It was an all to similar feeling to find ourselves two nil down inside the first twenty minutes. Fortunately though, that was the only real similarity to our season under Mick, as we played some pleasing stuff.
I was impressed with the team selection too. Zubar, Stearman and Berra came into the defence and added some much needed pace at the back, dealing with Ba and Cisse well. Zubar in particular was superb, giving us much needed energy going forward but also defensive stability.
I was just glad to see us play 4-5-1 too, and Kevin Doyle playing up front. He'd obviously been instructed to play more central and be more of a goal threat, and that he was as he got into some great positions and probably should have had more than just the one goal. Too often we've seen him out wide, playing for throw ins but yesterday he looked confident.
With Karl Henry back, and Roger Johnson dropped (correctly, in my opinion) it was a real surprise to see Stephen Ward named as captain. I thought the likes of Kevin Foley and Christophe Berra might be ahead of him but there isn't a player who deserves it more. He put in a good performance, winning some great tackles and making one important block. He almost got a goal too, but his snatched at it a bit with his right foot.
Hennessey - 8Zubar -8
Stearman - 7
Berra - 7
Ward - 7
Foley - 7
Henry - 7
Edwards - 7
O'Hara - 6
Jarvis - 7
Doyle - 8
That is six games unbeaten away from Molineux, an impressive feat to say the least. We have an away trip to Craven Cottage before a HUGE home game against Blackburn, and who's to say we can't get something from both of those games?
Our new manager managed to do some successful adjustments. Some times we played very direct, at other times we played sideways, in periods our passing game went really fast, and in periods we played long ball. Wolves played a variety of styles. As times goes by and TC gets more time with the team, I suspect we'll see his fingerprints all over even more. At last I want to say that his substitions were very sensible. It was exciting to see Kightly play behind Doyle. And if he had runned directly towards their goal on the break on some occasions, without hesitating, I'm sure he would have runned through on a clean goal. It would at least have been fun to see him try. I really hope he will develop our counter attack game. And I believe playing Kightly behind Doyle was an attempt to do exactly that, in a situation were Newcastle chased the game for a winning goal.
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