Wolves 0-2 Crystal Palace: Verdict Thread

[Jabbawolf]

In fairness I was moaning in January but was told to stfu

That’s because you do nowt else.

 

[Throbber3]

There's quite a bit of revisionism now, and you're not the first to do it (I think it was Del and Cyber guilty of it too), but there were some good to very good performances in that period. Lets not re-invent history because it suits the new narrative.

Man United, Sheff Utd, Southampton, Spurs were all varying degrees of good to very good.

Brentford & Leicester less good, but the mentality was positive.

(the mentality v West Ham and yesterday is my prime concern, the body language was off)

13 blanks including the fact we
Can’t score against Norwich twice palace twice Burnley . It’s not a new worry . On our day we can give anyone in the league a game but it’s based on a solid defence and relies on one moment to get us the points 1 0. Now, don’t get me wrong I loved the win at United, it’s great to win at Spurs , excellent to get one over Leicester but we have been very very lucky to get 40 points with 25 goals . Sa and Kilman have been the bedrock for that but if they falter we concede then we lose . Max is playing with lots on his mind it appears and Sa is great but bonkers and will make the odd Rick . Putting Podence as a false 9 was Saunders like for me and Bruno needs to stop making stupid selections. Our defence is programmed to play it out or hit a target man in Raul . Against a press the long ball just gets hoofed back . Play four at the back as it’s your preferred style coach . It may cost you your job , yes but you would at least go down with your principles intact . At the moment it’s just a shit show and players don’t appear to know what to do to change it .

 

[Throbber3]

That’s because you do nowt else.

That could be because the rose tinted specs brigade piss on my head and tell me it’s raining . At least I have plenty to moan about after the last three games . It seems so have plenty of others. Not only me who sees it now though is it? Roll on the summer

 

[Charlie Wolf]

Just raising a point, and absolutely not an excuse for the performances over the last few games or at home over the season, but are we one of the most accommodating teams to our away fans giving (most) a full length of a stand directly opposite the TV cameras, where the acoustics make it sound like they are the home side.

The atmosphere yesterday was flat as fuck to a point where I don’t think anyone gave a shit after about 10 minutes in, whether we won or lost. I know it’s the team on the pitch that should raise noise levels, but equally you can’t hear much from the opposite ends of the ground, so what it must sound like to the team must be surreal and hardly inspiring

Added to the fact that the away fans positioned in the lower SB taunt the exec boxes when they score and win is all kinds of wrong.

If we want to take away any advantages from the away team start by sticking their fans in the fucking uncovered corner or up the top of the NB.

 

[PuntsWolf]

There's quite a bit of revisionism now, and you're not the first to do it (I think it was Del and Cyber guilty of it too), but there were some good to very good performances in that period. Lets not re-invent history because it suits the new narrative.

Man United, Sheff Utd, Southampton, Spurs were all varying degrees of good to very good.

Brentford & Leicester less good, but the mentality was positive.

(the mentality v West Ham and yesterday is my prime concern, the body language was off)

I’m not sure I’ve been revisionist. I’ve made references all season about us being in a false position and over performing points wise.

Man United we were genuinely good. But still took a wonder strike/scuff through a defenders legs right in the bottom corner to win. We had an xG of 0.7 that day, United 0.8. We won the fine margins.

Leicester I didn’t think we were good at all. Brentford huge slices of luck/ fine margins went our way (xG of 0.2!) and they are shit, Saints again fine margins went our way.

Spurs we were comfortable. But our issues are scoring goals and they kept trying to set us up!

 

[PuntsWolf]

Just raising a point, and absolutely not an excuse for the performances over the last few games or at home over the season, but are we one of the most accommodating teams to our away fans giving (most) a full length of a stand directly opposite the TV cameras, where the acoustics make it sound like they are the home side.

The atmosphere yesterday was flat as fuck to a point where I don’t think anyone gave a shit after about 10 minutes in, whether we won or lost. I know it’s the team on the pitch that should raise noise levels, but equally you can’t hear much from the opposite ends of the ground, so what it must sound like to the team must be surreal and hardly inspiring

Added to the fact that the away fans positioned in the lower SB taunt the exec boxes when they score and win is all kinds of wrong.

If we want to take away any advantages from the away team start by sticking their fans in the fucking uncovered corner or up the top of the NB.

