Wolves Fans' Verdict v Ipswich: A change was needed

Adam Virgo

Losing to a last minute corner making it 15 goals conceded from set pieces already this season, our players fighting the opposition players and staff and our owners sacking Gary O’Neil four days after putting a statement out saying they support him and will give him the January transfer window to turn it around. 

The way this football club is being run is nothing short of disgraceful. 

The incompetence being shown from the top is unfathomable from any professional football club, let alone a Premier League club. 

Gary O’Neil should have been sacked after the Brentford game and how he was still in charge after the Everton defeat I will never know. We were good for a 15 minute period against Ipswich and that was after we equalised. 

The first half was extremely poor and Tommy Doyle coming on at half time made a huge difference. He has to be starting games at this current moment, he obviously cares and has quality on the ball that other midfielders in our squad don’t possess or aren’t showing. 

The first goal sums up our season, two unreal blocks and the ball bounces off Doherty and slowly rolls into net, you can’t write it. When we equalised it felt like we were going to get the winner with the pressure we were putting on but we panic in the last few minutes and end up conceding from another corner because for some reason we have zero organisation on set pieces every single time. 

Whoever takes charge next has a serious job on their hands in getting these players to fight to stay up because everything from top to bottom just seems like a complete mess at the moment. 

We all thought we turned a corner after the Fulham game but that was clearly a fluke judging by recent results, ever since Bournemouth it has gone the completely opposite direction and our players seem more interested in fighting off the pitch after the game than on it for each other.

For us to even have a chance of staying up, we are going to need something miraculous with our current situation because other teams are getting further away from us. The owners are to blame for a lot of this situation, too many mistakes have been made at the top for too long and we are now seeing the effects from all of that.

John Lalley

Sack the Head coach; that’s the easy part; it’s the next step taken to alleviate the current chaos that matters. 

Trouble is, when your own palsied inertia has been steadily charting a course to the cliff edge, surviving the fatal fall becomes a precarious business. Hesitation, vacillation and confusion abounds at Molineux right now and has done for far too long. 

Being just on the cusp of disaster deemed acceptable just as long as the ultimate drop into oblivion doesn’t submerge the club altogether. The last two games have culminated in a disintegration of control and discipline amongst some of our players indicative of the direction the club has plummeted to. 

Wolves are in disarray, lacking direction and leadership both on the pitch and off it. Utterly haywire and descending rapidly; communication lacking leaving passionate, but taken for granted supporters both bewildered and resentful. If you yearn for a spot of success, Wolves might not be the club for you. 

Makes you seethe doesn’t it? Lopetegui might not have been anywhere near as gifted as his ego tells him, but he saw exactly how the wind was blowing at this club and it was decidedly chilly. 

O’Neil, to his eternal credit, exceeded all reasonable expectations in the initial stages. He ensured that relegation was avoided despite having little or no backing regarding team strengthening and he presided over some terrific early performances, invariably with the resources stacked against him. 

He was calm, polite and dignified and it was painful to hear him speak after the defeat at West Ham saying that the one thing that disappointed him more than anything was losing the connection with the fans. 

Most football people don’t give a hoot for the supporters, but in this case, I believe O’Neil was speaking with sincerity. I’m genuinely sorry it has turned out so badly but the truth is that the appalling statistics that he has presided over last season and into this campaign stand as a damning indictment. 

Ultimately, he was simply overwhelmed by the size of the task; let down by his superiors but sadly, out of his depth. No other club in all of the four leagues in this country would have allowed such a litany of failure to continue for such a sustained period of time. 

The team has degenerated into a confused and disorganised hotchpotch, uncertain of its purpose or identity and self-destructive beyond belief. Their capacity for repeating the same catastrophic errors indicative of their chronic lack of direction. 

The Ipswich fiasco meant that even this ponderous executive couldn’t play for time any longer. The absurdity of awarding O’Neil and his staff recent four-year contracts with the team in decline is totally baffling. Truly hope over expectation in the extreme. 

This festering boil was not lanced because the executive at Molineux were convinced until the very end that O’Neil was the best man for the job. More likely is that proper contingency plans were not in place or if they were, fancied candidates were reluctant to accept the strictures likely to be placed upon them should they be appointed. 

Whoever arrives immediately or otherwise, will soon find himself operating within choking constrictions. It’s a daunting task.  The onus now is on the club; they have to accept that the fan-base still riled by vast price hikes for little or no return, don’t have much confidence in the decisions taken at board level. 

Whether anything can be retrieved from this awful mess remains to be seen; most of us aren’t holding our breath. Like most Wolves’ fans, I feel short-changed and badly let down.  

Harry Lee

Just days after Gary O’Neil was publicly backed came another loss to a relegation rival, with yet more embarrassing scenes after the final whistle.  

Very quick to praise Semedo in midweek when appointing him captain, O’Neil once again showed a lack of class and responsibility after the game, when he singled him out for blame by not dealing with the big Ipswich striker for their first goal. 

Maybe if he played Dawson, an actual centre back in that position then it may have been a different story?  And of course, another set piece goal conceded, but once again it was the players' fault, nothing to do with the corner system O’Neil puts in place.

The club have finally made the right decision sacking O’Neil, a new voice is much needed, a new manage

r bounce could be season defining. 

It now seems the club are jumping back into bed with a certain super agent, and after numerous high profile managers apparently turning us down (Potter, Moyes etc.) it seems like a wise move. 

The experienced Vitor Pereira will hopefully have enough time and funds in January to turn things around.  A few early Mendes deals could be crucial, this squad needs help, especially defensively.  

Away at Leicester next, who themselves have had their manager bounce, but are clearly weak at the back, it’s a must win, those squad players need to step up in the likely absence of both Ait-Nouri and Cunha.

