Stephen Warnock expressed sympathy for Fabio Silva on Match of the Day 2 last night, after Wolves’ 1-0 loss to West Ham United.
Wanderers slipped to a second defeat in just a few days at the London Stadium to lose ground in the race for the top four.
Bruno Lage made a handful of changes to the side that started against Arsenal, including bringing Silva in for Jimenez up top.
Jimenez had struggled to make an impact against the Gunners.
There had been calls for the Mexican to be rotated and Lage duly obliged. But it was a tough outing for Silva, who suffered from a lack of support.
The youngster was probably actually one of the better Wolves players on the day.
But he was often isolated, and pundit Warnock expressed his sympathy for the teenager on Match of the Day 2.
He said in his analysis: “The one player who was isolated was Fabio Silva. It was only his second start. When you look at him here, he does extremely well, his job is to hold the ball up, it’s to link play, he does that, and then you look at Hwang and Trincao and think ‘where’s your runs forward?’ They’re not even moving.
Warnock criticised Hwang for being too slow, and also not playing close enough to Silva to pick up second balls. He added that the 19-year-old was ‘feeding off scraps’.
He also picked out a moment where Max Kilman could have fizzed the ball into him, but instead played back to Conor Coady.
Fabio Silva did what he could yesterday on a tough shift against West Ham
Silva has come in for criticism again from some after his display yesterday.
But Warnock is right to point out the fact he seriously lacked support. It was a thankless task for him yesterday, and he did his best against two very physical centre-backs in Craig Dawson and Kurt Zouma.
Hwang and Trincao were often miles away from him. It’s very difficult for a lone striker to be effective when the cavalry are not close by. Even for strikers who have been playing the game for years.
It was right that Silva got a chance yesterday. And it’s a shame that he’ likely go straight back to the bench for the Crystal Palace game because he couldn’t make that much of an impact.