It’s the worst away section (and day) in the league bar none. Theyre the first set of fans to make any noise all season.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

13 blanks including the fact we
Can’t score against Norwich twice palace twice Burnley . It’s not a new worry . On our day we can give anyone in the league a game but it’s based on a solid defence and relies on one moment to get us the points 1 0. Now, don’t get me wrong I loved the win at United, it’s great to win at Spurs , excellent to get one over Leicester but we have been very very lucky to get 40 points with 25 goals . Sa and Kilman have been the bedrock for that but if they falter we concede then we lose . Max is playing with lots on his mind it appears and Sa is great but bonkers and will make the odd Rick . Putting Podence as a false 9 was Saunders like for me and Bruno needs to stop making stupid selections. Our defence is programmed to play it out or hit a target man in Raul . Against a press the long ball just gets hoofed back . Play four at the back as it’s your preferred style coach . It may cost you your job , yes but you would at least go down with your principles intact . At the moment it’s just a shit show and players don’t appear to know what to do to change it .

Yeah i'm aware of the issues, I just dispute the idea that we haven't played well for months, it's just not true.

....but we have been very very lucky to get 40 points with 25 goals . Sa and Kilman have been the bedrock for that...

Having players that perform well isn't "lucky" they are part of the team. Are City "lucky" when Ederson pulls off a worldy? Or are Liverpool "lucky" when VVD does some excellent defending? They're part of our team.

What's lucky is getting extreme VAR decisions go your way (Moutinho hand ball, or Rodri handball) we haven't had much of that?

We have been clinical with our paucity of chances and very good at defending, up until recently.

The majority of us would have been really happy with 8th-12th at the start of the season? No? So i'm surprised at the anger now, although it is frustrating when just a couple of players that offered us more depth could have made all the difference, but that's not on Bruno. (his acceptance of it is crap though)

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

I’m not sure I’ve been revisionist.

Well you have, you've said we haven't been great, then quoted games where we you have said yourself we did perform well. It's surely without question that we played well against Spurs, United and Sheff Utd?

I’ve made references all season about us being in a false position and over performing points wise.

Where you are in the table at any given moment is where you deserve to be, especially with just 11 games left! No?

Moaning that we don't score many goals (we don't) but then saying the goals we do score are fortunate just seems like you are desperate to criticise, so i'm withdrawing from this now.

 

[Throbber3]

Fair enough. You put it more succinctly than my couldn’t score in a brothel but it’s a similar message .
I agree with you about the anger bro. I am pissed off , not because of the last three defeats more the manner of them and the lack of backing for Bruno . Fosun hired him and in my eyes set him up to fail . He was getting results, though god knows how at times and we can forgive shit football if we get three points. We have done a lot of ugly winning this season and a fair few last. Spurs was not a good performance by us . It was an abomination by them . They would have lost to a championship team defending and playing like that . Leicester was ok, not awesome just ok . They are in transition this year but it’s a welcome win against them . The tactics against Arsenal were silly. You can’t defend for 80 minutes like that with tired legs . We have had three or 4 good wins when we played well. We have had the same number of defeats when we have played well too so that’s 8 decent performances for me out of 24 games . Two at home. We can’t wave a wand. We can’t change much until the summer. Personally I thought Lage had done well up to January mostly. It’s been very odd at times since . I would be interested to see what he could do with a squad he had built but I don’t think that will happen here .

 

[PuntsWolf]

Well you have, you've said we haven't been great, then quoted games where we you have said yourself we did perform well. It's surely without question that we played well against Spurs, United and Sheff Utd?

We’re not shit every week no! But on the whole our points tally out weighs are performances. I don’t think it’s remotely debateable?

The Man United game we “played well” but still could have easily not won. The Spurs game we deserved to win no question with a massive helping hand from them. Sheff Utd Is pretty irrelevant, they were a midtable championship team who rested players

Where you are in the table at any given moment is where you deserve to be, especially with just 11 games left! No?

Not really. 38 games is the closest, even then still some limitations. Sheff Utd got the fine margins and did well, fine margins go the other way and they got relegated. Not a massive difference in performance levels from what I saw.

Moaning that we don't score many goals (we don't) but then saying the goals we do score are fortunate just seems like you are desperate to criticise, so i'm withdrawing from this now.

Not really. It’s an objective assessment. We don’t have a method of scoring goals!? We switched the play and put an early cross in against Leicester which forced a mistake from unset defenders and we scored a goal. Mental, do it more!

I was moaning when It was boring under Nuno and It’s still boring so it’s only fair to moan now really.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

A huge concern that bar one freakish event at Villa (the kind of sequence that happens about once every five years if you're lucky), if we go behind then we lose. We look clueless as a unit in that situation and rarely threaten to get back into the game, Lage's changes are either non-existent or totally ineffective. The tempo basically never changes, West Ham away being the absolute worst example of it, still playing at 30% pace and knocking the ball around at the back at 1-0 down in injury time. He waves his arms a lot but I'm not sure what that's supposed to signify.

We don't have it in us to permanently score the first goal in a game, we aren't good enough to bank on doing that. Even Liverpool and City concede first sometimes.

