WOLVES ON SHEEP’S CLOTHES’ LINE
Wolverhampton 1 West Ham 0
One advantage of playing a team in gold and black is that you get to wear your first team colours on the road. Unless of course you’re Wolves playing away at Cambridge United. West Ham control the game for the first twenty minutes as they have done in away games for most of the season. The news that Ogbonna is probably out for the campaign after the knock against Liverpool doesn’t seem to have upset the mood or flow of the play. It’s good that Dawson is starting in his place, as that gets the Wolves’ fans interested (he is an Old Baggie, after all).
Cresswell is like a concrete post in the penalty area, blocking shot after shot, keeping Fabianski from getting his gloves dirty. On 33 minutes Jiménez gets round the back, but although he gets to the ball before Fabianski, his touch sends the ball just wide. Then Saiss heads just past the post from an inswinging corner. This is Wolves’ part of the game.
Just before half time Bowen chases what in 2019 might have been seen as a lost cause, and wins a corner, which he takes. Zouma bundles the ball in at the far post but is adjudged to have fouled the keeper. It was a superb inswinger from Bowen that he needn’t have taken the offensive to. He could have blown it in if he’d just stood back and waited. This is how games have been going away from home. Moyes will turn up the gas in the second half and Wolves will be overrun. But today that’s not how the narrative will pan out.
Wolves start the second half with momentum and almost score two in as many minutes, but Fabianski comes to the rescue. Cresswell and Bowen are the stars at either end of the pitch, and when they aren’t there, Fabianski is inviolable, fingertip saving a brilliant individual effort from Podence. But the goal comes, Jiménez hitting home from the edge of the area after a neat series of passes and Podence squaring the ball perfectly across into his path. Moyes immediately brings Lanzini on for Fornals, who seems to have taken a knock. This doesn’t feel quite right.
Zouma is having his first uncertain game in a West Ham shirt, which is unsettling for Dawson who is trying to keep the back four steady, and West Ham are struggling. Yarmolenko and Vlasic are brought on for Benrahma and Bowen in an early last throw of the dice. Moyes is determined to go big for goals. It doesn’t look like a great tactic five minutes after he’s committed his side to it.
Antonio v2.0 (Traoré) is on for Podence, as Wolves look to kill the game with a second. A 30,667 attendance is capacity for Molineux, and the home side have cleverly spread West Ham’s 3000 travelling fans across the back of the Steve Bull stand so they are unable to get themselves heard easily. Or that’s how it seems from this side of the ground. Maybe they have just accepted that what will be will be.
‘Champions League? You’re having a laugh!’ sing the Wolves’ fans. It’s a kind of inverted compliment. As the final whistle is blown, ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ plays. I listen attentively to the lyrics. ‘Nothing ever lasts forever,’ I hear. They could be singing about our unbeaten away record this season.
Rice and Zouma had poor games. Soucek was almost non-existent. Yarmolenko and Vlasic made very little difference. Rice appeared in the second half but not for long. There is no Lingard to score those wonder goals that he poached here last season, though Manchester United are crumbling, and not looking like the choice they should have been for him. Though, for now, that’s all there is to say. Wolves, meanwhile, have moved up to sixth.
1 Lucasz Fabiański, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 4 Kurt Zouma, 31 Ben Johnson, 41 Declan Rice (c), 15 Craig Dawson, 28 Tomas Souček,, 8 Pablo Fornals, 9 Michail Antonio, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 22 Saïd Benrahma
Substitutes: 10 Manuel Lanzini, 7 Andriy Yarmolenko, 11 Nicola Vlasic
