Wolves Somehow Snatch Point from Swans

Today, Wolves fought back from 2-0 down to snatch a point against Swansea. Swansea raced into a first half lead thanks to goals from Danny Graham and Joe Allen and looked set to claim their first away win of the season. However, Wolves rallied in the last 10 minutes and Kevin Doyle first scored, and then set up Jamie O’Hara to grab an undeserved point.

• First of all, the line-ups. I was not happy when I saw Sylvan Ebanks Blake was in for Nenad Milijaš. This basically surrendered the middle of the pitch to a Swansea side that already have a better technical midfield than we do. In fact, I tweeted that we’d be lucky to get 35% possession (it was actually 37%, so better than I expected). I also stuck £5 on a Swansea win – I just couldn’t see us getting hold of the ball long enough to create anything.

• The last time we played 4-4-2 against a technical side playing 4-3-3, we were battered. We did make a slight change to this, with Mick McCarthy making use of my suggestion of using one of the strikers to pick up Swansea’s deepest midfielder. When Swansea had the ball (which was quite a lot of the time), Ebanks-Blake was used to pick up Leon Britton. This sort of worked, mainly because of the slow tempo Swansea employ when in possession – had they played at a faster tempo, it’s unlikely Ebanks-Blake would have been able to get back towards Britton in time.

• Talking of Ebanks-Blake, I am clearly not his biggest fan. In fact, I probably rate him lower than 99% of other Wolves fans (the same with Adlène Guedioura, but more on him later), so maybe I’m being biased when I say he looked lazy and disinterested today. Saying that, in the 83 minutes he was on the pitch, he did exactly the same amount that Doyle managed – nothing. Yet, today it’s Doyle who is coming away from Molineux with a goal and an assist to his name.

• There was one other tactical innovation that seemed to work reasonably well at times, especially in the first half. Adam Hammill, starting as a right winger tends to drift inside, and today Doyle moved into the space vacated by Hammill. Given Doyle’s lack of goals as a striker, this is maybe a position I could envisage him playing, but only when Steven Fletcher is fit – if I don’t rate Ebanks-Blake in a pairing, I definitely don’t want him as a lone striker.

• Man of the match today was clearly Nathan Dyer, who had an annoying habit of drifting into space where he wasn’t picked up. It was obvious today why it was he, and not 27-goal Scott Sinclair who won Swansea’s player of the year last season. He’s absolutely tiny, but has good awareness of the space around him and uses the ball intelligently.

• On 68 minutes, McCarthy made a double substitution that the fans didn’t like. While everyone was happy to see the introduction of Milijaš and Guedioura, taking off Hammill and Matt Jarvis was a puzzling decision. While neither was having their best game, they looked the most likely to create a chance. Was this change an acknowledgement from McCarthy that the only way we were going to get close to Swansea’s midfield was to have 4 central midfielders on the pitch? I was a little worried we were going to be very exposed down the flanks, but fortunately Swansea were starting to shut up shop, and so neither Neil Taylor or Angel Rangel pushed forward from fullback as much as they might have done.

• As mentioned, the fans didn’t like the substitution and let McCarthy know. This, I can sort of understand, but I don’t think there’s any need to boo when Roger Johnson makes a mistake that leads to a goal. Is booing supposed to know that what he’s done is unacceptable? He knew full well he was at fault, but also that there were 65 minutes left in the match. And Wolves fans to sing ‘You’re Not Singing Anymore’ left me with a sour taste in my mouth as the majority of the South Banks had spent the match booing or yelling expletives at McCarthy and the players.

• A 2-2 draw when 2-0 down with 6 minutes to go may seem like a point gained, but we were woeful for 84 minutes, and at 12:45, I’m fairly certain Swansea fans would have been far happier with a point than Wolves fans.