Wolves 1-1 Blackburn Rovers

Dean Saunders debut as Wolves’ manager finished in a 1-1 draw at home to Blackburn Rovers. A contentious Jordan Rhodes penalty gave Blackburn a first half lead, before Roger Johnson equalised with 15 minutes to go.

- Unsurprisingly, Saunders put his stamp on the team from the very start, with a full debut handed to young striker Jake Cassidy, fresh from scoring 11 goals for Tranmere Rovers already this season. It was Sylvan Ebanks-Blake who was left out, perhaps surprisingly given his goalscoring record so far this season. Elsewhere, Ronald Zubar was brought back out of the cold for his first league game since his abysmal performance away at Cardiff.

- I was actually quite excited when I saw the line-up – it looked perfect for a 3-4-1-2 formation. I had brief dreams of a back-3, with Kevin Foley and Stephen Ward as wingbacks, David Davis and Karl Henry sitting in midfield and Bakary Sako given a floating role behind Kevin Doyle and Cassidy. As it was, a fairly standard 4-4-2 formation was selected, with Foley nominally selected as a right sided midfielder. I hope suspect that Foley was selected to try and prevent the influence of Blackburn’s attacking left back Martin Olsson. If this was the reason for playing Foley, it worked reasonably well; Foley’s defensive nous was able to prevent Olsson from getting too far forward.

- So, was there a big change in the style from Ståle Solbakken’s time? In a word, yes. We were far more direct than we ever were under the Norwegian, with the default setting for most of the players appearing to be to get the ball forward. This meant we started the game in a very offensive vein; Blackburn was perhaps not expecting us to be so direct and struggled to cope with this early on. But, even with this, we struggled to create real chances, with only a clever Foley flick forcing Jake Kean into an, albeit excellent, save.

- There was a definite attempt to get the ball into the penalty area a lot earlier. A few times Ward lumped played crosses in from deep when previously he’d have definitely passed the ball inside. This was particularly noticeable when we won a couple of free kicks on the half way line – under Solbakken these would have been passed into midfield, but instead they were clipped forward to the edge of the opposition penalty area. Now, we need to consider that neither Cassidy nor Doyle is the best in the air, and so it is vital that we get players around the forwards to win the second ball. This is something that didn’t particularly work, with Henry and Davis often far too deep to challenge, and Blackburn’s midfield were generally able to remove the danger easily.

- I won’t mention the penalty particularly – I’ve only seen it once, and no doubt by the time you read this, you’ll have seen it from a couple of different angles. But, overall we defended reasonably well, with Jordan Rhodes barely getting a kick. Saying that, most of the players we picked are naturally defensive, with Henry, Davis and Foley all defensively minded players. On the one time Rhodes did get a chance (aside from the penalty), he was wasteful, sliding the ball past Carl Ikeme, but with no real direction or power. The one thing that stood out here was how slow Ikeme being coming off his line, seemingly making three different decisions about whether to stick or twist.  This is something that I’ve criticised Wayne Hennessey for in the past – something for the coaching team to work on?

- Imagine you’re the leading scorer of a football club with nine goals. A new manager is brought in; a former striker who surely understands the ways forwards work. For the new manager’s first game, you’re on the bench with a 19 year old debutant starting ahead of you. Your team is 1-0 down at half-time, with neither of the selected forwards doing particularly badly, but neither really impressing. After the hour mark, still a goal down, the manager makes a substitution; he takes off a defender for a midfielder. With 15 minutes to go, your team are still losing and neither of the forwards on the pitch have gone close to troubling the opposition keeper. Another substitute is happening; surely it’s your golden chance. But instead, another midfielder is brought on. Eventually, you introduced for the final 10 minutes, replacing the young debutant who did ok, but not really standing out. Your contract is expiring in six months – are you happy with this situation?

- Apart from that entirely hypothetical situation, I thought Saunders was leaving his substitutions very late, not making the first until the 67^th minute. Słavomir Peszko is a player I’ve been impressed with this season, and having him back into the team is a massive bonus. But, with 23 minutes to go, we were losing at home and still had a midfield including Foley, Davis and Henry; three primarily defensive players, and not players who are going to break a team down. But, was it inspired, bringing on Jamie O’Hara only to see him get an assist within a minute? I don’t know, but I couldn’t help and think that a midfield with Sako, Peszko and O’Hara in it was far superior to the team that started the game – who knows whether Ståle Solbakken would still have a job had he had a midfield of that quality throughout the season?

- One final thought – by my reckoning, the last two Wolves youth players to make their full league debut for the club have both done it at home to Blackburn; David Davis also made his first league start against Blackburn, last March. Danny Batth, Matt Doherty and Johnny Gorman are yet to make a league start for the club, while Anthony Forde’s full debut came at Stamford Bridge in November 2011