Wolves Fans' Verdict v Brentford: A poor day at the office

Clive Smith

Our team sure know how to ruin our weekend. Positives? Well it was only 0-2. I can't think of anything else. It reminded me of the painful 0-4 Burnley TV watch last season. We knew exactly how the opposition would play yet we had no answer. It did not look like we had done our homework. We were second best all over the pitch.

Yes, we can say the referee was poor and rarely looked in control. There was (plenty of) time wasting, cheating, game management from Brentford too, but our poor performance was the telling factor.

Defensively we were done for pace time and time again. The ball was played through midfield with embarrassing ease.

In attack I wonder if the heart is ruling the head regarding Jimenez. Good for him to be getting minutes under his belt, but after five games he has shown very little form. At times the game is passing him by. Playing him for 90 minutes seems counter productive.

We have come up against Vardy, Son, Greenwood and Toney who have all significantly out performed our number nine.

At times, particularly in the opening quarter of the game, we had some good moves, nearly always involving Marcal. They failed to create many attempts on goal however. Traore worked hard in possession frequently beating several defenders but finding a gold shirt in the box remains a challenge. He was again our best player and again came the closest to scoring. At times his crosses were wasteful but others were in the right area. Having so few colleagues in the box is why our goals tally is so poor and why his number of assists is not what it should be.

Neves and Moutinho venture into the area too infrequently and Semedo was more withdrawn than at Watford. That often meant, especially in the first half, a cross had just two Wolves players, surrounded by half a dozen defenders, to aim for.

Bruno shuffled his pack as best he could. Not sure I have even seen us go from five at the back, to four, to three then to two. Yet still our forwards could not find the net. Traore, Trincao and Kilman swapped wings as well but even against ten men nothing worked.

The crowd fluctuated between shock, disappointment and frustration. It was a poor performance, no doubt, but the vocal negativity from the home fans is unlikely to encourage or help.

Rob Cartwright

Well I never expected this result or the under-par performance by Wolves.

We never really imposed any sort of authority over the game. The first 20 minutes was quite similar to Watford, last week, so I was still confident but the penalty really knocked us.

No one was clear why it was given, inside the stadium. You see this every game with corners and it’s the first time I’ve seen a penalty awarded for it.

The quick second goal was a killer blow. It was a great counter attack but woeful defending with Kilman, Saiss, Coady and Marcal all involved. Kilman should have stopped it before the cross to concede a simple throw-in. The other three defenders had one man to mark. Woeful.

I felt we were still in the game, but clearly needed to score the next goal. Traore was unplayable, at times, but his final ball was lacking (still) whether it was a shot or a cross.

He had bad luck with a rocket shot which was deflected onto the bar off a defenders boot.

Trincao had a good first half, but faded quickly in the second. We had lots of possession but created little. Lage used his subs and it seemed he took off a defender/midfielder for a striker each time.

We went from five at the back, to four, then three and ended the game with two, I’m sure!

We still couldn’t trouble the Brentford keeper. Why he needed to take an age to change his gloves mid play I’ll never know? He’d hardly used the pair he had on!!!

Podence made a difference and deserves a place, but who does he replace? I’m not sure.

Shameful of the referee to fall for the time wasting tactics that were evident from the 50th minute. Players were feigning injury every few minutes. At one point, four Brentford players were on the floor with none having been part of a challenge.

All designed to break up Wolves momentum and it worked. The red card on 64 minutes should have given us time to seize the game, but made little difference in honesty.

Any other season and a Jimenez header would have got us back in with a chance, but he headed wide and promptly threw his head protector on the sidelines. He’s looking a frustrated figure but we must stick with him; one goal will make all the difference.

My man of the match was Neves. He was looking for the ball and setting up all our passages of play. No faulting his desire, battling or creativity. We did get the ball wide but too often there were insufficient players in their box for the cross, in the first half.

The second half became frantic and disorganised as the clock ticked with Wolves frustrated by time wasting.

A game to forget.

Southampton is now a very important league game, but first the little matter of our cup run continuing and a chance to get Brentford out of our system.

John Lalley

Moments before the interval, Romain Saiss received the ball unchallenged midway in Brentford’s half of the field. Inexplicably, he aimlessly hoofed the ball in the direction of Bushbury crematorium and looked puzzled at the nonsense he had just indulged himself in.

It summed up our afternoon; Saiss was withdrawn at half-time but he was far from being the only culprit. Bruno Lage was spoilt for choice; he wasn’t here last season, but for those of us who were, this was an uncomfortable throw-back to the grim final days of Nuno’s regime.

Ponderous and hesitant, over reliant on Traore to fashion a glimmer of a chance, panic-stricken and haphazard under pressure and simply second best in every area of the pitch, this was an all too familiar scenario played out by a recognisable list of characters so many of whom have responded so similarly so often. There was no semblance of the refreshing approach that Bruno seemed to have initially instilled; just a slide towards the inevitable embarrassment, devoid of ideas with no inkling it seemed in how to break down Brentford’s rigid organisation.

Baptiste’s sending off provided a half-hour lifeline but Wolves simply degenerated still further; the numerical advantage counted for absolutely nothing and frankly, the final whistle couldn’t arrive a moment too soon.

The frustration was compounded by Brentford’s brazen cynicism in taking time-wasting and mickey-taking to quite stratospheric proportions. That isn’t their problem, it’s the responsibility of the referee and the hapless Mr. England was about as decisive as a politician trying to prevent bogus boat trips in the English Channel.

You just had to see the funny side; risible beyond all comprehension, Raya in the Brentford goal was allowed to delay a free-kick he was taking himself so that a new pair of gloves could be laboriously delivered to him on the field of play. Astonishing that the pristine pair was required given that the old gloves hadn’t been called upon previously to make a single save! Just another ruse to waste time with the referee looking on benevolently. Little wonder that Jose Sa in the Wolves’ goal shook his head in astonishment when only six minutes of stoppage time was announced.

It’s cheating the spectator, but that’s nothing new.

Brentford were deserved winners the bitter pill all the more difficult to swallow given the monumental contribution from the outstanding Ivan Toney who slipped through our fingers a while ago. There’s much to be said for good recruitment.

Adam Virgo

Very disappointing considering how well we’ve played in the previous games. We were poor in every area on the pitch and Brentford could have beaten us by three or four on another day.

Silly individual errors cost us big time in the first half. Up until the penalty there wasn’t too much in it but no idea what Marcal was thinking when they had the corner. He literally grabbed Toney around the waist and pulled him down, our players had the nerve to protest it but it was a clear penalty.

How we then concede instantly from our own kick off is beyond me, luckily it was disallowed for hand ball. We never really recovered from it and Brentford punished us. A catalogue of errors, Ivan Toney got past far too easily and how Bryan Mbuemo had acres of space at the back post is unbelievable.

I was more surprised at how very little we offered after they went down to 10 men. With added time we had 30 minutes and didn’t do anywhere near enough. Zero shots on target in the whole game when we had six attackers on the pitch at one point is worrying for sure.

Neves taking a shot from 25 yards at the end of the game summed it up for me, those are the type of things we should have been doing long before. We didn’t test David Raya all game.

A lot of players weren’t at it for whatever reason. Jimenez being out for so long is going to have an effect and we seem overly reliant on him in terms of he’s playing 90 minutes every game even when he’s not playing well. We need goals to come from somewhere and it needs to be soon otherwise we’re just not going to win that many games.

We really need to improve in these upcoming games, Southampton and Newcastle are two teams we ideally need to beat, especially if we want to progress and finish in a respectable position this season.