Five talking points from Brighton 1 Wolves 0

Sam Baldock's 14th-minute header was enough for the Seagulls to take all three points at the Amex Community Stadium.

Walter Zenga's team were second best for long spells but were unfortunate not to claim a late point after creating several chances during six minutes of injury time.

Wolves correspondent Tim Spiers picks out five talking points from another disappointing result.

Another poor start

That's four games in a row now that Wolves have conceded inside the first 15 minutes.

Wigan, Norwich, Villa and Brighton have all caught them cold, adding to Huddersfield and Rotherham earlier in the season to make it six sides that Wolves have given an early head-start to.

Zenga insisted it wasn't a problem, preferring to bemoan Wolves' luck that their opponents were regularly scoring with their first attack.

But it can't be a coincidence that in just shy of half their league games so far they've conceded an early goal.

Wolves are giving themselves too much to do and, for all their admirable attacking approach and rousing second-half comebacks, the message on Saturday has got to be to keep it simple, calm and tight in the first 15 minutes.

Tuesday hoodoo

Another statistical sore point is that Wolves have picked up just one point from their four Tuesday matches this season (the drab 0-0 home draw with Ipswich in August).

Since then they've lost to Barnsley (0-4), Wigan (1-2) and now Brighton, plus you can throw the Newcastle EFL Cup loss into the mix as well.

Again, is this just a coincidence? Or are Wolves failing to recover properly from their Saturday exertions?

With a first-team squad of around 25, Zenga certainly isn't short of options should he choose to freshen things up.

The boss was rightly accused of too much squad rotation when he made seven, five and five changes for the games against Burton, Barnsley and Newcastle. Since then he's stuck to a pretty much the same XI barring a few alterations here and there.

But surely this game, after the energy expended in a frantic second half at Villa on Saturday evening, called for more than one fresh face? Especially seen as that change saw Nouha Dicko come in for his first start in 14 months (Zenga admitted he only planned to give Dicko an hour).

It wasn't that Wolves were necessarily physically tired here, but they did seem mentally tired.

Careless mistakes were made at the back, and going forward they were short of ideas against an admittedly stubborn and well-drilled Brighton defence.

Brighton the template

Chris Hughton's team are everything Wolves aspire to be.

They're organised, disciplined and well-drilled. Each player knows his role and they've got familiar partnerships all over the pitch, but they also possess creativity and flair going forward.

The Seagulls have finished in the play-offs for three of the past four seasons and look set to be one of the teams to beat again this season.

In contrast, the 'new' Wolves have been together only two and a half months.

That puts into context the incredibly tough job Zenga has this season. It's not just about signing 12 players of decent quality and throwing them into a squad.

Team cohesion is absolutely vital in any league, least of all the Championship, and Wolves just aren't at that stage yet.

That's why Zenga deserves patience as he bids to mould a coherent and consistent winning team.

But in the meantime (and by Jeff Shi's timescale that means by Christmas) Wolves do, in stating the obvious, need to be picking up more points.

Yes they're still only four off the play-offs, despite only earning one point out of a possible 12, but they're also only five off the drop zone.

With Leeds, Blackburn, Derby and Preston next up they'll be hopeful of a decent haul of points to lift them towards the top six.

After the poor run they've just had, they should be looking for at least eight points from those games.

Hard done by?

"This night I can say we had hard luck," Zenga said after the game. "I don't like to use this word but I think it's there for everybody that we can score and we can draw the game."

Wolves could certainly count themselves unfortunate not to have netted in those frantic six minutes of injury time.

Danny Batth and Helder Costa both produced good saves before Ivan Cavaleiro's flick-on somehow evaded everyone in the six-yard box in the last action of the game.

But overall, looking at the whole 96 minutes, Wolves weren't unlucky to lose.

In fact on the balance of play they were lucky to be only 1-0 down.

While it's understandable that Zenga doesn't want to criticise his players, it's a bit of a kick in the teeth for the 800 or so fans who travelled the best part of 200 miles to watch their team outplayed for the most part, only to hear their boss say there was no difference between the two sides.

Wolves fans like a spade to be called a spade. There was absolutely no shame in losing to a very experienced and hard-to-break-down Brighton side, but the boss needs to start telling it how it is, otherwise he'll lose respect and support from the Wolves faithful.

Old guard hastily snubbed?

It's a lot to ask of the likes of Romain Saiss, Prince Oniangue, Helder Costa, Joao Teixeira, Jon Dadi Bodvarsson and Ivan Cavaleiro to slot straight into a new team, a new league and a new country and expect them to produce consistent performances week and week.

Quite frankly, it's not going to happen. And to rely to heavily on these new signings might not be the wisest of moves.

Players like Jack Price, Jed Wallace, George Saville and Joe Mason have barely stepped on the pitch in the past few weeks, while Conor Coady was strangely left out of the side for a while. Perhaps they've been dispensed with a bit too readily.

After all, Wolves made a positive and unbeaten start to the season with these guys still in and around the team.

Blues were convincingly beaten 3-1 on their own turf with only Bodvarsson of the new signings in the starting line-up.

This wasn't a disastrous defeat by any means, and Wolves did well to compete with the hosts and keep the game competitive on what was a tough night.

But if results aren't up to scratch, Zenga needs to start making better use of his squad.