Liam Keen comment: Inconsistency, Wolves relying on youth and VAR impact

Any hope of surviving relegation will rest on home matches such as this one against Nottingham Forest, but a damaging defeat has plunged the team closer to the drop.

Consistency

Wolves have certainly had consistency with results, as they continue to lose every week.

But performances had begun to improve under Edwards, resulting in a display against Villa on the weekend in which they deserved at least a point.

Any hope of following that up against Forest on Wednesday was extinguished quickly with a flat first half performance. Wolves just simply never got going.

Jean-Ricner Bellegarde, who was so dangerous and influential against Villa, could not pick a forward pass, Joao Gomes lost the ball on too many occasions and overplayed it, while Jorgen Strand Larsen was back to the isolated figure we had seen in recent months.

They were not the only ones - Jackson Tchatchoua was struggling with the basics of the game and Jhon Arias offers next to nothing - and Wolves never gave the home crowd a reason to get behind them.

It was a huge game that could have given Wolves a lifeline in their relegation fight had they earned their first win, but the players seemingly approached it like a pre-season friendly.

Edwards gave a hard-hitting analysis in his post-match press conference and revealed he asked the players at half-time if they were scared. They certainly looked afraid to make a mistake and the performance suffered as a result.

The second half was marginally better but Wolves still conceded a really avoidable goal.

Omari Hutchinson's cross should have been dealt with initially and Igor Jesus got his head on it after beating Emmanuel Agbadou in the air, with a huge gift from Sam Johnstone failing to reach it.

Youth

Edwards has made Wolves more compact and composed defensively, but offensively they are still struggling.

The attacking intent was non-existent in the first half and although it slightly improved in the second, Wolves do not look like scoring, with their last goals coming at the end of October.

The head coach has turned to 18-year-old attacker Mateus Mane from the bench in the last two games and the teenager has shown some energy and fearlessness.

That is to be expected considered the lack of pressure on him in comparison to his senior team-mates and although he has not set the world alight, he has shown some positive glimpses.

It says a lot about the options Edwards has available and the recruitment mistakes in the summer, but the boss has turned to the academy product in the hope of inspiring some creativity.

"I think he'll take a risk," Edwards said.

"I probably wanted him to shoot when he had that opportunity later on. 

"He said he could have - you're on the pitch, you believe in yourself. 

"Maybe these younger ones are a little bit more risk-averse and not being burnt by making a mistake and then hearing one or two grumbles or something like that.

"He's done well, we like him and we had to try change things up a little bit."

VAR

Considering previous mistakes against the club and the fact Wolves stood alone as the only Premier League side to vote to abolish VAR in the summer of 2024, it is no surprise that Wolves fans are not keen on the technology.

Regardless of whether the check is in favour of Wolves or not, supporters often chant 'boring' and 'it's not football anymore' when deliberations are taking place.

At Molineux on Wednesday, Jesus did head Forest in front in the first half but a five-minute VAR check found that Dan Ndoye had impeded goalkeeper Johnstone.

It seemed like a fairly obvious decision to make, but VAR stewed over it for an age before referee Tim Robinson was sent to the pitchside monitor to stew over it even more.

Coming to the right decision and eventually overturning the goal is commendable - it is the reason we have the technology - but is it worth it at the expense of the game?

To wait five minutes for that decision is laughable, impacts the flow of the match and ruins it for supporters.

Of course, Forest boss Sean Dyche disagreed with the decision, but he did agree that it took far too long to decide and Edwards was in the same camp regarding the length of the wait.

"It was a long, long wait, wasn't it," Edwards said.

"I know we all want the right result, the right decision off the back of that, and it's gone our way so I'm going to sit here and say, at least we got the right decision at the end of it. 

"But it's a long wait and it's not very entertaining, especially when the game was how it was as well.

"It's not great for the fans. 

"We don't want the long wait. It's not good for my heart anyway.

"We want to try and make the game as entertaining as possible. As I say, we didn't do that from our team's perspective, but that slowed things down even more."