Fan column: Wolves muddling along and ill-prepared for popular tactic

This tactic seems to have reinvented itself in the Premier League this season with Wolves, clearly caught out and ill-prepared following sequentially. Sadly, like much else that the team has served -up this campaign, Mosquera’s projectiles have fallen well short, quite literally. 

It’s demonstrably self-evident that he isn’t up to Olympic standard; if he was a cricketer throwing in from the boundary, the ball would be reaching the wicket-keeper on the third bounce! Any comparison with the most proficient exponent of this art, Rory Delap is purely incidental; I reckon Delap would lick our guy by the best part of 20 yards. 

But it’s the vogue right now and Wolves muddle along with the tactic without any discernible result. Predictable and ineffective like a golfer opting for a sand-wedge instead of a seven iron. 

Mosquera hasn’t been helped by having to target Tolu Arokodare right now or Jorgen Strand Larsen previously bearing in mind that both strikers despite their respective lofty heights aren’t particularly dominant in the air. Neither striker possesses a natural spring from a standing start either, so the tactic hasn’t delivered very much. 

Santi Bueno’s winner at Blundell Park did originate from a throw-in but it was comfortably won by a Grimsby defender and a fortuitous ricochet created the chance for the excellent cross by Joao Gomes to manufacture the goal. 

Genuinely unsure as to why long throws have resurfaced; it’s hardly a recent innovation. First time I saw it done properly was way back in the early 1960s when Bobby Woodruff newly signed from Swindon standing near the tunnel on Waterloo Road launched a mammoth throw towards the North Bank aiming for the Brylcreemed bonce of Ray Crawford. 

There was an audible gasp around Molineux; none of us had witnessed anything quite like this before. 

In later years, Mike Bailey developed a very effective long throw with the head of Derek Dougan the prime target; The Doog, like Crawford was outstanding in the air and both Woodruff and Bailey were naturals whilst for Mosquera without a genuine point of reference the entire process seems arbitrary and contrived. 

What’s more, neither Woodruff nor Bailey had the benefit of a bath-towel to wipe a wet ball. In my view this practice should be outlawed; the time wasted is interminable and wholly inappropriate.