Wolves going for five on the trot

Suddenly it’s gone from hoping for the best to trying to keep the feet on the ground as Wolves look for their fifth successive Championship win against Crystal Palace at Molineux on Tuesday. Still early days of course, but the season looks like it can go better than most Wolves fans were hoping for and as a new team there should still be improvement to come.

After the last international break we said on this site that the target should be to get 4 wins from the 6 games until the next break. Well those 4 wins have been secured already so anything from the Palace game tomorrow then the trip to Blackburn on Saturday can be considered a bonus. And those games do look far from easy. Blackburn are also sitting in the top 6 and their fans will be lifted by a change in manager, and even more so if there is a new man in the seat by the weekend. And Palace are a team in form with 13 points from their last 5 league games.

After losing their first three games of the season, Palace have been on as good a roll as Wolves and there win at Bolton on Saturday suggests they can be promotion contenders. Their manager Dougie Freedman had a year as a player with Wolves making 30 appearances but he played ten times as often for Palace and is gaining a good reputation as a manager. The last meetings between the clubs was in the FA Cup in 2010 when Palace knocked Wolves out in a replay after a particularly poor Wolves performance. But they have been regular league opponents over the last 20 years and it’s been fairly equal with 24 clashes at this level of which Wolves have won 10, Palace 8 and 6 draws.

After a run of wins it would be no surprise to see Solbakken pick the same starting 11 as Saturday, although Boukari was injured early and will likely not be available again. And the last time Wolves had three matches in a week the manager decided to bring in some fresh legs for the midweek game and may do again. The British players are used to the games coming around so quickly but the foreign players are not and Doumbia, Peszko and Sako could be rested although Sako is becoming so important to the team that Solbakken would not leave him out lightly. The likes of Edwards, Hunt and Forde would be the most likely to get a game if they are rested, and Sigurdarsen might get his first Molineux start at the expense of Ebanks Blake.

It should be a good game between two of the division’s form teams and a draw would not be a bad result for the home team. But the run of results has raised the spirits and aspirations and a 5th successive win would certainly go down a treat. It feels like we are starting to be greedy to ask for another success but we can but hope.

Category: Team News