COMMENT: A confused transfer policy - but new Wolves signings help restore balance

Sometimes football is a breathtakingly simple game.

Wolves' problems this season have been pored over at great length, not least on these pages,

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Everyone of a gold and black persuasion has had their say on where Jackett, Thelwell, Moxey and Morgan have gone right or wrong.

And chief among the legitimate criticisms levelled at the quartet has been their blindspot when it came to experience in the Wolves squad.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the admirable policy to blood young talent and look to build to the future, Wolves' naivety on the pitch has been glaringly obvious.

It's all well and good buying up lower league players, or players under 25, who've played a couple of hundred matches, and calling them experienced, but in reality Wolves have had next to no 'senior pros' in their squad.

No players aged 30 or over, and very few players with top-flight experience.

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It is a method Jackett has happily (in the public domain at least) worked within, largely untroubled.

But Wolves have gone to extreme lengths to continue it of late.

Richard Stearman was of course sold for just £2m, Wolves electing instead to let the 20-year-olds Dominic Iorfa and Kortney Hause be given room to blossom and develop at centre half.

With Iorfa, as is Jackett's preference, playing at right-back, and Hause injured, that decision has proved folly, just weeks after it was enacted.

In September's away defeat to Bolton, the total number of career matches between the team was just over 1,800. Two players – David Edwards and Adam Le Fondre – accounted for almost half of that total.

Emiliano Martinez, Dominic Iorfa, Ethan Ebanks-Landell and Kortney Hause have been regulars in the Wolves defence. Between them they have made 216 career appearances.

The numbers speak for themselves.

And this is meant not to disparage the talents and undoubted potential of those young players.

It is merely a fact that, in arguably the position where experience and nous is a more important requirement than any other part of the pitch, Wolves have come up comfortably short.

Then, last week, in the biggest u-turn seen in Wolverhampton since Brian Law turned around his double-decker bus, Wolves began to redress that balance.

In the space a little over 30 hours, they added 847 games' worth of experience, in the form of Mike Williamson and Grant Holt.

And, in Williamson, what an instant difference a bit of experience made on Saturday.

The centre half, who has been there and done it with Newcastle, was magnificent on his debut, producing a man of the match display.

Good in the air, strong in the tackle, an excellent reader of the game, vocal, unruffled and organised – he was the standout player in what was, by no coincidence, Wolves' sternest rearguard action of the campaign.

While Danny Batth is a blossoming, fearless centre half and a good captain, he is arguably too young to be the most senior centre half partner in a team aiming for promotion, especially when the likes of Iorfa, Hause and Martinez are still so green.

As Batth himself said after the game: "Obviously we've added that sprinkling of experience that perhaps we've missed at times this season and I think it paid dividends."

With Williamson alongside him Wolves were compact, sturdy and hard to play through, rendering Martinez a spectator for long spells.

They had backbone. Williamson hoofed clearances into the stands, steadied the defensive line and barked orders at those around him.

Not subtle, not pretty, but, in the Championship, necessary attributes.

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It's only one match, one performance, one victory, and while Williamson was good let's not get too carried away and start comparing him to Billy Wright.

It was just a very welcome and overdue sight to see Wolves look like a proper, balanced team, perfectly executing a game plan.

Williamson's fellow new signing Holt was handed a 10-minute cameo. In him they have not only experience and nous, but also a different option who will win a few headers (as he did for James Henry's late chance, which was shortly followed by the second goal), rough defenders up and, hopefully, chip in with the odd goal, as he has throughout his career.

It all adds up to a chaotic and confused transfer approach.

Better of course that Wolves change their minds now and add a couple of wise heads, rather than pig-headedly stick to a philosophy that was taking them nowhere, in the short term at least.

You do wonder how many more points would have been accrued if Williamson, or someone of his ilk, was recruited in July, not at the end of October.

But after a befuddling period of contradictory messages and too much tinkering, perhaps Wolves' common sense, back-to-basics approach will, surprise surprise, bear fruit.