Emmanuel Agbadou, the centre-back Wolves could finally be set to sign this week, looks like a strapping lad. That’s good because he’ll need biceps the size of watermelons and shoulders made of titanium given the weight of expectation that’s about to be lowered onto him.
Christmas came here and left, but in motion in motion, it is still the eve of Christmas for Vitor Pereira, who expects President Jeff Shi, sports director Matt Hobbs and perhaps even agent Jorge Mendes is to leave more gifts under the tree.
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Without desperately mandatory additions to improve a soft, slow, flexible and submissive defense OH-SI, or for a quality team, the wolves will be in the most horribly inconsistent productive. In the worst case, there is an intelligent possibility that they are relegated.
Pereira has had 4 games in the fee and his team has already gone from one excessive to another.
More specifically, the Wolves have gone from successive wins and cleaning sheets and looking for the table and smart timing to concede five goals in two games and – Oh no!- It’s Newcastle (a) and Chelsea (a) then and they started a series of seven games opposed to the groups in the more sensible 8 and Smart Lord, it’s dark and therefore so cold.
Where is the non-unusual terrain? Where is the normality and consistency and a space?
Not here. Not against Nottingham Forest.
It will be Nuno Espirito Santo, who has now won the 3 visits to Molineux since he left the club in 2021.
It had to be Morgan Gibbs-White, who embraced the role of pantomime villain with more melodrama than a washed-up Eastenders baddie.
And, of course, it is Chris Wood, who has marked 8 times opposite to the wolves in the beyond 4 years and one year.
In some ways, it was a bit of a result.
The wolves, seriously hindered the absences of Matheus Cunha, Nelson Semedo, Andre, Craig Dawson and Toti Gomes, put a dog of an XI that included 3 files and a single central center in Santiago Bueno, which they were in a position to lend last summer.
And yet, even without Cunha, they played smart things, fell for Open Forest for a defense, and created plenty of chances in the first hour to win two games, not to mention one.
If Jorgen Strand Larsen woke up on Sunday night imagining the possibilities of looking for him to present it, a free five -yard shot with the goalkeeper of his goal, a loose header of six yards and a better explosion of crossover to the right. His right foot possibly would have gone through his brain. In a genuine life, he explained the three.
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Pedro Lima, Rodrigo Gomes, and Rayan Ait-Nouri have all done their part, creating chances for quality with quality deliveries. It Wolves’ biggest force of the night, high-flying wings that took the game from the opposition. But it also their biggest weakness, as the forest appreciates the spaces left behind.
If one symbol sums up the painful inadequacies of the wolves in a really weakened backline, it was Matt Doherty, with his back on Bueno who was held back 3 meters, desperately raising his arm for the pass of Matz Guardian’s salts sent Callum Hudson-Odoi flowing. Doherty was left on an exercise, while Hudson-Odoi experienced the inevitable wooden target.
It was Forest’s moment (they probably had another one when Ait-Nouri tried a cross in the penalty area), but the first one was worse.
With the wolves on the attack and a stroke of evil gone awry, it took just one undeniable pass to lose Gibbs-White beyond the Wolves’ midfield. A wise man two later and the Wolves defense can see how they opened the scoring.
Why on earth Wolves weren’t wise to this most basic of Forest ploys, launching a counter via Gibbs-White, is pretty inexplicable.
Pereira, interesting, blamed Tommy Doyle. “Doyle lacked, playing this type of team, tactical wisdom to attribute to Joao (Gomes),” he said. “Sometimes they were on the same line, in other lines. “
Pereira also had a slight excavation, the Premier League fan for Lima’s teenagers for not having stopped Cross. The Portuguese manager has a small story to fall with the players and wonder if it was the first index of the explanation why it happens.
Anyway, for now, that’s an aside. The focus is whether he can be given any new players to potentially fall out with in the first place and, on that front, Wolves are in familiar territory: they have a manager doing his bit to show that he and the team have promise, but they need to be backed with smart additions in the transfer market.
Going above and beyond
Wolves Transfer Dealsheet: What to be expecting in the January window
Bruno Lage, Julen Lopetegui and Gary O’Neil can tell you a tale or two along those lines.
Being a horrible aspect of Leicester 4 games did not mean that the wolves went to the middle table, while wasting the third place forest does not mean that the wolves are going down.
But this was a reality check. A red warning sign. An air raid klaxon that needed to be sounded very loudly in Shi’s office.
“If we want to be fair and look at the team, we know, everyone knows, that we want positions that we want to bring players to us,” said Pereira, before echoing one of Nuno’s favorite words: “More solutions, more solutions , to deal with this league.
He wants two or three additions because he likes a small squad. Will that be enough? In a perfect world, they’d have an entirely new central defensive back line. Even if Dawson and Toti return soon, they haven’t shown the form or fitness to suggest they can keep goals out.
As a club, Wolves have chased their tail on recruitment for some time now. They took three years to buy a proper striker fit to lace Raul Jimenez’s boots. They have perennially been two, three or four players short of what the manager has wanted and needed.
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If they leave Pereira short, the consequences are obvious.
The naked facts are that they are only from the descent zone on purpose, they have a brutal series of accessories ahead, and only have the worst defense in the Premier League, but the worst in the total country. The game rate will see them admit 85 before the end of the season.
Agbadou, whose career clubs to date have read as Monastir, Eupen and Reims, may be bigger than Franco Barei in his bombshell and he would have been hard pressed to afford this.
Shi, Hobbs (and Mendes), is for you.
(Superior Photo: Wolverhampton Wanderers FC/Wolves Getty Images)
Tim Spiers is an athletics journalist based in London. He joined in 2019 after racing in the Express