Wolves v Luton: Gary O’Neil ready to write-off a bad day at the office

Their manager Rob Edwards was seen enjoying a chat with Wolves’ sporting director Matt Hobbs on Wednesday night at Molineux as he watched Bournemouth get the better of O’Neil’s men.

And he will be the man trying to outwit the Wolves boss as Luton aim to keep their hopes of Premier League survival alive.

For the hosts, they will be looking for an immediate reaction to that defeat on Wednesday after a really poor performance in front of their home crowd.

O’Neil says his players have plenty of ‘credit in the bank’ after what he describes as a successful season so far before warning that does not mean standards can drop.

“I have spoken to the players and I will be looking at my part in it, and I think we all need to,” he said reflecting on Wednesday. “We have had an incredibly successful season with the issues that the club has faced.

“To have gone through the last six games training with 10 outfield players and managing to put in a competitive performance for six games and to beat Fulham.

“Some of the results we have had over the course of this season, the lads have a lot of credit in the bank, but that doesn’t mean we can accept what they produced.”

The result means Wolves have now gone seven games without a win across all competitions – but the most concerning part was the lacklustre display.

And O’Neil says sometimes you have days where you are off the pace.

“Tricky one really. You have days where people are below the level,” he added.

“We had a lot obviously. Falling over, slipping over, the ball going under the foot, misplacing passes – it was a really strange first-half performance.

“Obviously, Bournemouth are in a good spot. If you look at what their front three were able to give them in an attacking sense, they were far more dangerous than what we were able to produce.

“They were really direct as we thought they would be and we weren’t able to cope – and if you are going to play against a team that does that you need to be able to handle the ball, and we did not reach a level that was anywhere near good enough.

“No excuses for it. Joao (Gomes) was probably below his normal level for us. He has played an awful lot and put an awful lot into the Arsenal game.”

Wolves will want to make sure they cannot be accused of being ‘on the beach’ by supporters.

Personal pride and finishing as high as they possibly can is the only thing they have left to play for this campaign – something most Wolves fans would have been happy with at the start of the campaign.

They need to make sure they finish the season on a high.