Friday, 27 April 2012

Get behind Dorus

Maybe it's a bit late to be trying to get this going, but I only thought of this when I remember that we had a game tomorrow, at Swansea.

It's rather unfortunate that the few games Dorus de Vries gets to play in the Premier League are when we are relegated and even worse, one of them is against the team's he left saying this:

"Wolves are a club with all the fundamentals in place to grow and expectations are higher than at Swansea at this moment in time."
Obviously, he's going to get his fair share of stick from the home crowd at the Liberty stadium, so I'm urging anyone who goes to get behind Dorus, in full voice! I'll leave others to get a chant going, because I'm clearly not creative enough to think of one... 

It will be a nice confident booster, not that he seems to need it. 

I was struck by the confidence he showed on his Premier League debut. His distribution was excellent, he made two excellent saves and even when he flapped at a corner he seemed confident about it! 

If Wayne Hennessey leaves in the summer, I won't be too disappointed as we have a good goalkeeper ready to come in. If not, then there will be an interesting battle to happen between the two for sure! 

Please share this with other fans heading up for our first European away game for a while! 

Saturday, 14 April 2012

Miracle day!

On the same day that Andy Carroll scored the winning goal in an FA Cup semi final for Liverpool, Wayne Hennessey and his four defenders did the seemingly impossible. 

They kept a clean sheet.

And after a tough season where we have conceded goals for fun it was quite nice to have at least one more shut out before the end of the season. 

I thought all of the back line had a pretty good game. Berra and Stearman battled hard and long, Wardy support the attack and nullified the threat of Seb 'diver' Larsson but most pleasing was the performance of Kevin Foley, returning from injury. He's had a tough season, but today showed what a class footballer he can be. Tidy on the ball, kept McLean quiet and made some important defensive headers. 

It was nice to see Anthony Forde get his third Premier League start. He looked lost at times and was shrugged off the ball too much for my liking but there were definitely glimpses of what he can offer. He came close with a good driving effort, which would have done wonders for his confidence had it gone in. 

Another youngster David Davis was one of our best players. A bit rash on the ball but strong and powerful in winning it back, which was really nice to see. Next to him in the middle was my man of the match, Karl Henry. Our captain put in a really effective performance. He did what he did best, winning it off a player in dangerous situations, reading a pass or moving the ball on to a wide player. I have a feeling clubs will come in for him in the summer and we will do well to keep him for next season. 

No doubt it was a boring game, not helped by Sunderland looking fairly disinterested at the best of times but had Fletcher's header gone in, or SEB tucked away one of his chances then it would have been deserved, and been a job well done. 

Hennessey - 7
Foley - 8
Stearman  - 7
Berra - 7
Ward - 7

Kightly - 6
Henry - 8
Davis - 7
Forde - 6

Fletcher - 7
SEB - 7

A second away point for Terry Connor, finally, and hopefully we can get some more before the season ends. Hey, maybe we can even end Manchester City's title challenge next? They've only scored ten in their last two games...

Tuesday, 10 April 2012

A small way to make up for this season

Beating Arsenal tomorrow.

Yep, sounds a pretty mental thing to say in our current form but if there's a team I have wanted to beat the most since we have been in the Premier League, it's these lot.

We've beaten Man United, Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs (twice) but the closest we have ever come to winning against Arsenal is the draw we got on boxing day, with Steven Fletcher getting the equaliser.

In fact that game summed up why I really do hate Arsenal. Like two years previously, we had a man sent off for the reaction of the Arsenal fans and players. Had Nenad Milijas made that tackle in the following game against Bolton, he would have barely had a foul given against him.

Most importantly though, it's who the majority of my friends support down south here in London. You can imagine the stick I've got over the years!

On to the game, I'm crapping myself. We've seen since Connor took over how vulnerable we are to a team who can pass the ball well, being picked apart by Fulham and Man United in humiliating thrashings.

So how do we set up for this one?

We've gone 442 in the last three outings and taken the lead in all of themm butd then gone onto lose them. I'm convinced that in this game we will go back to one up top, with two wingers and three central midfielders.

I expect that lone striker to be Steven Fletcher, but I'm hoping it will be Kevin Doyle. 'Fletch' has been anonymous in recent games and if he'd been more livelier, perhaps we could have done better in them. He's a class footballer but he's looked like his mind is somewhere else, unsurprisingly. Doyle I think would bring a bit more energy up front and perhaps more chance of holding onto the ball.

In midfield I think we will go with a trio of David Davis, Karl Henry and David Edwards. Doesn't sound very exciting, but I think it's the best we can go with. Edwards has come in for a lot of stick lately, but I think he's been performing well. He's given us movement in the middle and the desire to win the ball back. With him advanced and Davis and Henry holding, it gives our two wingers license to attack more. And if we are to have any chance of getting anything at all it will be from Kightly and Jarvis, our best two players lately.

I can see TC going with this:

Hennessey

Zubar
Stearman
Bassong
Ward

Kightly
Davis
Edwards
Henry
Jarvis

Fletcher

Anything less than three or four is a bonus, as I can really see us getting torn apart. We need to keep ourselves in the game and have a go at the centre backs, because without Koscielny they are certainly weaker at the back. Let's hope the City game on Sunday took a lot out of them!

Thursday, 5 April 2012

Is Morgan on the right track?

When I heard that Steve Morgan and Alan Curbishley didn't 'share the same views', I was mightily pissed off.

Gorman - Ten caps for Northern Ireland
Here we had the chance to get a Premier League proven manager in to rescue our season, and Morgan wanted him to bring the youth team in, instead of giving him a load of money to spend in the summer. It sounded ridiculous back then but as we get nearer and nearer to the Championship, it doesn't seem to be such a bad idea.

We've seen the likes of Matt Doherty, David Davis, Anthony Forde and Johnny Gorman all make their Premier League debuts, it doesn't stop there either. There are plenty of others, such as Zeli Ismail, Jack Price and Liam McLinden.

What caused me to write this article today were these quotes from Scunthorpe manager Alan Knill, where Jamie Reckord is on loan.

“I think he’s got the potential to go all the way,” enthused Knill. “When Mick McCarthy was at Wolves, he said they were thinking about putting Jamie in the team, to play in the Premier League.
“Then he got an injury which knocked him back, but fortunately it meant he could come to us."
 It got me quite excited, not just about him but for that fact that next season, we really should be seeing a lot of our younger players getting a chance.

Is it unrealistic to think that Danny Batth could be one of our first choice centre backs next season? Or that Matt Doherty, who has impressed whenever I've watched him, could stake a claim. Personally, I think he's better than Zubar already!

David Davis - Ready made replacement for Karl Henry
And if Karl Henry were to leave, we've already seen that David Davis can perform at the highest level. He's already shown that he has as much quality as someone like Dave Edwards (who I'm a big fan of, for the record). 

It would be silly to expect all of them to become first team players, but with the sheer amount of good young players we seem to have it's not out of the question to see three, four or five players coming through. How I'd love us to be that team who have a team full of young players brought through our youth system. Least of all, it would be quite exciting to see players playing without fear and giving it their all. 


Morgan and Moxey have come in for a lot of criticism lately (rightly so) but maybe, just maybe they are on the right track on this one.