, Podence, Neves, Moutinho, Semedo, RAN etc doesn’t mean you can only play a pragmatic style of football far from it.