Wolves Fans' FA Cup Verdict v Brentford: A resilient display

Clive Smith

It’s often said you learn more from a defeat. Well, we were not beaten (except by the ref who seemed uneven handed on a few decisions), but it did feel like we learnt plenty about our squad.

Two players in particular. Tommy Doyle for one put in a MOTM performance. All the more impressive because, unless he had an earpiece with Mario shouting in his ear, he had no-one alongside him to lean on. Yet, at times, it seemed he was controlling midfield. Whatever the fee is to make his loan a permanent deal, its a no-brainer to take it up.

Far less obvious was the performance of Bellegarde who equally ran himself into the ground. Nothing very pretty about his effort but he helped the team paper over the cracks after losing a man inside 10 minutes.

That incident certainly put a dampener on the mood in the away end. Optimism based on our visit last week and the last few results took a knock as the difficulty of our task became apparent.

Missing Hwang, Lemina and Ait-Nouri had already meant our squad was exposed.

Despite the majority of possession being with Brentford we stayed in the game until just prior to the break. An unfortunate ricochet led to us going behind.

Few would have expected we could rescue the game but a corner routine just after the hour saw Doyle hit the back of the net with a lovely controlled shot. Belief then flowed on the pitch and in the stands and having a man short only really showed when we tried to retain possession in the attacking third. Chances were scarce but with Neto on from early in the half we had a legitimate threat.

In the end, we deserved what we got, a chance to go again and being still in the cup. I’ve name checked a couple of players already but Sa, Kilman and Cunha all seemed to lead by example in their own way. Many teams would have given up the ghost going a man and a goal down but this squad are made of sterner stuff and deserve a huge amount of credit.

Robbie Meakin

The magic of the FA Cup looked to have disappeared after 41 minutes of Friday night’s trip back to Brentford, following Joao Gomes’ red card, Mikkel Damsgaard escaping punishment for a stamp on Tommy Doyle and Neal Maupay making it 1-0.

However, a solid team performance and an absolute beauty from Tommy Doyle helped secure a replay at Molineux.

The fixture was a key example of the togetherness that Gary O’Neil has embedded within the pack. I, for one, had written us off and how glad I am that I was made to eat my words. It would have been easy to buckle, switch to damage limitation and play for pride, but that’s not in O’Neil’s locker. We’re seeing that ‘never say die’ attitude that we previously saw under Nuno.