Wolves 2-1 Bristol CIty
Doyler
By Tom Bason
March 16 2013
Wolves today won its first home game for 153 years, defeating bottom of the table Bristol City 2-1 in a classic relegation 6-pointer. A comical David Davis own goal had given the visitors the lead, but two goals in three second half minutes gave Wolves a precious three points.
- The most obvious change that Dean Saunders made was leaving out Karl Henry, with Jamie O'Hara and David Davis partnered in central midfield. I suspect that you'd have to travel a fair distance to find a Wolves supporter who thinks Henry should be the certainty in the first eleven that he's been for pretty much his entire career as a Wolves player. It was around this time last season that Davis first broke into the first team squad, and he was one of the only bright spark of the disastrous Terry Connor era.
- The thing that struck me though was that we had Kevin Doyle and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake upfront together AGAIN. They have been teammates for nearly four years now, and I can count on one thumb the amount of times they've played well together. I don't understand why this season they have continually been partnered together when it clearly doesn't work, especially when we have someone like Björn Sigurðarson sat on the bench. This got me thinking about the lack of partnerships that we have seen in the Wolves team over the past 3 or 4 years. The team that went up had partnerships all over the pitch; think of the way that Ebanks-Blake and Andy Keogh played together (I never thought the Ebanks-Blake/Chris Iwelumo partnership was that effective; they both scored goals yes, but not because they were working in tandem), and even more impressive was the way that Michael Kightly combined down the right flank. To a lesser effect, Matt Jarvis and Stephen Ward played well together, but it certainly improved over their time together and I'd say that Ward's movement off the ball in an attacking phase definitely contributed to Jarvis having the success he did. Think to the team now, and is there a single partnership that has any sort of positive effect on the team?
- David Edwards was again nominally on the problem right hand side of midfield. Obviously, he is not a winger, and so spent much of his time tucked in towards the centre of midfield. This in itself wasn't a too much of a problem as it helped match Bristol City's three central midfielders. It did mean that there was a lot of space for Matt Doherty to push in to. I've been critical of Doherty's positioning when going forward (and Marco Cassetti gave a master class in it for Watford), but today Doherty was far better. It came of no surprise that the two best passes of the day came from David Davis spreading the ball wide to the onrushing Doherty.
- And speaking of David Davis passes... If you've not seen the own goal, make sure you do. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. While Davis' pass wasn't brilliant, I think Carl Ikeme has a few questions to mull over. The first question is why play that pass to Davis in the first place? We have been risking conceding that type of goal for ages. At the start of the season, the centre backs would pull wide, and Tongo Doumbia would drop in to take the ball. Now, no offence to Davis, but a confident Doumbia who is playing well has the ability to get him out of any sticky situations he may find himself in. Yet, even with Doumbia out of the team we continue to pass the ball out like that. It was O'Hara a couple of weeks ago who kept finding himself facing his own goal, 30 yards out with an opposition player up his backside - not the best position to find himself in. Today, Davis offered the pass, but didn't collect it properly and was forced to pass back to Ikeme. It wasn't the best of back passes, but Ikeme has dealt with far worse this season. I've only seen it once, so I'm not even going to try and describe what Ikeme did. In my head, he tried to control the ball, completely misjudged it meaning he actually just opened his legs for the ball to go through.
- I'd questioned Ikeme's judgment on occasion before, and today there was another example. A nothing ball was played down the Wolves left channel. The Bristol City forward would have been the first to reach it, but was basically at the corner flag. Ikeme for some reason came charging out his goal, and rather than launch the ball into the crowd, tamely nodded the ball over the touchline. Fortunately, he had the wherewithal to then stop the Bristol City player taking a quick throw in, with Ikeme stranded at the touchline. Oh, and to compound the Ikeme bashing for today, today wasn't the first time this season he's had problems with the ball at his feet…
- Still, Ikeme has been one of our better players this season (although how representative this is of his actual form I'm not sure. Goalkeepers always stand out in struggling sides, partly because the outfield players are playing poorly so they look better in comparison, and partly because they have more to do), and it was a surprise to see Dorus de Vries come out in the second half in goal. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that de Vries decision to move to Wolves must go down as one of the all-time worst transfer moves, but we all know he's a decent keeper who has never let the club down when he's played. He is certainly far better on the ball than Ikeme, giving an impression of calmness when distributing the ball. The big question is why he was introduced. Ikeme didn't look injured, but that doesn't mean he wasn't. If he wasn't injured, then Saunders took him off for one of three reasons: 1) in direct reaction to the mistake for the goal. If this is true, then you have to question Saunders' man management - Ikeme wasn't the first and won't be the last goalkeeper to make a mistake. 2) Saunders and Ikeme had a bust up at half time or 3) tactical reasons. Presumably, Saunders recognised that we were going to be the attacking team in the second half, and so Ikeme's superior shot stopping ability wasn't required. But, de Vries' calmness on the ball would allow us to build attacks from the back. We could also play a slightly higher defensive line, allowing us to press higher, as de Vries has better judgment when playing as a sweeper keeper. I hope it was the latter reason, but for what I've seen of Saunders so far, I don't think it was.
