Wolves Fans' Verdict v Huddersfield: Oh dear!

Gulraj Kular

What's your verdict on the match? Well that’s going to take some recovering from. It was an ego-bruising, tiresome watch and entirely divorced from what we’ve become accustomed to over the last season and a bit under Nuno.

Watford felt like a poor performance, but this team - as excellent as it is - found a new depth which we really didn’t believe they had. In consolation, I don’t think we have - or can - play much worse with the squad and management in situ.

There’s a school of thought that we’ve been found out in the centre of midfield, that crowding out our maverick pair of Portu-geezers is the key to stopping us. That’s fair. But it didn’t help that they were just plain rubbish all of their own accord.

Phillip Billing and Aaron Mooy had the run of the centre of the park and a big part of their success was the outlet they always seemed to have, whether it be with their wing-backs or Steve Mounie, who was more Drogba than Mounie for 90 minutes.

The usual diagonals were unsuccessful all night long and Billing in particular seemed to attach his all encompassing limbs and head on to everything.

This was a wake-up call for us. It was a performance nothing short of abject. I’m not a fan of booing during the game, but if there were murmurs at 45 and 90 minutes I think we had the right to display them.

Who played well – and who didn't impress? Little went right. Costa and Cavaleiro, in keeping with their close friendship, decided to book the day off together. Moutinho and Neves were hounded out of the game and Matt Doherty appeared to still be concussed from two weeks ago. Willy Boly didn’t win a header all night long and Jimenez cut a forlorn figure, chasing down the goalkeeper in the manner of an eager puppy, or Stephen Hunt.

Conor Coady worked manfully to gee up the troops and still managed to have a decent game, while Morgan Gibbs-White provided some level of competitiveness in the middle. You can see a level of rawness in Ruben Vinagre’s game but he also worked as best as he could to get into advanced positions.

Rob Cartwright

What's your verdict on the match? Oh dear. We saved our worst performance of the season for the Sky cameras. Just goes to show there are no easy games at this level.

It’s hard to believe this was the same team who were so unfortunate not to take all three points away at Arsenal last time out. We seem more effective away from home at the moment. Teams are coming to Molineux and packing their midfield.

We’re on a nasty run and it needs to end quickly.

We started the game brightly, but fell behind from Hudderfield’s first attack, after just six minutes. A shot from the edge of the box getting past Patricio.

We didn’t respond well. Their midfield ran the show. Meanwhile, our midfield were too slow, often second to the ball and when they were in possession gave it away far too often. Consequently, we were creating very little with both Costa and Cavaleiro looking well off the pace too.

Our best chance came when Billing cleared off the line from Jimenez downward header. It was millimetres away from an equaliser. The margins are fine.

Later, Jimenez should have taken advantage, with a defender down, he ran into the box with the ball but failed to get a shot in. A missed opportunity.

A Boly foul gave Huddersfield a free kick in a good position. The gap in the wall was inexcusable. What was Costa doing there? I also think Patricio should have done better with the ball beating him at his near post. Game over.

Who played well – and who didn't impress? The stand out players for Wolves were Vinagre (first half), Gibbs-White (second half) and Coady.

There were a number of below par performances, most notably from Neves and Moutinho. Doherty, Cavaleiro and Costa were also poor. Boly was inconsistent; giving the ball and free kicks away. Traore was mostly ineffective.

I also think Ruddy must be close to a recall!

A very disappointing day. Cardiff is not the ideal next game for us, but being away from home may well help us get the win we need.

Clive Smith

What's your verdict on the match? Well, no-one will rush to watch that again on recorded TV. Have we played any worse under Nuno? Well played Huddersfield, it pains me to say it, but they were better than us for 90 minutes in all departments. We had one poor performance (Watford) in our first 12 games, let's hope this is the only one in our next 12.

By half time we had to be thankful for only losing 1-0. We were hurried in possession and that resulted in continually giving the ball away. Defensively we looked out of shape, our precious clean sheet had lasted just six minutes. Boly and Doherty have rarely played so poorly while midfield seemed powerless to win or retain the ball. In the air we were second best all over the pitch.

Two early corners and some energy from Vinagre had suggested we were ready to compete but that just offered false hopes.

The early goal conceded was similar to the first Watford goal. It set the tone. We did nothing of note in the first half.

Nuno made two changes at the break which helped improve our tempo but failed to reduce the frustration in the ground.

Our only effort worthy of the name was a Jimenez header that looked very close to crossing the line. That however was as close as we got because soon after a free kick punctured our net and made it 2-0.

