Wolves 0-0 Shrewsbury

Wolves record-breaking run of consecutive wins was finally brought to an end by a well organised Shrewsbury side, in front of an on-watching Graham Turner. While Wolves dominated much of the possession, Shrewsbury defended well and could easily have nicked a goal themselves on the counter attack.

- Well, it had to happen at some point. The starting XI that has been crucial to our recent run of nine consecutive wins had to change, and it's not really surprising that it was Sam Ricketts who missed out. Given the way he plays the game, it's easy to forget that he's 32, a fair bit older than the rest of our outfield players. As a fullback, he's naturally going to cover a lot of ground, but he does it in high intensity bursts, which are going to take their toll. It's really frustrated me in recent weeks that Kenny Jackett hasn't made substitutions to protect players, especially when we have been so comfortable in games. I said at half time against Swindon that I'd have substituted Ricketts, especially as his replacement wouldn't have played a lot of football recently. And on that, I was more than a little surprised to see Ethan Ebanks-Landell chosen ahead of Matt Doherty. Doherty was arguably our player of the season until he got injured, and I felt that his ability on the ball would be a more natural replacement than Ebanks-Landell. 

- Shrewsbury played three central defenders, with Jermaine Grandison and Joseph Mills as wingbacks. Generally, Asa Hall and Ryan Woods sat in midfield, while David McAllister joined strikers Sam Foley and Miles Storey from midfield. Shrewsbury's formation caused us a few problems; firstly it was difficult to press effectively as Nouha Dicko was being left to deal with three defenders. If any of the attacking trident from midfield stepped forward as well, it meant they were leaving a man behind them who invariably wasn't picked up. The big issue we had was deciding who was going to pick up the wingbacks. We had a similar problem against Bristol City and it was a little frustrating to see that we hadn't been able to work on this problem in the intervening weeks. When we play a team with fullbacks and wide midfielders, there is a simple 2v2 situation down the flanks and everyone should know what they are doing. But Shrewsbury only had one wide man on each side, and we never really got it sorted whether James Henry and Bakary Sako were going to track the runs, or Scott Golbourne and Ebanks-Landell were going to step forward to engage them further up the pitch. 

- Scott Golbourne, being the more forward minded of our fullbacks often did step forward to combat Grandison, but this left a gap in behind him. Cleverly, it was often Foley who made the run from left to right in behind Golbourne. This dragged Danny Batth across out of position into a very unfamiliar left-back type position. Shrewsbury’s best first half opportunity came after one of these runs, with Batth beaten easily and a cross whipped across goal into the place Batth would have been defending. Had a Shrewsbury player have gambled on a far post run, they’d have had a tap in. 

- While Shrewsbury’s wingbacks did create problems defensively, it should also have given us overloaded flanks when we attacked. But the two wings were quite lopsided; our left wing almost became a pure battle between Golbourne and Grandison as Bakary Sako tucked inside quite a lot. Grandison played quite high up the pitch looking to stop Golbourne as soon as he got on the ball. This should have created space in behind him for Sako, but he spent a lot of time inside, nearer Dicko. On the other side, Joseph Mills played a lot deeper, more as a conventional fullback up against James Henry. This meant that Ethan Ebanks-Landell had plenty of space to move into, and directly led to our first opportunity. Sako picked the ball up narrowly, slipping the ball out to Michael Jacobs who had moved into the left hand side. Jacobs ignored Golbourne’s overlap, and instead sent a low ball across the front of the 18-yard box to the onrushing Ebanks-Landell. Ebanks-Landell picked out James Henry well with a nice cutback, but Henry was unable to keep his effort below the bar.

