With nine games left of this dreadful campaign, it’s all over bar the shouting and Wolves are virtually, if not mathematically, safe. We sit 9 points clear of the drop-zone, and have a vastly superior goal difference, which effectively gives us a ten-point cushion..
Southampton are out of it, sitting a staggering 17 points behind, which means they’d need to average nearly two points per game in their remaining fixtures just to catch up—and that’s assuming Wolves don’t win any more points at all. That’s more or less title-winning form.
And if you look at Leicester and Ipswich’s remaining fixtures, it’s hard to see a scenario where either of them manage to pick up another ten points, let alone ten more points than Wolves.
With all three teams still due to play each other once more then, in theory, if Ipswich or Leicester were to beat both of their relegation rivals, then they would only need to secure an additional four points from their other seven fixtures to draw level with Wolves (assuming Wolves don’t gain any more points).
But given that Leicester and Ipswich currently sit 19th and 20th in the form table with just 1 point between them in the last six game weeks, compared to Wolves sitting in 9th with 10 points in 6 games…
Well, like I said, it’s all over bar the shouting.
Back in November, I predicted Wolves’ defence would send them down, and at that point, the stats certainly backed up that fear: we’d conceded thirty-two goals in thirteen games. An average of two and a half goals per game. We were on course to concede almost one hundred goals in the season.
Since then, the transformation has been stark: we’ve conceded just twenty-six goals in the subsequent sixteen games, bringing the average down to just over one and a half per game.
Overall, we’ve now conceded fifty-eight goals in twenty-nine games, which brings the average down to just two per game, and we’re on course to concede about seventy-five goals—although, that does take into account our awful GPG average from the first half of the season and this suggests the final figure is likely to be closer to sixty-five.
It really does show that it was the defence that was the problem all along and now that’s sorted out. We look much more solid at the back. The silly errors are less frequent and it no longer feels like we’re going to concede every time we defend a corner.
And that bodes well for next season.
After a full pre-season under Vitor Pereira, I think we’re likely to finish much higher up the table than this season. Perhaps higher than we have since Nuno left. It will, of course, depend on the transfer window, but the impact Vitor Pereira has had on how Wolves are playing, while there’s still room for improvement, makes them look more like a side that should be challenging for Europe than one battling the drop.
Call me optimistic. But fans always are.
Aren’t we?
