Mick McCarthy cut a rather forlorn figure on the touchline at Selhurst Park on Tuesday night, as he tried to digest one of the worst Wolves performances in living memory.
He looked like a bewildered and beaten man. After the comprehensive thumping dished out by Palace, he reportedly locked his players away for an hour to asseverate his dismay at them for such a lousy performance.
Ok, some of the blame does need to go to the players who were outfought, outmuscled and outplayed by a unified Palace side. But if I was Mick, I’d forget having a go at the team, I’d instead have locked myself in the broom cupboard and berated at myself for an hour or two.
Tuesday night’s dismal offering illustrated yet more tactical naivety from the great eagle. I think Mick managed to beat his own record for placing square pegs in round holes in one game.
We had a right back on the wing, a right-footed centre back at left-back, a centre back in midfield and a right winger on the left and so on and so on. I’m amazed that Hennessey actually made it between the sticks! I mean with his height, surely he should be the club’s new target man up front, a modern day Kevin Kyle?
The performance against Palace was an absolute shambles, a disgrace. And just because it was the FA Cup and not the Premiership, doesn’t dissolve Mick from any blame, far from it.
How can we believe that he has any confidence in the players he has brought into the club over the summer when he flatly refuses to play them in the positions they have trained in all their lives?
One of his signings, Ronald Zubar, may have had the fan’s chanting his name, but for me he makes too many critical mistakes, wildly flying into tackles. Kevin Foley now needs to be reinstated at right back; his rightful position and you have to feel for him being crow-barred onto the wing where he is ineffective.
Mick also claims to have finally found his plan B with the shiny new 4-1-4-1 formation. This may have been effective in boring Liverpool off the park at Molineux, but it looked a complete mess at Selhurst Park.
The idea with defensive formations like this is that the team should be able to quickly switch to a 4-3-3 formation when they are attacking and get the wingers bombing up the flanks to whip in a ball or two into the box.
But how was this supposed to work on Tuesday night when we had Foley on one side and the right footed Mujangi Bia operating on the left? By the way, I can’t recall a worse Wolves full debut since Robert Taylor nearly 10 years ago, so let’s just hope Geoffrey Mujangi Bia isn’t this January transfer window’s Tomas Frankowski!
With the exception of Kevin Doyle and the occasional good game from Nenad Milijas, is this Premiership side any better than the one operating in the championship last season?
I would argue that despite the millions spent in the summer, we have taken a backward step.
Mick took the Stoke blueprint too literally in the summer, by narrowing the pitch and then paying over the odds for Greg Halford, who’s one show stopping talent is that he can “throw a ball a long way”.
Part of the foundation of our title winning success last season was built on Jarvis and Kightly, when both fit, bombing up the flanks to provide the service for Ebanks-Blake and Iwelumo to score goals a plenty. So why narrow the pitch?
And after an unsuccessful summer transfer window where Mick wasted millions on the likes of Halford, Surman and Maierhofer, we now have had a disastrous January transfer window.
Jez Moxey and Mick can moan all they want that their selected transfer targets never wanted to come to the club. But didn’t they get just a little obsessed with Stephen Hunt?
As for Robbie Keane, why would he want to come back here in the mess we are in and then pick his playing position out of hat? No, Robbie wanted to join yet another team he has supported all his life and apparently it was always his dream to join Celtic. I thought that was Liverpool?
Anyway, it’s a joke that all we brought in the January transfer window was two unknown kids from one second rate Belgium club; it is simply not good enough.
Mick still doesn’t have a clue what his best side is and you have to wonder if we stay up this season whether it will be because he has done such a fabulous job, or will it actually be down to the mediocre standard of football in the Premiership?
And no, I wouldn’t support a change at the helm that would be completely pointless at this stage in the season.
However, as you may have deducted from the rant above, my confidence in Mick’s abilities to deliver us top flight football again next season is beginning to wane.
The points picked up against Liverpool and Hull were welcome and have kept us out of the bottom three, but we need more than just a point here and there to keep us afloat.
Whilst I feel fully justified to have a moan in a forum like this, we still need to get behind the team, beginning with the trip down the M6 for Sunday’s televised game against an in form Birmingham side.
At least with Doyle and Jarvis back in the side we should pose some attacking threat, but Mick and Terry (Clipboard) Connor are going to have one hell of a job lifting the team after the cup exit.
How many of you would have thought that Birmingham would have scaled the dizzy heights of 8th in the Premiership after they looked so unlikely to get promoted last season?
Their success has been built on a stable starting XI with players playing in the positions they were brought to club for, an incredible obdurate defence and proper investment into their attacking options.
However, a good friend of mine went to the game where they got a lucky draw against Spurs last Saturday and said that it was some of the most clueless football he has ever seen, so there is hope!
I was hoping that this would be a positive bit of blogging; talking about beating Palace in the cup and the fantastic bit of business the 3Ms had done in the transfer window.
As it is, we now have to believe that Mick has enough at his disposal to deliver around a point a game for the final 15 games of the season which I believe would give us enough for another season of top-flight season.
Would we still want Mick at the helm after that? That’s a discussion for another day.
Have a great weekend.
UTW!
@Wolvesblogger 