Liam Berry

In what proved to be Gary O'Neil's final game as Wolves manager, a late header by Jack Taylor put the final nail in the coffin for the English manager.

Arguably, this decision should have been made months ago. For me, he should have been relieved of his duties after the Brentford away game. That defeat highlighted everything that has gone wrong for us since then, and had a decision been made after that fixture, maybe we would not have been in the mess we are in now. However, you can't change the past so there is no point dwelling on it.   

We need to focus on the fact that the next managerial appointment is arguably the most important that Fosun have had to make since their takeover in 2016. The defence has been leaking, it feels as if we're conceding two-plus goals a game, and form like that will not maintain Wolves' Premier League status.

Talking about the game, for the vast majority I thought we were terrible, with players looking like they lacked interest especially in the first half. Then Tommy Doyle came on at half time and it started to look like we could play football. I really rate Doyle, and I think he should be starting week in week out. 

Just as it looked like the players were running out of ideas, a Matheus Cunha goal sprung us back into life, and it looked like if one team were going to to go on and win it, then that team would be Wolves. However, chance after chance was missed, the adrenaline seemed to wear out and our players looked fatigued. It was another set piece that dealt us the final blow with what was pretty much the final action of the match. For me, it was a performance from a team that had lost their belief in the direction they were going, so it was obvious a change was needed.

With Vitor Pereira emerging as the front runner to take over, serious backing will be needed in January to give him a fighting chance for the remainder of the season.

Clive Smith

It still feels pretty raw at the moment to be honest. When will the bleeding stop, his many scars do we have to take? It is hurting big time.

Those happy away days at Brighton and Fulham are fading memories. While at home, someone needs to pull up the drawbridge while we sort out Fortress Molineux. JLo did that two seasons ago, so we know it is possible.

Lightening can strike twice... we saw that as Ipswich broke our hearts at the death as City had done a while ago when they were still good. Again it was a corner. It felt like every corner we had, that got past the first defender, was comfortably plucked from the air by their keeper.  Coaching manual page 1. Option 1, catch it. Option 2 punch it clear. God it is oh so annoying. 

God it is oh so annoying part 2 is defending the ball over the top. Toti messed it up against Bournemouth, today it was Semedo.  

Repeating these basic errors is killing us and ruining so many weekends. Just after conceding though we carved out an opening, from a rare successful press, only for Bellegarde to hit the back of row Z instead of the net. What a chance. What a miss.

The predictable half time rotation brought a slight change to the game with more quicker and forward passes  from Doyle who replaced a tired looking Andre. It was still a struggle though, and with the Ipswich mindset more on 'what we have we keep' (highlighted by their keeper falling on the ball and staying there for ages in the 54th minute), but at least the ball was more in their half than ours.

It was hardly after prolonged pressure when our equaliser arrived, but most welcome just the same. The score improved and the mood lightened and we had our best twenty minutes of the game. 

As usual, the introduction of Guedes fresh legs brought something extra up top and Larsen nearly converted his excellent cross. A come-from-behind win would have been such a tonic. Instead the 2-1 reverse is yet another body blow that we need to recover from. Those contrasting emotions were clear to see at the final whistle. As I initially said, it hurts, it hurts because it matters, it hurts a lot and being in close proximity to those feeling so different is not a good place to be.

Let's hope our fortunes change for the better next week.

Matt Gallimore

Finally!

Better late than never, but eventually, finally, we make a decision to fire Gary O'Neil.

It's been long overdue in my opinion. The numbers don't lie. In the last 29 games we have W3 D5 L21. He has the lowest win percentage of any manager under Fosun, haemorrhaging goals every week and acts of ill discipline each game of late, showed a clear indication that he had lost control of the dressing room.

The fact it has taken this long is of complete surprise to us all. Some might say the loyalty and faith shown in O'Neil by the club is admirable but I see it as giving him a few extra games that we needed to get points from, that now puts us further in the mire. He should have been gone weeks and weeks ago.

It looks quickly like Fosun, or possibly Jorge Mendes, have found their man in Vitor Pereira. Of this guy I don't know much about, but let's be honest, even the tea lady could have done better than Gary O'Neil, and certainly not any worse.

We need to give him chance, support him and hope he can galvanise this team. I have said for months now that I believe this group of players to be better than what they have shown thus far. That is the main hope I have left, that VP can go in, organise, coach and install the belief and confidence that we require to start fulfilling our potential. We have good footballers, but as we all know, confidence is huge in football and Saturday's game clearly showed a total lack of it running through the side.

Another positive for me regarding this appointment is the clear evidence that Fosun and Jeff Shi have gone above Matt Hobbs to make this decision. I have been a big critic of Hobbs and his decisions whilst in the sporting director role. With the failed attempt to appoint Michael Beale, to the appointment of GON, the lack of signing a centre back we so clearly needed, and then to sign Sam Johnstone instead, shows me more than enough that he is out of his depth and he is another that needs replacing. If the involvement of Jorge Mendes is true in this new managerial appointment, then I'm all for it. The strategy of placing faith in the super-agent might not have always worked out well, but more than not he has provided us with players that would have previously been out of our reach. Hopefully he will help us in January, to sign the extra quality that's needed.

For now, the main emphasis is primarily survival and that is all that must be concentrated on, but going forwards if we do manage to achieve that, we must start to look at the bigger picture of where this club is going. The 'self-sufficient ' model is clearly not working and it must be looked at in the future. If Fosun are not prepared to spend to keep moving forwards, then it's best that they look for someone who will.

That can wait until the summer though. For now, we must all get behind the new man in charge and do everything we can to keep our top-level status.