Wolves Fans' Verdict v Brighton: A 10-minute capitulation

Rob Cartwright

We arrived full of expectation, after such a good performance five days before.

Brighton are our “bogey team” but with Silva starting we felt this could be the day.

How wrong were we.

To be fair, the score does not reflect the game. We matched them in the first half and should have gone in 2-1 up at half time. Silva and Ait-Nouri both had good chances to score. Mitoma glided past four defenders to score a fantastic goal. Our build up play was good and we were creating chances. The same old issue prevails, we create but cannot score.

I don’t know what was said at half time or whether tactics were changed but we came back out a changed team; for the worse. In the next nine minutes, Brighton simply tore us apart. The defence collectively lost their heads and sense of position.

With Southgate watching, I don’t expect Kilman to get a call anytime soon. The same thing happened last time he came!

Dawson, Kilman and Semedo may as well have stayed in the dressing room for the good they did in this nine minutes. These were fairly basic through balls/long balls even, yet we didn’t even get close to dealing with them. March couldn’t believe his luck as he entered the box twice with time and space to receive the ball and score. Game over.

Wolves continued to huff and puff and created more chances. A hit bar and a couple more misses before Hwang headed in from a corner.

Nunes was my man of the match, but he also gets the Idiot Award.

The referee (who was excellent by the way) had already booked four players for obstructing play/time wasting when Nunes did the same on 76 minutes. He was fortunate to not get another card for a similar offence 10 minutes later. It would be sensible to sub him off at this point. He was showing frustration and in the 95th minute with a bit of push and shoving he was sent off.

He’s been in good form so to lose him for the Everton game is a big loss.

My only hope is that Guo Guangchang and Jeff Shi spend plenty of time talking with Paul Barber about how to run a success football club, because right now it looks like they have little idea.

Clive Smith

‘Brighton are a damn good side, better than half of the Big six....watching recordings of Brighton would also be a good learning experience. They have my respect and admiration.

Sa looked petrified everytime he had the ball, playing it short constantly made retaining possession a challenge, while going long never gave anyone a chance.’

Recognise that? Its a cut & paste from my last Brighton report!

The comments are just as applicable this time around as the Brighton press often left us struggling to progress. When we did though, the risk of a turnover left us vulnerable with their pace. Mitoma did a ‘knife through butter’ impersonation when any number of our players failed to make a significant challenge. They had further opportunities to score but we had opportunities too. Both Silva and Ait-Nouri got behind their defence but failed to beat the keeper.