- The other reason that the substitution was surprising was that it didn't leave any further changes. To lose one wide midfielder to injury in the first half is unlucky. To lose two is careless. Bakary Sako appeared to injure his hamstring, and I very much hope it's just a twinge. Given that we don’t have another game for two weeks, hopefully he won’t miss too much of the run in, although I couldn’t help thinking about Mark Kennedy’s injury at the latter end of the 2001/02 season, an injury that had a huge effect on the resulting run of form.
- When Edwards went off, he was replaced by Sigurðarson, who took over his place on the right hand side of midfield. I don’t really understand why this happened, given that Sigurðarson has looked quite sharp upfront in recent weeks, and Doyle’s most impressive recent performance came when he played as a right winger against Leeds United. After 60 minutes, they swapped, and Doyle stayed out wide for the rest of the game. We’ve had a lot of problems on the right hand side in the last couple of years, and I’d have no problem with Doyle given a run there for the rest of the season. I see no reason why he can’t do the sort of job Dirk Kuyt did for Liverpool, a defensive winger if you will
- It doesn’t take a genius to work out that none of our central defenders are particularly comfortable on the ball (the fact that we’ve let our only centre back who is capable of playing out of defence go on loan to Ipswich is another matter), and this was one of the reasons I was such a Michael Mancienne fan. But, for some reason, Kaspars Gorkšs seems to have taken on a role as the new Franz Beckenbauer, constantly being looked to to supply the ball to the midfield. The fact that he is totally incapable of this seems to be lost on most of the team, and as a result, a huge number of long balls sailed miles past their intended recipients.
- Obviously, I wrote earlier about Ebanks-Blake and Doyle being incapable of playing together, and the fact that they both scored today doesn’t alter my opinion. As it happened, both were good goals. Firstly, Ebanks-Blake chested the ball down in the penalty area, before turning and smashing past Tom Heaton in the Bristol City goal. It was a fine goal, but was also the one moment of class from Ebanks-Blake in an otherwise dreary performance. Doyle’s goal was similarly good, but for other reasons. Stephen Hunt, who entered the pitch firstly to boos, then cheers due to his comments in the press, did well down the left, and put in a good cross that Doyle finished well. He arrived at Wolves with a reputation for being good in the air, but I can’t think of any other headed goals from him (admittedly I’ve not thought for very long). Doyle now has five for the season – three have come against Bristol City.
- Obviously, at this stage of the season, the result is far more important than the performance, which is just as well as the performance wasn’t brilliant, although it’s possibly an indictment of the football we’ve seen under Saunders that despite being pretty rubbish, it was still one of the best performances so far in 2013. Fortunately, despite Sean O’Driscoll moving to a Marcelo Bielsa-style 3-1-3-3 formation at the end, we weren’t put under any real pressure. With Peterborough and Barnsley both winning against the odds, we are still firmly ensconced in the relegation zone, but hopefully today’s result will put a slight spring in the step of the players.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013:04:13:19:29:39 by toomb.
Regarding the jeers when Hunt came on, I got the impression it was from fans who thought it was a tactical sub from Saunders and who missed the fact that Sako pulled up with his hamstring. There were not really any other options on the bench so I don't see what else Saunders could realistically do.
The jeers in the Watford game were due to an abject performance from a player who was not match fit and who should never have started.
Both goals were excellent finishes today. For me Doyle should definitely be playing midfield and SEB and Siggy should play upfront. The players being mooted as loan strikers are no better than SEB and Siggy IMO. We need players who are prepared to roll their sleeves up and that's a quality that Siggy has. Doyle did well when he dropped into midfield.
It was a dismal game today for 75 minutes but I still thought that Davis offers much more than Henry.
Wow first home win for 153 years, what league are we playing in now and are Moxey and Morgan still here. I guess they must be with that home record.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013:03:17:16:46:51 by cedric harper.
It looked a bit like Doyle decided to make the change and went over to tell Saunders that was what they were trying.