 

[Carsy]

Didn't we have something like 70 shots on goal in the first 3 matches of the season. Yes I know we lost (even though the better team) but we haven't had that many attempts in the last 15 matches.

You’re right we did. There should definitely be a happy medium where we’re not massively open but can create and score.

The worry though as mentioned previously in this thread is if you look at the cold hard stats (aware there’s more ways to look at football than that) none of our attacking players (Raul aside) have ever been notoriously creative or prolific in the goals/assists stats. That’s throughout the whole team

 

[Throbber3]

Villa are the only points we have won from a losing position this season . Go behind we lose . It’s happened 12 times in 27 games and we have lost 11. Not even a couple of ugly draws there

 

[Throbber3]

That

You’re right we did. There should definitely be a happy medium where we’re not massively open but can create and score.

The worry though as mentioned previously in this thread is if you look at the cold hard stats (aware there’s more ways to look at football than that) none of our attacking players (Raul aside) have ever been notoriously creative or prolific in the goals/assists stats. That’s throughout the whole team

s what transfers are for. To plug bloody obvious gaps. Just don’t think our owners know that

 

[Carsy]

It makes me smile when people say "we should play x formation", "we should play y formation", "we should play the kids, we haven't got anything to lose", all whilst get their knickers in a right twist when we lose a game or two (or three), which shows that we DO actually have something to lose, the sanity of those who struggle to handle us losing a couple of games, and those same fans will give the manager a good kicking when he tries something different and it fails.

There is so much entitlement and pant wetting all over social media at the moment regarding Wolves, and don't get me wrong, i was far from happy with the performance yesterday (or against West Ham), it feels like we have a bit of a soft mentality that since we conceded the 2nd against Arsenal our confidence has capitulated . But ultimately we are an upper mid table team, who by their nature are inconsistent.

The 6 weeks after Christmas were great, and now they're not so great, it's tough, but lets not over-analyse, write off Bruno, or write off players who have largely been excellent this season (Coady, Kilman, Saiss).

*i'm not using you as an example of this, just that your post reminded me.

I think the issue is that a lot of our points have been from games where they could’ve gone ‘either way’, whereas games we’ve lost we have been comprehensively outplayed.

Even as a mid table team, you’ll have a decent percentage of games that you won where you sit there and think ‘yeah, we were the far better team and deserved it’ I can’t think of too many.

I’m in the camp of happy where we are, it’s a results business etc and I didn’t expect us to be flirting with Europe, let alone the top 4 at the start of February, but it is high risk to just bank on us being tight, not conceding abs taking our 2 or 3 chances a game. It can very easily bite you in the arse.

Both managers we have had in the prem have been fairly pragmatic, playing a similar style of play. The bulk of the main squad is made up of players from nuno’s time.

The squad has for me just gone abit stale, and needs reviewing and abit of a clear out.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Lage can't particularly be pleading poverty, there is absolutely no reason for us to be so incredibly lacking in creativity, goal attempts, sheer number of goals, etc etc.

He's choosing to play some pretty appalling football. I'm sure he would like some new players like every single manager in the world would, it doesn't excuse his current level of performance.

 

[Carsy]

Lage can't particularly be pleading poverty, there is absolutely no reason for us to be so incredibly lacking in creativity, goal attempts, sheer number of goals, etc etc.

He's choosing to play some pretty appalling football. I'm sure he would like some new players like every single manager in the world would, it doesn't excuse his current level of performance.

Totally agree. I guess the point I’m saying is with the current players there is no stats to evidence that will lead to a huge increase in goals.

Obviously if you have more than 1 shot you have a better chance to score. No one is disputing that. My concern, as well as the style of play is whether the players we have are equipped to be far more prolific.

 

[PuntsWolf]

We weren’t even giving up chances in those first 3.

Only Watford (a), Newcastle (h), West Ham (h) and Burnley (h) have we given up less chances based on xG, and 3 of them are/were terrible.

All the other games we’ve given up more chances even with the dull style.

 

[SSB]

If we want to take away any advantages from the away team start by sticking their fans in the fucking uncovered corner or up the top of the NB.

Premier League rules state “At least one block of away fan seats must be made available pitchside.” (Unless you are Man Utd or Newcastle)

 

[Tony Towner]

Totally agree. I guess the point I’m saying is with the current players there is no stats to evidence that will lead to a huge increase in goals.

Obviously if you have more than 1 shot you have a better chance to score. No one is disputing that. My concern, as well as the style of play is whether the players we have are equipped to be far more prolific.

As discussed previously their career records would suggest not, however in the last couple of games it's not that we are missing chances, we aren't creating any and that's for the manager to fix. We are so easy to play against when behind, I saw comments yesterday about how we were better in the second half, we weren't it's just that Palace let us have the ball confident we wouldn't break them down twice. West Ham did the same the week before