Wolves are out of the FA Cup, losing 3-2 to Coventry City – and a Jose Sa statistic shows that one player had a tough time at Molineux.
Gary O’Neil‘s hopes of taking Wanderers to Wembley were shattered in injury-time, with Coventry scoring two late goals.
Ellis Simms and Hagi Wright both netted, after Rayan Ait-Nouri and Hugo Bueno had cancelled out Simms’ opener.
Wolves gave their all but just came up short on the day, and after the game O’Neil was keen to exonerate his players given the injuries in the squad at the moment.
Nathan Fraser was deployed up top again in the absence of Matheus Cunha, Pedro Neto and Hwang Hee-chan, and one statistic in particular really does show what a tough game it was for him…
Nathan Fraser had three times fewer touches than Wolves goalkeeper Jose Sa against Coventry
Fraser was handed a second successive start by O’Neil, with the teenager having also played against Fulham.
At the moment, he is the only real option for the manager to lead the line, with Cunha not quite ready to return, and Neto and Hwang longer-term absentees.
He will have been hoping to make a big impact yesterday, for the club he joined at the tender age of seven. There’s no doubt he would have imagined being the hero in such a huge game.
But it just didn’t really happen for Fraser, who was rather starved of service.
Whether that was because the Coventry defenders marked him really well, or the Wolves players just didn’t quite trust him enough to give him the ball in certain areas, Fraser was really quiet.
According to Sofascore data, Fraser had just 13 touches during his 60-minute appearance against Coventry. For perspective, that is three times fewer than Wolves goalkeeper Jose Sa, who had 39.
It’s not Fraser’s fault
It was a shame that Fraser couldn’t have more of an impact against Coventry, but it is far from his fault that he was quiet.
There were definitely opportunities where Wolves players could have passed him the ball but chose not to, potentially indicating that full trust in the ‘powerful’ youngster isn’t fully there at the moment.
Realistically, it’s hard for him because he’s still only 18 and he’s kind of been thrown in at the deep with the injuries in the squad.
The situation is somewhat similar to when Raul Jimenez suffered his skull injury and a vastly inexperienced Fabio Silva then had to play more minutes than the club had initially wanted him to.
Ideally, Wolves would have signed a striker in January which would have allowed Fraser to go out on loan to develop.
But of course, the financial situation at the time rendered Wolves unable to do much and so, no business was conducted and Fraser is now being unfairly relied upon.