Let’s start with some good news. The last time Wolves lost a Carling Cup second round tie against Rotherham on penalties they finished with promotion to the Premier League.
Every Wolves fan would happily accept this repeat disappointment if they knew that little treasure from six years ago was waiting for them at the end of this campaign.
All that matters now is that Mick McCarthy’s players do not let this fairly grim episode interfere with the confident opening they have made to their Championship campaign.
There is something about the Carling Cup which rarely fails to bring out the “ordinary” in Wolves and this was no exception.
A much-changed team delivered a flat, uninspired performance which enabled Rotherham to reach the end of 120 minutes delighted with a stalemate which set up their second successive advance past Championship opposition in a shoot-out after doing an identical job on Sheffield Wednesday.
Not for a moment am I suggesting Wolves did not care about this outcome while there would have been no complaints from their manager about their effort.
If nothing else, at least this proved to McCarthy that he knows what his best side is at the moment. No Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, no Matt Jarvis, no George Elokobi, no Dave Jones, no Chris Iwelumo - without such key figures from the encouraging League start, Wolves retreated to the stodgy, flat-line levels that we saw too often last season.
Their attacking ventures came in straight lines of 4-4-2 with not even Michael Kightly able to find some extra ingredients despite a shovel-load of running.
With all but one of those players set to return at the weekend, it made the scouting expedition of Nottingham Forest manager Colin Calderwood pretty much redundant.
Hopefully, this will be nothing like the Wolves his team faces on Saturday.
As the tie lapsed into a kind of training ground intensity for Wolves, McCarthy’s only satisfaction would have been to have seen key fringe players get a useful work out as well as another opportunity for the ever-game Neill Collins to try out his stand-in role at left back in the event he could be needed there.
It is a role the central defender takes on with a shrug more than any complaint and was conducted with mixed results last night, McCarthy swapping Collins and Richard Stearman for the latter phase in an effort, he explained, to try to get the latter forward.
Neither would claim to be an Elokobi, however, and the Cameroon man’s injury is vexing for all.
Andy Keogh’s much needed run-out was interrupted by illness but there was an impressive effort from Stephen Ward, who was responsible for registering the bulk of the flimsy goal attempts by Wolves.
You will note by now little mention of any goalmouth action and that is largely because there wasn’t any worth recounting until we cut to the penalty shoot-out.
Kevin Foley and Stephen Elliott, who was denied by a wonderful Andy Warrington save in a moment which possibly sums up his Molineux career to date, were the players whose misses gave Rotherham their chance for a victory.
And their most impressive player, Reuben Reid, duly completed the execution with a composed finish to the left of Carl Ikeme.
Match Facts:
Rotherham: Warrington, Lynch, Sharps, Fenton, Nicholas, Cummins (Mills 117), Danny Harrison, Hudson, Rhodes (Burchill 115), Broughton (Taylor 105), Reid. Subs: Cann, Tonge, Yates, Green.
Wolves: Ikeme, Foley, Collins, Stearman, Gray (Elliott 78), Kightly, Edwards (David Jones 99), Henry, Darren Ward, Stephen Ward, Keogh (Iwelumo 45) . Subs: Davies, Daniel Jones, Potter, Hennessey.
Referee: Neil Swarbrick (Lancashire)
Attendance: 5,404
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