Wolves battle back to earn a draw

Wolves took a point from an evenly contested local derby with Birmingham City at lunch time today.

With the only change being the return to the starting eleven for Mark Kennedy, in for Joey Godhesuselessman, it was an attacking 4-4-2 formation that started the game.

The first half produced chances for both teams. Iversen had a pile driver of an effort tipped around the post by Maik Taylor and then a Craddock header was cleared off the line from a corner.

Blues had a fierce drive from Dugarry, for once not lying prone on the floor, tipped over by Oakes and Craddock just nicked the ball away from Forssell when he seemed certain to score.

It was an open game. Wolves central midfield duo of Rae and Ince had to lie deeper to protect the defence and this allowed Dunn, at times, a dangerous amount of space to pick his passes.

That said there was not a great deal in it and you couldn’t see why the teams occupied such relatively diverse league standings.

Wolves started the second half poorly and Blues took full advantage. Forssell, who looked dangerous in the first half, exploited the lack of pace at the back and skilfully placed his shot through the legs of Oakes.

It didn’t look good as Wolves forward pairing of Iversen and Miller showed that they’d not played together before. Kennedy was having one of his ‘days’ and Camara’s neat tricks weren’t likely to do any real damage.

However, Rae decided he was the man to take on the Cameron mantle and force the game back into the visitors half. Several inspired runs and tackles seemed to rattle Birmingham and we gradually worked our way back into contention.

The equaliser, when it came, was straight off the training ground – not!

A low corner from Rae was flicked on at the near post by Camara. The ball found Butler about eight yards from goal, relatively unmarked. Rather than score himself he cunningly sliced the ball back across goal to Camara thus confusing the visitors defence. Camara returned the ball back across and Iversen slid in at the back post to turn the ball just over the line.

Sweet relief and a chance to goad the away fans.

From then until the final whistle the game was pretty scrappy. Savage started whining to the referee and living up to his reputation for being ‘less than honest’. Dugarry went off on a stretcher which brought big cheers from the home fans after the Frenchman had tried to dive his way to a penalty.

And then in the dying seconds an unlikely breakaway by Camara nearly produced a winner. A delightful low cross came into the path of Iversen but with the goal at his mercy and all he had to do was hit the ball forward; he skilfully guided the ball out wide to Kennedy.

A draw was probably a fair result. Birmingham did have some skilful players especially Forssell and Dunn but there wasn’t a great deal to chose between the teams.

Wolves, inevitably, lacked that bit of extra skill where it counted. Miller was again very disappointing, Iversen played better than in recent weeks. Ince and Rae were excellent in midfield. Craddock was caught out a few times and Naylor missed a couple of tackles but all in all it was a big improvement on the performance at Boro seven days ago.

With Villa losing at home there now seems to be a clutch of five teams competing for the bottom three positions.

If Wolves, can get some of their missing key players back we have the bottle and battling qualities to make a real case for staying in the top flight for another season.

Come on the Wolves!

E-mail me with any comments to dave@wolves-mad.co.uk