Wolverhampton Wanderers

Wolves being shown how to surrender by Jez Moxey – March 21st 2012

It’s hard to have much sympathy for Wolves at the moment. The fans, no, but the ownership deserve exactly what they’re getting here.

On Sunday, Wolves didn’t just lose to Manchester United, they surrendered to them. Ronald Zubar’s red card obviously didn’t help their cause, but the home side’s general level of application was embarrassing. This wasn’t a peak era United, shredding a lesser team for fun, this was a good team playing quite well, but facing no resistance from their opposition.

I don’t blame Terry Connor for what’s going on at Molineux, and anybody calling for him to be sacked is miscalculating the depth of the problem at Wolves. Connor has inherited an impossible task; it’s as if he’s been allowed to ‘have a go’ on the bridge of the Titanic post-iceberg.

A manager is given the reigns of a struggling club outside of a transfer window, and is expected to miraculously avoid the drop into the Championship? What tools are at his disposal to do that exactly? The only role Connor can really play now, is that of motivator – he was an integral part of Mick McCarthy’s coaching staff, so it was unlikely that much would change tactically. No new players and a limited change in approach – what did Jez Moxey think would happen?

The problem is probably routed in this; Moxey didn’t want to make another high-price appointment with the threat of relegation looming over the club. If he’d appointed Steve Bruce, for example, he’d be looking at a very ugly financial loss should the team still have been relegated. Connor’s appointment as manager really represents financial fire-proofing rather than football-centred logic – which Moxey didn’t exactly dispel with these comments on Monday:

“In footballing terms we are, of course, extremely disappointed to be in the bottom three. We recognise that on the field results are the most important measure for any club. We are not happy with the current onfield situation, far from it, but we should put things into some sort of perspective. We shouldn’t forget Wolves went through a period of spending just one season in the top division in 25 years. We are currently in our third consecutive season in the Premier League and still with every chance of going on to win our survival battle and make it four seasons.”

Translated, that basically means ‘don’t moan if we go down, because we’re still better than we used to be’.

That’s almost Churchillian in its inspiration.

This is what happens when you dally with a decision. If Mick McCarthy was to be sacked, it should have been done in November or December, because as it is, his replacement represents little more than an aesthetic change. Unfortunately for Terry Connor, he’s less a manager, a more the relegation caretaker of somebody else’s team.

When a board appears so eager to wave the white flag, is it little wonder that the same mentality starts to appear on the pitch?