City just too slick for us

Last updated : 02 April 2002 By Dave Burgess

I have to be honest and say that Man City were basically just too good for us.


We knew that this would be a tough match and that we would need to be at our best to compete, we weren't, and we were shown up to be quite ordinary and lacking in many areas of the pitch.

For the first ten minutes we did compete in the midfield with Cameron and Rae tiggerishly chasing down and winning any loose balls. However, City worked out that they could use the vast expanses of space on their left to work their way through.

The longer the first half went on the more you could see the goal coming as the pressure was building with every attack. Bernabia wasn't being picked up and was drawing Butler out of the centre to try and close him down.


When the goal came, sure it took an unfortunate deflection, but it really was only a matter of time.


City's passing was far slicker, a massive contrast to Wolves who handled the ball like a hot potato.


Huckerby was causing problems with his pace and Wolves seemed to lack any real strategy as to how to combat the many threats that City were posing us with.


The injury to Cooper further weakened the midfield. Bringing on Ndah on resulted in City murdering us in the middle as Ndah and Newton contributed nothing going forward or covering their over-worked fullbacks.


When half time came all we could hope for was a rallying call from Jonesy. Perhaps this and some steel and determination from the players, could allow us to turn things around before they slid totally away from us.


For a while in the second half it did look better. However, the set pieces that we worked for were wasted with some shocking execution of the free kicks and corners.


City weathered the storm and then killed us off after several previous attempts when Rae got caught in front of his own 18-yard area and Wright-Phillips drove the second, final, nail in the Wolves coffin.


City could have added more before the end but a 2-0 scoreline read like 9-0 to the Wolves fans that had left in droves before the final whistle had blown.


The despair was to be compounded by West Brom's victory at Coventry that leaves us tied on points with three games to go.


However, a quick glance at the comparative fixtures sees West Brom with the easier run in on paper.


Worryingly for Wolves the wheels really do seem to have come off the promotion bandwagon.


We have senior players showing a lack of discipline, injuries to key players and several others carrying knocks through games, a paper-thin squad in terms of quality replacements and finally, a loss of form.


I'm sure that the noises coming out of the Molineux will be that we are still ahead by 4 goals and that our destiny is still in our own hands but I along with several others believe we are going to slide into the dreaded play-offs.


I'm a realist and I think it will take something extraordinary to now hang onto 2nd place.


However, perhaps a victory at Millwall will give us some hope – let's keep our fingers crossed!