Wolves were comfortably beaten today by West Ham United in the Premier League – and the result and performance indicated that Gary O’Neil would be wise to shelve the back four system until he can strengthen.
Wanderers crashed to a 3-0 defeat at the London Stadium, with Wolves putting in arguably their worst display of the season to date.
West Ham didn’t really get out of third gear down in the capital, with Lucas Paqueta and Mohammed Kudus really hurting the visitors.
Kudus got two of the goals, and gave Toti Gomes a torrid time.
Jarrod Bowen added a third in the second-half, which might have panned out differently had Vladimir Coufal been sent off for the hosts for an elbow on Jean-Ricner Bellegarde.
Realistically though, Wolves did not deserve anything today, so poor was the performance.
Gary O’Neil went with a back four – and this is something that may need shelving because Wolves have rarely looked as shaky as they did today…
Back four formation must take a back seat until Gary O’Neil reinforces at Wolves
O’Neil decided to roll out a back four for today’s game, which felt like a risk against a side with good attacking quality.
It became obvious very quickly that the system wasn’t going to work, with West Ham able to cut through easily.
Toti looked really uncomfortable playing as an out-and-out left-back and was often caught out of possession.
Craig Dawson and Max Kilman needed an extra man in there, and it would have made more sense to have Toti continuing as a left sided centre-back, with Hugo Bueno of Rayan Ait-Nouri on the left and Nelson Semedo on the right.
Wolves in a back four this season have looked so flimsy and porous.
We saw games against Brighton and Crystal Palace earlier in the season that Wolves just don’t have the players to be setting up this way and arguably, O’Neil has to shelve it until he can get the right players in in January.
Attack-minded players like Semedo and Ait-Nouri are not particularly well suited to playing as traditional full-backs. Then you’ve got Toti playing left-back which is not his natural position and Dawson and Kilman both lack pace, giving very little chance for recovery.
Until O’Neil can bring in the right people, he surely must use a back three with wing-backs.
Sometimes, people see using a back three as a ‘negative’ thing. But Wolves have only managed to not score in two Premier League games this season, and both times a back four was used. So there should not be a hesitation to just settle on what has been working.