Wolves 2-0 Oldham Athletic
By Tom Bason
October 23 2013
In the driving rain, Wolves took advantage of Peterborough United and Leyton Orient slipping up with a 2-0 win over Oldham Athletic. James Henry's first goal for the club gave Wolves a second half lead before Leigh Griffiths wrapped things up with a well-placed finish.
- Kenny Jackett made one change of personnel to the side that drew 1-1 with Coventry City on Saturday, with Lee Evans coming back into the team and Kevin Doyle dropping to the bench. If Evans was in contention for selection, then perhaps Jack Price was a little fortunate to keep his place given his disappointing display in the first half against Coventry. Seeing as David Davis wasn't even on the bench, I can only assume he has picked up a knock of some sort and wasn't available for selection. Then again, it's possible that Jackett was not worried about regaining possession (Davis's strength), and instead preferred to have a more technical midfield three in Evans, Price and Kevin McDonald. At times this season, Jackett has seemed to be happy to ignore what the opposition can do and instead let them worry about us.
- We lined up in a 4-1-4-1ish formation, with Price given the deeper role, sitting just in front of the defence. One of the problems we've had this season has been our defenders lack of ability to build possession from the back. With Price in the side, the idea would be that he would have this role, to get on the ball deep and play incisive passes forward. When we've played with a defensive midfielder (during our brief diamond formation dalliance), it has been Davis who has played this role. But Davis is not as comfortable on the ball as Price, and acts as a defensive shield rather than a base from which to start attacks. One way that Price did impress me was the way that he was instructing his fellow midfielders. From that deeper role, he has a good view of everything in front of him, and wasn't shy in telling Evans and McDonald where they should be going. While Price isn't going to be proactive in chasing down the ball and winning tackles, I thought his positioning was often very good. There were a number of occasions where he managed to get himself in place to intercept a ball forward, and a couple of other times when he moved in anticipation, but didn't quite get the ball. Promising.
- With Price sitting deep, this should have given Evans and McDonald more freedom to get forward, but McDonald especially seemed hesitant to get ahead of the ball. McDonald is somewhat of an enigma so far; David Weir built his Sheffield United side around McDonald playing as a number 10, but this doesn't seem to be his favoured role. Personally, I think he's best suited to a Frank Lampard circa 2005-07 type role, running onto the ball from deep. But this generally needs the ball to be ahead of him, which is fine when Didier Drogba is playing as a lone-striker, but perhaps Leigh Griffiths upfront on his own is going to be slightly less effective. Tonight, it was quite frustrating that McDonald often sat so deep, occasionally drifting into the area where Price was, and as a result Griffiths was often isolated. Evans made a few attempts to break beyond the ball, and quite often in the first half, our best chance of creating something was when Evans broke through into the right hand channel and was able to link with James Henry and Matt Doherty.
- In the first half, before he was substituted, Doherty was arguably our best attacking player. Doherty has improved this area of his game immeasurably, and is starting to form a nice partnership with Henry. Those two on the right seem like a far more cohesive partnership than Bakary Sako and Scott Golbourne on the flank. I think Doherty would like to improve his clinicalness around the penalty area, and if he is injured for any period of time, he could do a lot worse than watch a few Leighton Baines videos. Despite Baines' excellent delivery last week to assist Wayne Rooney's all important England goal, his crossing isn't actually that good. Instead, Baines is at his most effective when he is passing the ball into the penalty area, finding onrushing players. Doherty did this well away at Colchester, setting up Griffiths second goal, and I think this is something he could definitely develop to become a potent weapon.
- I mentioned earlier that Griffiths was often isolated, and it was noticeable that Henry's opening goal was the first real time we got numbers into the penalty area. The goal came after a drilled, low Sako cross was pushed by the goalkeeper into Henry's shins, and the ball rebounded into the net. Sako also had a big hand in the winner, with his raking through ball miss controlled by the Oldham defender, and Griffiths finished well from outside the area. For those of you who think Sako should be sold, he is the one player we have who can produce a piece of magic. In the first half, he did an awful lot of work in our half, always defending diligently to the extent that I suspect he got a rocket up his backside after switching off on Saturday. But, in the two real chances he had to do something tonight, he got two, albeit fortunate, assists. There is no one in the squad who can replace him, and there is not a chance in hell we could bring someone in that is as good.
- Leigh Griffiths is another enigmatic player. I wrote in my Saturday report that I'm not sure about his finishing when he has time to think about it. Twice he went clear tonight, and on neither occasion did I expect him to score. But if the ball dropped for him to hit first time from a scrambled corner, I'd expect him to score every time. The first time he went clear, I thought he'd overran it and the defender was going to slide into clear, but Griffiths was able to direct it well, with the ball clipping the inside of the far post on its way into the net. The second time, he tried to dink the ball over the onrushing keeper, but saw his effort dribble disappointingly wide.
- There was a sense of déjà vu last night, as a Wolves midfielder named Henry slid in recklessly and absolutely clattered his opponent. This time though, it was James Henry, and he was slightly unlucky as an Oldham player pushed him. Given the soaking wet conditions, it wasn't Henry's fault that his momentum took him skidding into Oldham manager Lee Johnson, completely taking him out.
- Many thanks to everyone who sponsored me as I ran the Birmingham half marathon on Sunday. My time was 01:45:43 and I finished 2,693rd out of about 20,000. For my first half marathon, I was very pleased with this, and again, a big thank you to those who sponsored me. I was half looking at trying the full Edinburgh marathon, but when I realised it is ran on the same day as the League One playoff final, I put that on the back burner.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013:11:03:09:39:40 by toomb.
