I met Matt (Mr Consistent) Doherty in the soup aisle of one of the posher supermarkets in Wolves about 5ish years back.
And what a lovely chap. We spoke in length about soups. We didn’t. We didn’t get round to discussing soups in our conversation. Which was a shame. I like soup.
No, thankfully, we kept things on topic and top of the bill was Matt’s switch to left back under Kenny Jackett, which Matt had discussed with his dad, who agreed that it would help Matt’s development.
I met him again a couple of seasons ago when I joined my friends from the Maltese Wolves fan club to hand over their player of the season to him (below – my baldy head is the second from the right). Frustratingly, I still didn’t get to chat about soup.
Fast forward to post-Leicester; a tremendous but ultimately unrewarding team performance and it was a little hard to read some of the vitriol aimed in Doc’s direction on social media.
Matt has been one of our most consistent performers for many a campaign; winning player of the season back in 2016 and grabbing third in the voting last time around. And yet. And yet.
Along with Bonatini, Doc came in for a mountain of moaning on social media after his rather awkward display, where he missed a sitter, scored a worldy own-goal and got absolutely clattered by Vardy.
Some fans have short memories. Matt is a fine player and I don’t think his place is seriously under any threat. I mean who have we got who could step in anyway?
One bad swallow doesn’t make a summer or some kind of idiom. Anyway, Matt is fine, leave him alone.
It’s been two games. Two games where we have a point, where arguably we could have had bagged all six.
My big(ish) worry at the moment, is that we are getting chances in front of goal but who is going to chuck them in the onion bag?
Bonatini works his socks off but I wasn’t convinced by him last season and he doesn’t look like the solution this time around either.
On the other hand. Jimenez looks like the real deal. So with Wolves chasing the game on Saturday, it seemed a little perplexing that Nuno would take off Costa & Jota and bring on Adama & Bonatini, only for Bonatini to become the focal point of the attack.
Once this team attunes to the Premier League way, then I’m sure we have goals all across the pitch, akin to last season when Bonatini’s goals ran dry in the second half of the campaign and other players, like Jota, scored aplenty.
And although I still don’t think Silva was the answer to our goal-scoring woes, (he did however bag a hat-trick on his Sevilla debut), in hindsight, I think bringing in another out and out forward would have be beneficial.
Perhaps we will all panic over a striker to come in the next transfer window, mirroring last season, only for Nuno to prove us all wrong and for the club to finish in a healthy league position.
The undoubted positive takeaway from the Leicester defeat was Adama Traoré’s cameo appearance.
Wow. He was running past players like they weren’t there and that turn of pace will frighten any defence in this league. He is a unit. A fast unit. A unit that is direct and powerful. Did I mention he is a unit?
He is likely to start against City, who blew away a Huddersfield team in about second gear.
We haven’t got Clipboard Connor in charge for the meeting on Saturday, so I’m not expecting that we will roll over and have our collective bellies tickled, as we did in 2012.
These are the challenges we shouldn’t fear. These matches are the reason we wanted to mix it with the big boys again.
We could also get our first glimpse of the talented Leander Dendoncker, who is likely to be on the bench for the toughest home challenge of the season.
Bring it on. Under Mick’s three seasons in the Prem, we beat a lot of the bigger teams, including Man City back in 2010.
So who knows? Difficult yes, impossible no.
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