Wolves Fans' Verdict v Leeds: Wolves in huge trouble after shocking defeat

Cameron Smith

Home games against Leeds are the kind Wolves must win to stay in the Premier League. Falling seven points behind them at this stage is deeply concerning.

What stings most is the manner of defeat. After a bright start, Wolves simply let Leeds dictate play. 

The goals conceded were soft and careless - the kind that make a side look out of its depth in the top-flight.

Everyone knows Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s threat in the air, yet Jayden Bogle was given acres of space to cross for the opener.

The second came from another moment of naivety, gifting Leeds a free-kick in a dangerous area.

By full-time, Wolves looked beaten in every sense - heads dropped, energy gone, confidence shot. Five games in, this already feels like a team staring at relegation.

The bigger issue is a lack of goals. Fer Lopez was the only spark in the first half, but his withdrawal left Wolves relying on hopeful Hugo Bueno deliveries to Strand Larsen or Tolu - a plan that never troubled a resolute Leeds defence that looked comfortable defending a two-goal lead.

Supporters pay extortionate prices to watch this, and like many others, I can’t help but question every day whether renewing my season ticket was the right call.

Harry Lee

Where do we go from here?  Fresh from the signing of a new three year deal, Pereira spoke about being united as one, suffering together with the ambition to make the supporters proud.  The timing of the extension to Pereira’s contract could not be worse, with his words clearly falling on deaf ears with the players at least. 

Despite the bright opening to the game with a very well worked goal, the Wolves XI once again was impacted by the amount of changes made, a lack of understanding between players is very telling. No patterns of play seem to exist and you’d struggle to find a Wolves who could describe our style of play (other than lumping it in the second half). 

The lack of leadership is clear to everyone, right from the top with Jeff Shi - handing the reigns to Pereira, allowing him to bring in Teti to oversee an utterly shambolic transfer window.  

Pereira is ultimately selecting the team however, with Agbadou seemingly undropable despite the numerous goal conceding mistakes he’s made in every Premier League game so far. Despite dominating the ball all second half we’d took our most creative player off at the break in Fer Lopez. The lack of any winger in the squad is painful to watch in these sorts of games, with no ability to beat a man Wolves simply struggle to open up a game. 

With Spurs and Brighton up next in the league, you struggle to see where the next point comes from. The Derby County record low points total seems genuinely at risk right now.  

The calls for going all in for Nuno will amplify, but why would he want to take this step down from his recent successes? Jeff Shi went public stating Nuno was lucky at his time with the club, but there’s one thing for sure Jeff would be the lucky one to have Nuno at Wolves for a second term.

Matt Gallimore

Make no bones about it, we are in serious trouble. That performance was a disgrace and is the culmination of years and years of neglect, bad management and lack of ambition. That ultimately starts with Jeff Shi and Fosun.

For years now it has become the Fosun 'blueprint' to sell the best players, take an age to recruit replacements putting us on the back foot before the season's begun, hence the poor start every season, replace the manager, spend in January to save our Premier League status, and then rinse and repeat.

The fact is that this season is different! In previous struggles we knew we had players good enough to get us out of the predicament we were in. It is quite evident to us all that that is no longer the case. I could name maybe three players at a stretch in that team that would be of any value to any other team. The rest are runners, lacking in footballing ability. They might be able to run and give effort but, in this league, you need so much more. It takes quality footballers who can create, excite and take their chances. They are the difference between Premier League teams and Championship teams.

All of this stems from the owners and a chairman who has proven has absolutely no idea about how to run a football club. The Bruno Lage, Julen Lopetegui and Gary O'Neil situations should have been something to learn from, but nope, after only accruing one point from the last possible 27, we go and give Vitor Pereira a new three-year deal. You literally cannot make it up. 

In the bigger picture this is not so much about VP, but he has to face consequences for the performances his team is putting out, not rewarded for it!

He stated he wants tall, physical, athletic players but as I said earlier the biggest attribute a player can have in this league, whether he is 5ft, lightweight or slow, is footballing ability and I don't see much of that on display. 

Sa has had enough chances and should be dropped. As much as I don't rate Johnstone, he now deserves a run of games. Toti shouldn't be on the pitch never mind captain. Agbadou is finally showing why at the age of 27 no one snapped him up before. Bellegarde and Munetsi are just not up to this level. Is it only us fans who can see this?!

And then there's the newly recruited players. They might need time but Arias, Fer Lopez, Wolfe, Tolu, all showing signs that they are inferior to the players they were signed to replace.

Before the season started I believed this was the year it caught up with us and after what I have seen thus far I haven't seen a worse side than us. 