One obvious difference between the two sides was the numbers of players in the box when a cross was played in. For Wolves it was usually two attackers up against six or seven defenders. Huddersfield nearly always had four players trying to get on the end of their crosses.

Another concern was the performance of Neves. He looked off the pace and played very few good passes. He wasted our set pieces and I have never seen his body language look so negative. Capped by yet another yellow card.

Once the internal gloom, frustration and anger has dissipated take a look at the tables and seeing Wolves 11th in the Premier League is still better than nearly any time over the previous 30 years. Cheer up everyone.

Who played well – and who didn't impress? The first goal was a good shot but I would not have expected Patricio to let in the second.

Doherty had a dreadful match and was at fault in the build up to the first goal.

Vinagre did some nice things, including an early cross, but he lost possession too frequently and was stranded up field when he needed to be defending.

Bennett always seemed at a stretch and wasted possession too often.

Coady was probably the pick of the bunch on a bad day overall. MOTM. He at least showed some energy and enthusiasm which others were lacking.

Boly put in a dreadful performance both on the ground and also in the air where he was constantly second best.

Neves was hugely disappointing. No tempo, no enthusiasm, no excitement in his play.

Moutinho only lasted a half after struggling to have any influence in the game.

Costa has shown promise in some games, but he has played enough this season to realise he has to be stronger when he has the ball. Still looks unlikely to score.

Cavaleiro also lasted just a half and had contributed very little up until then. He struggles when he starts games, when the game is tight and there is less space.

As usual Jimenez put in a good shift but had few opportunities to get attempts on goal. He was close with his header but should have done better with a one on one.

From the bench Traore played the second half. As we have seen too often, he played like Bambi on ice, constantly ending up on the turf. His performances still fail to justify his significant transfer fee.

Gibbs-White also played the second half. Neat and tidy in his play he was unable to reproduce the spark he had in the Spurs match.

Jota played the last 15 minutes and forced a save with a decent effort.

Chris Hughes

What's your verdict on the match? Ah, the International break. Otherwise known as Wolves’ kryptonite. How a side can look so good and then so utterly, utterly bad after a two-week break is amazing.

What better way to bring a sense of reality about our situation as a newly-promoted side than being completely outplayed by the worst team in the division?

Talk of European qualification has been replaced by relegation chatter and “No Plan B!” is being thrown around as much as “in Nuno we trust!” on social media among our bipolar fan base.

For the fourth home game in a row we were slow out of the traps against a side who had found a way to create an ‘extra man’ in central midfield to overrun Neves and Moutinho. While we were fortunate that Southampton were toothless in attack and we managed to find late goals to beat them, this is the third successive game we’ve found ourselves behind and chasing the game at home before half-time.

This was the worst start of the lot. Doherty lethargically chased their winger down the line as he had the freedom of Molineux to put a cross in which, for some reason, Neves decided to leave for the onrushing Mooy, who was being not-very-closely ‘chased’ by Cavaleiro, to stroke home past Patricio.

I’d like to say it got better from there, but it didn’t.

We were outfought, outmuscled and outplayed for most of the game. Even Boly seemed overawed by the physical battle while the ‘flair’ players in the team of Costa, Cavaleiro and, later, Traore, spent more time on the backsides appealing for free-kicks than on their feet.

A friend of mine watching at home sent me a message during the second half stating “Raúl ay got a clue” after his amazing second half effort but did claim that “there’s a goal coming here”. With my friend being an Albion fan and unaware of Wolves’ usual efforts against struggling sides I obviously put him right with a response of “for them, against the run of play. I’ve seen this game play out before”. From a free-kick lazily conceded by Boly, Mooy duly delivered on my Nostradamus-esque prediction.

The closest we came to scoring was when Raúl sent a header to within an inch of crossing the line. Jota did managed to have our second shot on target late on but their keeper somehow managed to keep it out by sitting on the ball!

Much for Nuno to ponder in our short week before Colin's Cardiff provide a similar physical test to Huddersfield on Friday night. Do we go with the same line-up or change things around to cope with the midfield battle with a Saiss or give Gibbs-White a start to give us someone who is willing to run with the ball through the centre of the park?

Do we swap something up front for some extra pace and movement from the off to pull their giant defenders out of position? Who knows? I’ll let Nuno decide that and watch the meltdown unfold on Twitter to keep me entertained and cheer me up during the week...

Adam Virgo

What's your verdict on the match? Absolutely terrible performance and the worst I’ve seen us play since Nuno took charge.

One point from the last five games isn’t good enough but luckily we are still 11th for now. We can’t be having performances like that again though and we need to end this bad run as quickly as possible.

