Wolves v Braga - Verdict Thread

[Lupo]

Braga were cynical shithouses after the goal and credit to the referee for seeing through it and booking a couple and also for seeing the dives in both areas.

Booked their keeper for chucking the ball several feet forward for that free kick but then he did the same again immediately after the booking - I'd have shown him a second yellow and sent him off for taking the piss

 

[lemonjelly]

thought braga played well tonight. pretty even game. both teams played well. jonny was very good tonight. Boly was immense defensively, but attacking wise it didn't come off for him. bennett was really good except for one glaring error giving the ball away.

don't think any of our players were less than a 6.5 out of 10 tonight. cutrone is trying to hard with his finishing. needs to relax, and it'll happen for him.

i'm also in the camp feeling cutrone and jiminez isn't going to work as a partnership. one of those 2, with one of jota/neto at the moment.

 

[PuntsWolf]

Played pretty average, gave away a goal. Didn’t deserve to lose but didn’t really deserve to win either.

Tactics shite again. 4 at the back making Coady obsolete. Then 6 up front with 3 on the one side and 3 on the other. Shit diagonal up to doc and then play for the seconds. Then when we lose the ball they’ve got the freedom of Molineux. Neves then dives in and gets beat and they’re on the counter.

We don’t use the middle of the pitch at all. Just hoof’s intro the channel. Yes it possibly should have worked today if we scored, but it’s fucking dire. Listen to how flat the crowd was? We were all bored. Not sure how people thought we played well.

Someone at the game today told me Nuno has had a bust up with the board and isn’t happy that he wasn’t backed in the transfer market. When he said in pre season he wanted us to go “strong in the market”, I’m not sure a backup striker, a couple of untested kids and weak Madrid reserve were what he was thinking. Our recruitment was shit, but he’s not doing enough with what he’s got at the minute.

 

[SLB]

An ok performance but nothing more. Jonny excellent in first half, rest decidedly average. Jota looked a bit brighter than recently when he came on. Bad mistake by Bennett but others could have done more to stop them scoring from it.

Not bringing in another ventral midfielder looks a very bad decision as we lack any pace and creativity there. It could be a long season I fear unless we tweak something to help us create more clear chances and cut out the habit of gifting soft goals.

Some MLS endorsement would do that job without a doubt. Wrong agent though and a bad past so won't happen.

Btw, Neto already has about 2 hours of play so far. How come some people here still want him on the starting eleven?

 

[Alan]

Neto at least looks like he's trying to make something happen. So many of our players look... Languid.

 

[The Bear]

I'm not worried yet, but lose to Palace away, don't beat Watford at home, then lose to Besiktas...

Well the pressure will be firmly on and the pant wetting will be at an all time high. Just Man City away after that little run of games.

 

[Newbridge Wolf]

Punished for not converting our chances and making our pressure count.

Yes bennet made a mistake but there were too many in front of goal, frustrating night against a frustrating team with tactics to suit

What has made the evening unforgivable is attempting to decipher Jeds match report on the E&S.

 

[jdrodrigues]

Still can't believe we actually lost against these wankers. God damnit.

We gotta step up the game, things are not looking good atm and Nuno has to turn us around. We won't be able to get the reinforcements we required until January, so we gotta make it work with what we have.

 

[sycophantia]

thought braga played well tonight. pretty even game. both teams played well. jonny was very good tonight. Boly was immense defensively, but attacking wise it didn't come off for him. bennett was really good except for one glaring error giving the ball away.

don't think any of our players were less than a 6.5 out of 10 tonight. cutrone is trying to hard with his finishing. needs to relax, and it'll happen for him.

i'm also in the camp feeling cutrone and jiminez isn't going to work as a partnership. one of those 2, with one of jota/neto at the moment.

Agree with all this

 

[Tredman]

I thought MGW played really well on the left, we lost a bit of impetus when he went off. Agree with the above that Cutrone doesn't work as a 2 with Raul - would rather have seen Cutrone with Neto. Overall I thought we played well, but with a lack of a cutting edge, could see most of the crowd thought that too with a very good reception at the end.

Not quite sure how to blame Traore for another right sided cock up, though I'm sure its his fault somehow.

 

[Monstrum]

I absolutely agree, gibbs white wasnt fantastic but atleast was creative, threatened with the ball... when mou came on there was none of that, he just had a terrible performance, fucked up easy passes, lost the ball, fouled (should have got a yellow card imo for one hard push). Hes 33 hes playing too many minutes, hes got to be tired

 

[Tyrannosaurus Dan]

I thought MGW played well too. He was one of our better players.

Boly was class and Jonny played well. Neves passing was good but he is still way to deep. Cutrone tried hard and there is definitely a good player there but his finishing was poor last night.

