People always react to friendly results with an air of dismissal, as they are only friendlies. However, if you, like me, were one of the 500+ Wolves fans in the 1,500 at Christie Park on Saturday, you’d see it differently.
10 of the starting line-up were first team squad players. The line-up was:
Oakes
Luzhny Clyde Butler Irwin
Rae Ince Cameron Cooper
Sturridge Clarke
I went to the friendly fixture last season and thought that Jimi-Lee Jones’ last-ditch equaliser in a 3-3 draw was embarrassing but nothing prepared me for Saturday.
The main horrors, from a large list were:
· The way the defence didn’t communicate with each other and didn’t form any sort of unit
· The way the midfield was out battled by a team of decent part-timers
· The injury to Deano
· The serious lack of fitness from our players
· The real lack of depth to our squad
The defence was shocking.
I have to single out Mark Clyde as the Morecambe fans around me were discussing just how poor he was, he looked out of his depth against a conference team.
Also in for criticism comes Luzhny. For some reason he decided he could play right wing and leave the defence to it. Sorry, Oleg but you don’t have the likes of Sol Campbell behind you to cover you any more.
In midfield, Alex Rae looked like a player at the end of his career. Paul Ince was out battled by the Morecambe skipper, which inevitably resulted in a second half booking for his third ill-timed tackle. No arguments Paul, you weren’t good enough.
Cameron, huffed and puffed and Wolves switched players round in the vain hope of combating Morecambe’s formation.
Only Kevin Cooper, in my opinion, came out of the game with any credit.
The goals were mainly giveaways. The first a mix up between Rae and Clyde. The second Cameron got a little nudge, stopped running to complain to the referee and turned round to see us 2 down.
The third wasn’t long in coming either. Oakes had denied Morecambe twice before a cross hit the back post and went in. The fourth was a run straight through the middle of the pitch. 4-0 at half time.
Ingimarrson and Melligan came on in the second half but the game was over.
We did manage to score with our first shot of the second half when Andrews drilled in a 20+ yarder. I thought, aim for a respectable scoreline, but no Ingimarrson, having replaced Clyde, was out battled for the striker to cross, leading to a tap in for Morecambe’s fifth.
It wasn’t over as Morecambe cleverly worked a sixth just to emphasise the difference between the two teams.
Add to the woe the injury to Deano and it couldn’t have been any worse.
To have the Morecambe fans rightly singing, “You’re not very good”, “Can we play you every week” was both amusing and scary.
Fair play to Morecambe they played good football and I expect them to be challenging for the right to be in the football league again this season – good luck to them, they are obviously a club going places.
However, we are going into the Premiership in 3 weeks and I reckon that at least 3 of the defenders who played will start at Blackburn. As to how they will fair against a slick footballing team with the likes of Cole, Yorke, Thompson and the like – well cover your eyes and ears when the result is displayed at 4.50pm on 16th August.
I hope this serves as a warning to Jones to get his finger out, get some decent players in, and to the fans that we’re in for a long hard 9 months that is going to involve a lot of defeats.
>>As good as it gets for Wolves fans at Morecambe
>> "Are they really in the Premiership?"
>> "Get rid of it!"
E-mail me with any comments/feedback to: dave@wolves-mad.co.uk