- That was one of the few times that Ebanks-Landell affected the game going forward. We not only missed Sam Ricketts as captain, but also his driving runs from the full back position. I couldn’t help but imagine what Ricketts would have been able to do with the space afforded to Ebanks-Landell. This isn’t supposed to be a slight against Ebanks-Landell, but he’s not a ball playing attacking fullback, and certainly doesn’t have the nous that the experienced Ricketts has. Another issue with not having Ricketts in the team is that our defence was quite lopsided in terms of ball playing. Scott Golbourne and Richard Stearman, playing on the left are far more comfortable on the ball than Danny Batth and Ebanks-Landell were on the right. Perhaps this led to James Henry, who I thought was probably our best player when he managed to get on the ball, being slightly isolated with much of our possession being directed to the left side. Danny Batth’s long balls forward continue to annoy me; his clips down the line are generally to no one in particular. I don’t understand why he needs to play these on such a regular basis. It’s almost like someone’s decided we need a defender who’s going to play hoof ball, and Batth has got that job. I’ve no issue with long passes, but I prefer them to be in the general direction of a Wolves player, and Batth’s aimless balls are almost his default setting: Get the ball, run out to the right wing and clip straight to an opposition defender.

- I don’t think anyone was particularly surprised when Ebanks-Landell was substituted approaching the hour mark (apart from the woman I was sat next to, whose inane ramblings throughout initially annoyed me, then turned quite amusing), with Matt Doherty coming on. Doherty is a better ball player than Ebanks-Landell, but didn’t really show it today. Even in the final ten minutes, I’m struggling to remember any time Doherty got to within 20 yards of the Shrewsbury goal-line, or looked remotely threatening at all. In the final twenty minutes Shrewsbury manfully defended the 18-yard line, and we had a real lack of width as Sako and Jacobs tucked inside. It was crying out for Golbourne and Doherty to really play on the overlap and stretch the Shrews’ defence. But this didn’t happen, and the best opportunities we created were from straight balls into the penalty area; first of all Kevin McDonald almost picked out Leon Clarke’s run into the penalty area, and then Doherty’s headed ball across goal was almost turned into his own net by a Shrewsbury defender. To be honest, given Shrewsbury’s lack of attacking width, I’m not sure we needed to be playing fullbacks at all. At half time I’d have been tempted to move Ebanks-Landell into the middle, and played Henry and Golbourne as wide midfielders in a 3-4-3 formation. Golbourne and Ebanks-Landell/Doherty were the players with the space, but didn’t use it well enough.

- Ebanks-Landell came on in a joint substitution, as Leon Clarke replaced James Henry. Clarke picked up that second striker position he played against Bradford City, with Jacobs and Sako nominally on the flanks. The Nouha Dicko/Leon Clarke partnership certainly needs to be developed, as I can barely remember them exchanging passes. I actually thought Dicko did reasonably well in the first half, particularly as he was effectively up against three defenders. But I wasn’t sure he was the right man for the role late on when we were trying to force a goal. Shrewsbury were defending the edge of the area, negating any possible space in behind for Dicko to exploit with his pace. But, if Dicko wasn’t the answer for this role, then Leon Clarke didn’t do anything to show that we’d have been better with him upfront as the main striker. It’s impressive to say that Clarke is the only one of Jackett’s signings that hasn’t been a success, but given Clarke’s history, it’s also the signing he will be most judged on. Clarke looked cumbersome; happy enough to lay passes off with his back to goal, but not much else. I actually would have taken off Dicko for the last 10 minutes and brought on Liam McAlinden. From what I’ve seen of McAlinden, he has good movement and may just have provided that spark needed in the dying moments. And if nothing else, it’s always worth throwing on a player against a former club, as Clarke himself demonstrated on Tuesday night.

- Worryingly, in the final 10 minutes I thought the players looked tired. There was no real snap about the players, no expectation that we’d find a winning goal. Ebanks-Landell, Doherty and Clarke aside, everyone else has played an awful lot of football over the last six months, with very little respite. For a long time today, I was thinking we weren’t in first gear because we’d played mid-week. It wasn’t until much later that I realised Shrewsbury also did, drawing at home to Crawley. Today also emphasised another thing we are lacking under Jackett – the ability to really force something to happen late on in a game. Since late winners in consecutive games against Bristol City and Swindon Town back in August, only once have we scored a decisive goal (i.e. one that either puts us upfront or equalises) after the 80^th minute, Sako’s penalty winner in the return game at Shrewsbury. Now this is obviously because in most of those games we’ve already been comfortably ahead, but in none of the games that have been in the balance have I really felt we’d push on and make the breakthrough.