We weren't that great but certainly didn't deserve to lose. We weren't creative enough though seeing as we had most of the possession, which seems to be an ongoing concern. Seeing as we play with 3 midfielders you would think there would be plenty of options available for payers to pass to but there seems to permanently be a big gap in the middle of the pitch. I have faith in Nuno though and trust him to put it right.

 

[prawnking]

We have to remember in our first 5 league games this season we've played Leicester and Everton away, both have been tipped in places for a top 6 challenge this season, and Man Utd and Chelsea at home - both firmly established members of the top 6. The only game we've had where I went into it completely assured of victory was Burnley. We have an easier looking set of fixtures coming up - Palace away, Watford home, Southampton home and Newcastle away in our next 5 games - and none of those have set the world on fire this season either.

That's a reasonable straw for us to grasp, but what concerns me is that we didn't pay much attention to these kinds of groupings last season, and got both good and bad surprise outcomes as a result. It's the way we're playing that's concerning, as a team and individually, not so much who we're playing. We won't be beating anyone in the PL or EL any time soon with this kind of form. We need a spark, even a shit, undeserved 1-0 at Selhurst to take the pressure off

 

[Wilf Wolf]

Some MLS endorsement would do that job without a doubt. Wrong agent though and a bad past so won't happen.

Btw, Neto already has about 2 hours of play so far. How come some people here still want him on the starting eleven?

Was that reply really meant to be to my post? Makes no sense.

 

[The Bear]

I don't think we've seen Jota/Cutrone together as a pair yet have we? That would have been my choice last night personally.

 

[Deano]

We were poor again for me. There was a slight improvement in general but we are still too slow at moving the ball when teams sit in, instead of moving the ball and moving into space quickly to pull them out of shape everything is played in front of the opposition while they're set defensively.

MGW shouldn't be getting singled out for criticism based on this game as he had a reasonable game, actually looked to create things and Cutrone should have at the very least hit the target from that ball MGW played over the top for him. I am in agreement with a few people above who have said it should be Raul or Cutrone alongside one of Jota or Neto.

Even aside from the mistake which led to their goal, Bennett is still an issue in games like this, as whenever he gets the ball 90% of the time the ball is knocked square or backwards to Coady, I understand that he's limited in his ability to distribute the ball but doing that gives the opposition time to reset into their defensive shape, we'd see a marked difference if we had a good defender who could distribute on the right like Boly can on the left, unfortunately we haven't got that so we will have to stick with this - Vallejo isn't an option at the moment. Dendoncker has been very poor recently too.

I think we should try Saiss, Neves and Moutinho as the 3 and use Saiss as the deepest player - we are getting nowhere having Neves holding hands with the CB's and with us looking shaky at the back at the moment, Saiss would offer more protection sitting there.

 

[Norman Deeley]

Three things worry me from last night – where, at best, we deserved a draw against a team who weren’t as good as Torino. First, our team is woefully short of pace – Bennett, Coady, Neves, Moutinho – and somehow it is being shown up a lot more than last season.
Secondly, I’m a fan of Ryan Bennett’s – I admire any footballer who makes the most of the talents they have, and given Benno came here as what most of us thought was 5th or 6th choice CB in the Championship he has done superbly well. But the proverbial blind man on a galloping horse could see he needed upgrading in the summer. The difference a ball-playing RCB who could pick a forward pass would make to our momentum and tempo is incalculable.
£20m on the Mendes twins? That just looks like madness right now. £20m would have gone a long way towards a RCB.
And yeah, like everyone else I like Patrick’s passion – but he’s looking a lot like a striker who needs six chances for one to go in.
And please, no more of this ‘one scratchy win and it’ll be alright’ bollocks. It won’t be: right now there are some big problems to put right.

 

[The Bear]

I wonder is Dias was ever likely to come here if we'd have stumped up the £57m to get him? Probably not but he would have been ideal.

 

[prawnking]

There are, but sometimes three points can alleviate manager and player pressure and give them room to improve

 

[jd1981]

We've got issues without doubt, I don't buy the blind faith it'll all be just fine come what May. Teams seem to be pressing Coady especially a lot higher upfield. Doherty still doesn't look a 100%, thought Neves passing range was back to being what we know but he's sitting far too deep to be effective.
I'd go back to the best 11 from last season with maybe playing Saiss in the holding role and give Dendoncker a break.
Regardless of recruitment this is still the same side that came 7th last season so should have enough not to go down comfortably. But i use the word should as its not out the question.
I agree Jimenez and Cutrone should be competing for a starting place not starting together, either one with Jota works far better for me.
Look teams have started seasons a lot worse than we have and survived comfortably, we all know how the world of football management works and you're always only about 5 games from a crisis.