WITHYesterday's home defeat to Brentford means Wolves have just two points from 17 games. No team in the history of the English Football League, in any division, has had a worse start than this one. To score 11 points, a record low for Premier League the season established by Derby County in 2007–08 will require significant improvement.
How could this happen? Wolves finished 16th last season, recovering from a dismal start. When Vitor Pereira took over on December 19 last year, they were in second place with nine points from 16 games. They took 23 points from their final 22 games of the season and effectively ended any prospect of relegation with a run of six straight wins in the spring. How can a team go from scoring enough points per game to a tenth of that? The fall is extraordinary.
There were sackings in the summer: Matheus Cunha moved to Manchester United, Ryan Ait-Nouri moved to Manchester City, Fabio Silva was sold to Borussia Dortmund, Gonzalo Guedes went to Real Sociedad, and Pablo Sarabia and Nelson Semedo (they made 115 league appearances last season) remained free. But that alone was not enough to send Wolves into free fall.
However, last summer was not a one-off. Wolves have been selling off talent and barely replacing them for a couple of years now. Pedro Neto, Maximilian Kilman and Mario Lemina left the team in the previous season. Matheus Nunez, Ruben Neves and Nathan Collins played the previous season. A team can tolerate a certain level of decline for a while, but there comes a point when critical mass is reached. This has less to do with the quality of the lineup per se, although that clearly plays a role, and more to do with a sense of decline.
Matt Doherty, looking distraught after Saturday's game, said it was time for the players to decide whether history would judge them to be cowards. The meaning was clear. At least some of his teammates are considering leaving in January. Others may have simply mentally given up. It's much easier to accept what now seems like an inevitable elimination if the player can tell himself that by the end he wasn't really trying, and neither was anyone else. This is a way to relieve ourselves of blame: how can we operate in such an environment? Doherty doesn't have to be wrong for these players to be right. Wolves have become an impossible place to play.
It never starts out too bad. They caused Manchester City some problems on the opening day before losing 4–0. They lost the next three league games by one goal. A 3-1 home defeat to Leeds may have started to raise serious concerns, but Wolves followed it up by beating Everton in the League Cup and then drawing with Tottenham and Brighton in the league. With the two clubs promoted in the next two games, there seemed a real possibility that they could achieve respectability. But they were physically overwhelmed at Sunderland, losing 2-0 and then conceding a 95th-minute winner after leveling 2-0 at Bournemouth. And with this, Wolverhampton’s season failed. Since then they have scored just twice in eight league matches. Neither team truly outplayed them, but the fight left them, as evidenced by Jorgen Strand Larsen's lukewarm penalty miss on Saturday.
Pereira's departure brought in Rob Edwards from a Middlesbrough side that looked well positioned for promotion from the Championship. Although he did something similar by leaving Forest Green to take charge of Watford early in his career, the move appears to have been motivated by a desire to try and save Wolves, the club he supports and for which he has made 100 league appearances. It's possible he was born on Christmas Day, but it's unlikely he'll perform a miracle just yet. After Luton's overthrow, his reputation may never recover.
Chairman Jeff Shea unexpectedly resigned on Saturday after nearly a decade in the role, although he remains chairman and CEO of Fosun, which owns Wolves. The reasons for his departure are unclear, although fans have continually protested his reign. Pending a full-time appointment, he was replaced by Nathan Shea, who is not related to him. Whoever turns up will face fans furious at the way the club has been run over the last three years.
Perhaps Wolves thought that even after weakening their squad through sales, they would still be good enough to finish above the three promoted teams. Of course, the struggles of the three upcoming teams have helped them in the previous two seasons. But with Sunderland and Leeds off to a good start to the season, Wolves were left to fend for themselves. They are 16 points from safety. Survival already seems like a hopeless hope. All that remains is to try to beat the Derby's all-time low.
-
This is an extract from Football with Jonathan Wilson, Guardian US's weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? E-mail [email protected]and he'll answer the best questions in a future episode.
