My take from being at yesterday’s game was yet again, we never seem to seize the opportunity to grab hold of a game from the start and dominate the play, particularly against these so called “lesser sides”. I don’t think Wolves fans were hoping for much because up until they scored you wouldn’t have known they were there.
But, on what’s becoming a theme, we start so slowly, strolling around passing side to side and generally being quite sloppy in our passing, it’s like the energy levels of fallen off a cliff. This in turn saps the energy levels from the crowd and the atmosphere becomes flat, that transfers back to the players and heigh ho, we’ve just gone full circle.
Appreciate Udogie and Porro were missing but the overall absence of both tempo, crisp forward passing and decent movement off the ball was awful to watch. There’s a real lack of movement from the front three and it’s clear to see Bissouma and Madders are off the pace and Sonny just hugging that touchline for the majority of the game simply didn’t work. Also, I noticed a lot of our players were getting knocked off the ball very easily. Sometimes it was fouls not given by Taylor, but generally we need to be a lot stronger on the ball at times and not roll over so easily. Wasn’t good to see that.
I know some are saying opposition teams have worked us out but I’m not sure I believe that. In my opinion, we are simply not playing with the same energy levels, the tempo, the forward passing and indeed the nous that we were using earlier in the season. Yesterday, we didn’t show any of that.
I got a ticket for the Palace game, so hope Ange uses these two weeks to claw back something from earlier in the season. I really don’t want to sit through another version of yesterday’s game.