It's painful to see the way the club has gone. From the heady heights of the Europa League to the quality that was running though our side. This 2025 version isn't a shadow on what we had previous. I reckon Joao Moutinho would still do a better job in midfield than what we have now.

It's going to take a massive upturn in fortunes to reverse this decline and survive. Getting onto the phone to Nuno would be a good start. He is there waiting for the call and I'm certain if it was offered it, he would crawl back to Molineux to come home. 

But yeah, Mr Shi has just rewarded our manager with a new deal instead. Brilliant idea!

Clive Smith

There is no place to hide - that was an extremely disappointing result. Yet, for 30 minutes, as at Newcastle, there was high hopes. We'd scored a neat goal and it was nice to be winning. Indeed, it was quite enjoyable, the pre-match nervousness had temporary subsided.

15 minutes later, the half ended,  and I almost felt like crying. By then the game had gone and there was still the depressing second half to witness. VP made changes and we had a few chances, but any thoughts of turning the game around were not there.

Finding positives is quite a challenge, but Krejci was our most impressive player by a long way. In a warped way, thankfully the score didn't get any worse. That's it though - as positive as I can be.

We are as far away as we can be from knowing what our starting XI should be. VP might have a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C, as he juggles the squad, but what we need most of all is a better Plan A. We can't pick the team by committee, but if we did, surely over 90 per cent of us would include Andre  wouldn't we? Why VP has not started him in two of our five games puzzles me.

Apportioning blame is rarely a rewarding process unless it highlights where improvement might be found. Johnstone had played well last week and it would have been no surprise had he retained his place. However, Sa got the nod and he should have done better on all three goals, being caught off his line on the first and failing to block the other two shots that were close enough to him.

It might be time (if it hadn't been previously) to take Agbadou out of the firing line. His confidence must be being destroyed as he constantly sees his mistakes being directly to blame for us conceding goals. Finding our best back five is imperative. Keeping clean sheets would buy us time to help Lopez, Arias and Arokodare settle and contribute more.

VP still has time to sort it, we are only one point worse off than this time last season, so all is not lost.

John Lalley

Catastrophic; pointless deluding ourselves, this flimsy effort simply confirms all of our worst fears.

A good start totally wasted, Leeds submissively allowed to dictate possession and stretch Wolves particularly on our right flank with the outcome increasingly inevitable. And yet again, another horrendous individual error ensured that the game was out of our reach by half-time. 

Leeds were light years ahead of us regarding ball-retention, singularity of purpose and overall quality. Outnumbered in midfield, chaotic in defence and blunt in attack, Wolves were barely competitive. 

Leeds bullied us in the first-half and comfortably sat on their laurels after the interval repelling our response with effortless ease. Apart from a couple of reasonable efforts from the willing Munetsi, we again looked devoid of method and enterprise; by the end, our intended formation was unfathomable. 

We finished in disarray; humiliated by a team likely to endure a tough campaign themselves. 

Wholly out of context with the performance was the excellent construction and execution of our goal. Krejci finished well and overall, he was one of the few positives on offer, competitive and aware with a modicum of vision. 

That we failed so miserably to build upon that initial boost was hugely frustrating. No inclination to push for a second, more a hold what we have outlook when we are the worst team in this league to adopt such a mentality given our propensity for self-inflicted wounds. This was awful; early it may be but we are in dire trouble.    

Adam Virgo

An absolutely despicable performance and right now, this team have no desire or fight to even try and stay in this division. 

Leeds hadn’t scored an open play goal in the league this season before this game, they’d only scored one goal and it was a penalty but we get comfortably turned over 3-1 by them and Jeff Shi wants fans to believe we have a good squad. 

I honestly don’t see anything but relegation this season, I know last season we started terribly but the three promoted teams that went down were a lot worse than the three promoted sides this time around. We need an absolute miracle to even get close to finishing 17th at this rate. 

I do not understand how we can go 1-0 up, start the game like we did and then just sit back and offer absolutely nothing. The goal we scored was brilliant football and then we were scared to attack anymore. Another cross conceded, shock. Another Jose Sa and Agbadou mistake, shock. Another home game conceding three goals, shock.

Krejci is comfortably the best player out of those signings and it’s still early doors for Tolu but if you get him the ball he can link up play well as proved with the first goal. 

Some of the crosses into him and Larsen at times were diabolical and it wasn’t working. Fer Lopez has been impressive in the spells he’s had but was poor in this game. 

I love Vitor Pereira for what he did last season and I’m not suggesting he should be sacked right now but to have given him a three year contract days before this game looked strange at the time but looks absolutely ridiculous now.