I asked:

How many games do you attend a year?
Whereabouts do you live?
Where do you think we’ll finish this year?
Do you want Mick to stay?

I’ve got 39 responses, so I won’t call you lot representative, but interesting nonetheless.

The most overwhelming result was the amount of support for Mick – 77% wanted him to stay, and only 8% definitely didn’t, with the rest not sure or wanting to give him a bit longer before deciding.

Generally positive too was the expectation of where we’d finish at the end of the season. We’re 19th now, but only one person thought we’d finish there. No one thought we’d be bottom and only 1/10 thought we’d be relegated.

Given there so much happy clapping and agreement, I can’t really draw any conclusions about whether going to games makes any difference, but if you haven’t already responded, I’ve love to hear from you – leave a comment answering the questions below.

A few of your comments:

Loved McCarthy for a long time, recently lost faith over the latest poor run of results but am regaining said lost faith. My judgement is based on whether he keeps us in the league or not.
(Less) Frustrated

Keep Mick as manager – he has brought us so far and keeps the players level through the highs and lows of the season.
Mike

Not sure. So many pros and cons to weigh up. At this stage I am happy for him to stay because I can’t see that anyone else would do better with whats available. The players play for him no question.

And my favourite:

Do you want Mick to stay? Yes (The fact that I have the same birthday as Mick does NOT influence this – although the miserable so-and-so has never sent me a card! I’ve never sent him one either, so I guess that evens it up)
Wirral Wolf

Thanks all!

Can’t wait for Sunday.

In the first half Wolves played, on the whole, confidently and fluidly, were creating all the chances were only denied a bigger goal margin by a couple of good saves from the otherwise uncertain Robert Green in the Hammers goal.

In the second half we conceeded an early penalty (soft but fair; unnecessary from Foley) to give them the goal they needed, and then stood back like rabbits caught in the headlights as all the good work of the first half unravelled. It was only a debatable hand ball decision in the last minute that avoided the scoreline having a more familiar ’2-1; goal conceeded in final minute’ shape to it.

Mick McCarthy assessed the situation thusly:

I’m pleased with the response after [the penalty] because West Ham played well and took the game by the scruff of the neck and we had to show all the battling qualities that we hadn’t showed in the first half because we were all over them…And when you have a penalty given against you in that situation it’s always going to change things.

This worries me, because it misses the obvious point that this result is not just about West Ham, who looked very, very poor in the first half, suddenly finding their game. This result is very much in keeping with a larger pattern of Wolves second half capitulation. Look, I’ve drawn a graph of our goals for/against in each half this season to point out the obvious:

When things go wrong, reach for the bar chart

We’re playing rather well in the first half, and rather badly in the second half. This was obvious on the field yesterday.

In the first half we were passing the ball, closing the opposition down and always looking to attack. There were four or five Wolves players in the box several times on the attack.

In the second half we were timid, never moved to offer the player with the ball a decent pass, and there was rarely more than one player in the box when we looked to attack; more usually, there were none.

West Ham did raise their game (starting from a very low base point) and we were always likely to spend more time defending, but we had attacking chances and never looked like we really believed. Substituting Fletcher for Van Damme can only have contributed to this strangely negative reaction. Van Damme played fine, but the game was there for the taking, and surely Ebanks-Blake deserves more of a chance after a good start to the season – the five minutes he got was not enough to judge. Perhaps the fact that in the end we were lucky not to lose justifies the timidity of the substitution, but I’d be more inclined to say that the substitution was at least part of a wider mentality that led to us nearly losing.

Onto the individuals. Doyle was the standout player for me, if only because of the contrast to his usual excellence. We shouldn’t have to rely on him as we did last season to drag the general standard of the team up, and judging from this performance, we won’t be able to anyway. He looked fed up.

As a general rule, everyone played much worse in the second half than the first. Jarvis in particular was excellent in the first half, useless in the second. Berra deserves a good word and Mancienne was sound – he harried the opposition well in the midfield in the absence of Henry, kept up his level of performance in the second half, and is the only player I can remember trying to run forward with the ball (why, oh, why don’t we do this more often – we see enough of it against us every week). Ward continues to be good at the last ditch tackle and terrible at backing off until he has to put in a last ditch tackle to save the game. Edwards battled and ran, and on a poor day, was one of the better players on the pitch, and was certainly one of the more positive in the second half. I’d have been interested to see Milijas play though.

So we stay second from bottom with a bit of a difficult run of games coming up (I think that’s what you call Chelsea – Man U – Man City – Arsenal). Can we turn this around? Judging from the first half performance: Yes. Judging from the second half performance: Down by Christmas.

I’m worried if McCarthy doesn’t acknowledge that there was a problem with our team yesterday, and it’s not just that our opponents wake up in the second half. There was a clear lack of confidence to attack, even in the face of our evident superiority over the opposition in the first half. At this point, we can’t rely on a run of good results to get some confidence into the team, so the Manager needs to persuade them fast that they can win games like this, even when bad things like conceeding a penalty occur.

