I'm sat on the train at Wolverhampton station, surrounded by Albion fans, trying to keep the big smile off my face. Wolves 3, Albion 1. Who would have thought it?
I'm going to start with a few comments on Steven Fletcher. Any of you who have read me on here before know of my deep and undying love for the Irish god that is Kevin Doyle. However, I may have another striker in my sights. Fletcher now has 7 goals in 12 starts. To put it another way, he is averaging a goal every 175 minutes. If you take the age old ratio of a goal every two games as being the target, he is starting to look every inch a £7 million striker.
He didn't stop running today. I thought that very few strikers worked as hard as Doyle, but Fletcher is not far off. In addition, despite being quite wiry, he wins his fair share of headers and has surely overtaken Sylvan Ebanks-Blake in the pecking order. His link up play is the best of any of our strikers, and he appears to be developing a partnership with fan's favourite Stephen Ward. The only complaint is the lack of an original song for him - may I suggest 'Fletcher's gonna getcha' for next week?
When two teams play 4-4-2, and are of similar ability, most often the team that wants it more will be victorious, and so it proved today. I don't think I can fault a single player today. Even Elokobi coped admirably against Somen Tchoi. I think at first he was taken aback to be facing a winger who is bigger than him, but with the help of Stephen Hunt ahead of him, he coped admirably.
And speaking of Hunt, was this his finest performance in a Wolves shirt? If Fletcher was man of the match, Hunt ran him close. When he played earlier in the season, he looked short of fitness and sharpness and many fans were worried he was a long way past his best. However, he made a positive impact last week, and grabbed his chance with both hands today. He loves a scrap, and I can definitely see him becoming a midfield snotter when his pace finally goes. That hasn't happened yet, he gave Gonzalo Jara a tough game and always looked to support the strikers.
While we’re talking about players called Stephen/Steven, a shout for Ward. By my reckoning, he’s now played at left back, left midfield, right midfield, center midfield and upfront this season. He can’t train for every single one of these positions, and that showed a little today; he had a tendency to run offside which has surely come about due to a lack of playing time upfront. Yet, he was excellent. He played well against Birmingham last week, but stepped up his performance this week. Had he kept his head towards the end, he surely would have scored one of the goals of the season.
The most pleasing aspect of today’s game was the return of the fight. That has been the most important characteristic of the season so far, but it had been gone since the Newcastle match. Last night, I was genuinely unsure at to where our next win was going to come from. Not because of a lack of quality in the team, but due to the players not looking like they had the confidence to go on and win games. It’s amazing what going 3-0 up will do. Saying that, when Albion pulled the goal back, you could physically see their heads drop, and we were lucky to get away with only conceding one goal in that spell of pressure. With a bit of luck, the fact we did only concede one will get into the player’s minds.
We have two games left, one win will probably be enough, and four points will almost certainly be enough. Whatever your personal views on Mick McCarthy, or Jez Moxey, or individual players, now is the time to bite your lip and concentrate on getting behind the team. You could see how much this win meant to the players – they want to be playing in the Premier League next season just as much as we want to be watching it. We have put ourselves in a great position to stay up, now is the time for positivity.
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