WOLVES 2-6 CHELSEA: ANATOMY OF A RIGHT HAMMERING

It's not as simple as it looks. But it isn't good, whichever way you cut it

The Good

I haven’t seen us concede six in a game very often. Once when we did and we lost 6-0 at home to Southampton under Mick McCarthy, there actually was a lot of positive play in there. And this wasn’t all that different. At half time it would have been a fair enough argument to say that we should have been winning. We’d scored two, hit the bar (with the keeper well beaten), had a goal disallowed for a marginal offside and missed a glorious chance off a set piece. There’s more attacking moments in there than you might have got in 10 games under say, Bruno Lage.

It definitely wasn’t that bad.

The play was quick, it was positive, it was front foot, there was bags of skill in there and both Matheus Cunha and Jorgen Strand Larsen shone in their respective roles. You can see very easily how we’ll cause teams problems. Both goals were smartly taken and it was compelling viewing.

Right, that’s enough of that.

The Bad

This has been going on for a while; we’re a polar opposite of the Nuno Wolves teams in as much as a) we casually toss possession away readily, game after game and b) when we do, we look alarmingly rickety and out of shape, meaning that invariably when you break on us, you’ll get a decent chance on goal.

You simply can’t do that at this level. It isn’t the Sega Megadrive in 1994 and this isn’t NBA Jam. If you give up those kind of opportunities, you will concede goals. Lots of them. And accordingly, this isn’t a system issue. Already I’ve seen people clamouring for us to switch back to three centre halves. As if we didn’t concede 65 goals last season when we broadly speaking, played three centre halves. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. We are very, very, very open under Gary O’Neil regardless of how many defenders we play.

We have to look after the ball better and we have to make sure that we’re not making elementary errors like charging 40 yards out of position (that’s you Matthew James Doherty, on the ultimately irrelevant but nonetheless hurtful sixth [SIXTH] goal), you have to make sure that you mark properly off basic set pieces (this is any number of you on the opener, but yes Doherty, it’s you), you have to hold an offside line properly (the lot of you at the back, but particularly the centre halves), you have to help out your full back when you lose the ball (Bellegarde and Hwang in this game).

Imagine giving him yet another contract after this one, which was already too long.

The Ugly

I like Rayan Ait-Nouri a lot. Our first goal is everything that he’s about. Driving forward with purpose and enormous skill, and increasingly decent end product. But defensively…today was a horror show from him, right from the first minute. He didn’t know if Noni Madueke was going inside or outside. He didn’t know whether to drop off or commit. He kept standing way too far off his man. He wasn’t even in the picture for a couple of the goals that were scored down his side. That was bad. Oh and we currently don’t have another left back to pick instead. That’s handy.

A display every bit as bad as anything this man served up.

Matt Doherty clearly has no business whatsoever playing at this level in 2024 and there’s no way Pedro Lima - even allowing for him being raw and acclimatising to a new country - can be any worse. I mean if he is, he shouldn’t be here at all. Mercifully Nelson Semedo is back for the next league game. Doherty couldn’t play at right back with any reliability 11 years ago in League One. He certainly can’t do it now.

José Sa continues to have odd spells of wandering around like a drunk on the way home from the pub (the second goal isn’t his fault primarily, but keep an eye on him. He isn’t wired right) and has stopped making the big saves that make up for his many idiosyncrasies. We also have no alternative whatsoever to him. Which needs sorting.

<Insert circus music here>

Hwang Hee-Chan failed to offer anything other than bottling out of routine challenges and wildly miscontrolling the ball. He’s always going to be an odd player to assess but that was genuinely 1/10 at best stuff.

The two centre halves are to say the least, skittish. A hell of a lot of stuff is very last ditch with them. We evidently don’t trust the two behind them in the queue to play instead, being as they turn like milk.

We have a bit of a worrying habit under O’Neil of completely collapsing and conceding multiple goals in quick succession. And we aren’t good enough to be regularly scoring 3+ goals in a game to win.

So there’s work to do in the next five days. Lots of it. Why we’ve left it this late is anyone’s guess.