In truth, McCarthy has always been both a good and a bad manager, but with much more good than bad. If he didn’t have strengths and weaknesses just like everyone it would certainly be remarkable. There will no doubt be a few (many?) calling for his head as Wolves head into a two week break in the bottom three and winless since the first day of the season, but to stop backing him now would be a mistake. Yes, he’s not picking the team I’d want him to pick right now – he’s stubborn and will never do what the fans shout at him to do. On the other hand, he’s stubborn and will never do what the fans shout at him to do. I for one don’t want a manager who doesn’t believe in himself or who would we swayed by the opinion of terraces or message boards. I do want one who cares about the club and demands the same of his players. I do want one who can develop our squad into a good Premier League team, but do not expect this to happen overnight or we’ll end up both relegated and bankrupt.

I value what McCarthy has achieved for this club and believe he has successfully built a good Wolves team within what are still by Premier League standards, tight budgetary constraints. I expect that better players like Hunt, and hopefully Mouyokolo will come into the team and improve it. I would also like to see Zubar and Van Damme play, and they will when they’re ready, and the best judge of that will be the people who see them play every day.

The board will undoubtedly stand by McCarthy and so will I. I watched Liverpool play Sunderland a couple of weeks ago, and that provides an interesting lesson in what vocal dissatisfaction from the stands achieves: It hasn’t achieved change, but it does unsettle a team.

Ok, so I don’t have to loudly oppose McCarthy, I could just disagree with what he does and maybe write about it here. I think, however, that he deserves more than not being protested about – he deserves trust and continued support. I won’t say he deserves ‘a chance’, because he’s had one, and he’s done very well with it within the cnstraints of the team he inherited – at Championship an Premier League level.

The case for the prosecution is clear. None of the summer signings have yet made a real impact. Team selections, on the face of it, have been frustrating. We’ve spent big on players who none of us have seen play (Hunt). Rather more frustratingly, we’ve seen money spent on players who none of us have seen play for more than 45 minutes at a time (Van Damme) or in the reserves (Mouyokolo). Instead, players from the Championship winning team, who we’ve all seen play hundreds of times are still getting a run out. There is an emphasis on exertion above excellence (although for all his exertion, Guedioura never got much of a run out). We spent big on Fletcher, but playing two strikers is exposing midfield weaknesses. With four losses in a row, the results speak for themselves.

So, let’s look at those results. Stoke: won and deserved to; Everton: drew and deserved to; Newcastle: drew, but were a bit of a shambles; Fulham: lost and deserved to, but could have won except for 5 minutes lack of concentration; Tottenham: lost but could and should have done better – individual mistakes late in the game cost us again; Villa: lost, but deserved better (despite terrible first half); Wigan: lost but played with 10 men for 80 minutes. The second half performance by Wolves yesterday was poor, but with only 10 men that’s hard to judge. In the first half, the ten men stood firm.

I’m angry and disappointed about the way the season has gone in the last month and expected much better. However, in my opinion we could and should have got better results and we can and will get better results in the future, and McCarthy will be the one to get them. We have a terrible run of games coming up, so things are likely to get worse before they get better, but get better they will.

Not only does McCarthy have my trust to deliver an improvement, but changing managers would be a reckless idea at this point in the season. Football teams need to stop jumping ship too soon in the hope of something better. If the majority had had their way, McCarthy would have gone in 2008 when we finished seventh or again when we were struggling last year. At any of those times, Wolves would have have gone backward, so I’m backing McCarthy to take us forward now. He won’t always do it in the way I would, but perhaps that’s for the best as I’m writing a blog and see the team play at best once a week, and he’s managing Wolves.

This doesn’t mean McCarthy or any manager deserves our support forever, but it does mean it will be the correct decision to give him longer to see summer signings come good and good fortune and bad to even itself out. Ask me again in January what I think of McCarthy; until then, I’m keeping quiet.

A draw away against Stoke is a decent outcome for the team after going 2-0 down in a poor first half, although frustratingly a result that, like the last two games, could easily have been three points to the Wolves.

It was irritating to see an otherwise fine Christophe Berra with his arms wrapped around the opposition in the penalty area again – he’s going to give away more penalties if he carries on; but fantastic to see Milijas coming on at half time and having the impact that we’ve all been hoping, and even more fantastic to see Jody Craddock getting a couple of goals.  Craddock has been a fantastic professional for Wolves for many years now so I would never be surprised to see him giving his all, but I am both surprised and delighted to see him playing so darn well at this level.  Following on from two games playing full tilt with several stitches in his head, this man is rapidly becoming a Wolves legend.  I keep fearing he’s going to be found out in this league, but he hasn’t been so from now on I remain silent on the matter.

And the final word goes to Mick McCarthy, always great value in interviews, who professed himself not bothered how far offside Craddock’s first goal was: “We’ve had a few go against us this season and I’ve accepted them with good grace; it’s about time someone else had to.” And so say all of us.