Fan column: Wolves have to find a way to score more goals

Right now, the feeling of disconnect is enormous, not total apathy, more a wearied acceptance of the inevitable. I cannot recall leaving a game for a very long time purring with satisfaction that an individual Wolves’ player has delighted us by playing out of his skin. 

No flash of attacking brilliance from a Jota, Jimenez or Cunha; no creative subtlety provided by a Neves, Neto or Moutinho and no spark of original flair offered by the likes of an Ait-Nouri or Traore. 

Instead, fending off the possibility of becoming, statistically at least, the worst team in Premier League history. 

Rob Edwards stated that if we can reproduce the type of performance achieved at Villa, positive results will follow. But I reckon to have the remotest chance of substantial progress, the players will need to surpass that level by a vast margin. 

To make investment in next month’s window even remotely relevant, Wolves require a dramatic upsurge in quality that this group of players have singularly failed to deliver all season.  

After the Villa defeat, a paltry seven goals scored by December; more goals conceded than any other team and a goal difference almost twice as bad as any other struggling outfit. 

Trying to retrieve the game at Villa Park, Edwards put his faith in two novice forwards in Chirewa and Mane in preference to the other bench options of Hwang, Munetsi and Arokodare who entered the fray almost in stoppage time. With the ineffectual Arias already replaced, the action taken by Edwards seemed to sum up his early appraisal of his lack of decisive options up front as the combined total of seven goals would appear to endorse. 

His main outlet Strand Larsen, touted as a £60 million player in the summer and seemingly distracted since then, has only managed a solitary goal and that was courtesy of the penalty spot. 

‘Transitions’ is the latest buzzword and our transitions into attack are painfully laboured lacking speed, subtleties and flexibility. Without a recognised playmaker, it’s difficult to see how the improvement Edwards perceives on the horizon can come to fruition. 

Given our position, caution appears a pointless option, but creativity requires the personnel to deliver. Edwards might find defensive pragmatism easier to establish than unpicking opposition defences; but somehow, he has to find a way.