From start to finish Huddersfield had a game plan to stop our midfield, just like Watford and Southampton did albeit we won the latter but got fortunate. Against the top sides it’s different because they aren’t going to set up to play like that.

Something needs changing anyway that’s for sure and especially in midfield because last few games, the Neves/Moutinho partnership isn’t working. Both fantastic footballers but then yesterday against Huddersfield and in our games with Watford and Southampton they have gone three in the middle and just nullified them completely.

We gifted them the first goal, awful from Doherty who rushed his pass and got caught out so easily in a bad position. Then no one tracks Aaron Mooy’s run who is free on the edge of the box and with that time and space he was never going to miss.

After that I was looking for a reaction and a response from the players but there was absolutely nothing. The whole game was unacceptable from us but the first half was something else and to say we could have been 2-0/3-0 down by half time is just laughable.

We were playing against the team bottom of the Premier League at home, they hadn’t won an away game all season and hadn’t scored more than one goal away from home in 21 games but we get turned over comfortably by them and for me that is worrying.

We created one good chance all game and Jimenez was unlucky his header didn’t go over the line but we didn’t deserve it based on our performance. Also, I have no idea what was going through Jimenez’s head when he was clean through, he has to shoot there all day.

I didn’t quite understand Adama playing through the middle and Jimenez being out wide. I feel like Nuno always panics and makes weird decisions when we’re losing. He’s a stubborn guy and will always stick to his formation but we are set up to score first in games and whenever we go a goal down, it normally results in us losing.

I need to know what Helder Costa was thinking on Mooy’s free kick as well. Why he was stood about two yards to the left of the wall, leaving a clear gap for Mooy to aim at and it goes in. Very bizarre and that just summed up our performance.

Who played well – and who didn't impress? No one played well at all and it was a shocking performance but Vinagre and Coady were the best of a bad bunch. The subs who came on did better than the players who started too.

Vinagre was trying to beat players and make things happen but Doherty on the other side had an awful game. You need the balance right on both sides and yesterday, Doherty was so lazy and he didn’t even play during the international break due to injury, whereas Vinagre had the energy and was getting on the ball to at least attempt to make something happen.

Coady stopped us from going at least 2-0 down in the first half. His challenge on Pritchard was probably the best moment of the game from our point of view. Either that or the firework display. He made a good block from Pritchard too which was important at the time and Boly and Bennett were far worse than him.

Moutinho and Neves were both awful and I’m expecting one of them, more than likely Moutinho to be dropped next week. Cardiff are going to try and bully us so maybe we should go back to what worked last season and bring Saiss in, maybe even Dendoncker.

The whole forward line was useless. Costa has done nothing this season and he needs to be dropped for Friday. Jimenez to be fair to him was the better of the three, although when clean through like that he’s got to shoot. He was isolated majorly in the first half, whenever he held the ball up, Cav or Costa needed to get closer to him to feed off his hold-up play but they didn’t and inevitably we lost the ball.

Doherty like mentioned above, was very lazy and offered nothing to us defensively or going forward and a lack of competition for his place enables him to get away with that. Yes he’s been very good this season so far but performances like yesterday are unacceptable.

Bennett and Boly were so poor. I was more surprised at Boly being so bad because since the first couple of games, he’s been rock solid. Doherty is mainly at fault for the first goal but Bennett put him under serious pressure and being so slow in our play got us caught out. Bennett is the weakest of the back three on the ball and the fans who were screaming shoot at him when he was 30 yards out are clueless because he was never ever going to score from there.

Patricio couldn’t have done much for the first goal and the second maybe he could have got over quicker but the gap shouldn’t have been in the wall in the first place. Both goals were a mess from our point of view and easily could have been avoided.

Gibbs-White and Adama offered more than what Cavaleiro and Moutinho did. Costa should have been taken off long before he did and Jota looked quite good when he came on but time was against him, plus the game was pretty much done at 2-0.

A massive performance is needed on Friday night against Cardiff because what we all saw against Huddersfield was nowhere near good enough. Some big decisions for Nuno to make as well.

Russ Evers (Hatherton Wolves)

What's your verdict on the match? Welcome back to the November hoodoo!

I would rather that than thinking the long-lost rollercoaster has returned. Huddersfield came with a plan and carried it out superbly whilst we were experiencing misplaced passes, mistimed tackles and misunderstood runs.

And even then at one down a matter of millimetres prevented an equaliser as 96 per cent of the ball was over the line from Raul's header.

Only captain Coady of the starting XI had a better than average game but all three subs did their chances of a start at Cardiff no harm at all.

We are going to get poor performances so it will be very interesting to see how we respond. The boss has not got much wrong thus far so in Nuno we trust