Recriminations And Then Time To Look Forward
It looked like being the campaign from hell; the one in which Wolves stooped so low as to set a new Premier League record for fewest points won.
That they ultimately inched past and then moved considerably beyond the embarrassing ‘lows’ chalked up by Derby in 2007-08 (11), Southampton in 2024-25 (12) and half a dozen others is at least something to be grateful for.
The total clicked on to 20 with the last-day draw at Burnley, where victory would have achieved the unlikely bonus of the club not finishing bottom.
This website does not see its role as overly commenting on the present but, as a way of finding good in an attritional nine months, we are happy to home in on the brighter aspects and highlight some statistical oddities of what we have seen and suffered.
At the top of the ‘did that really happen?’ running order is the observation that Wolves have indeed finished a season with more cup victories (four) than League wins (three).
It is the first time in a history spanning almost 150 years that has occurred – but there’s much more.
Remarkably, Wolves didn’t score at the Stan Cullis Stand/North Bank End for well over four months from January 10 until Mateus Mane’s excellent first-half finish against Fulham on May 17, although by far their best home run of the season came during that lop-sided spell.
Twelve successive home goals, starting with the completion of Jorgen Strand Larsen’s hat-trick against Shrewsbury and ending with Santiago Bueno’s headed equaliser versus Sunderland, came at what became very much the side’s favoured end.
And, because highlights have been pretty thin on the ground (pun intended), the ones that saw off champions Liverpool in the League and Europa League winners-elect Villa shortly before felt pretty special; enough to have Rob Edwards sprinting into a neighbouring post-code anyway.
Who would have thought, too, that the Arsenal players who departed the Molineux pitch in such tetchy mood on a mid-February night after Tom Edozie’s dramatic last-gasp equaliser would end up winning the title by seven points? Strange things have occurred, for sure.
Wolves profited unexpectedly from a bizarre rush of four home night games in two and a half weeks, all of them against leading clubs, then went into decline again following an even more bewildering 50-day break between Molineux fixtures.
They actually went 25 days without a game at all and then made us wish the break had been even longer! Three consecutive miserable defeats against West Ham, Leeds and Tottenham came during the period in which six successive wins had been reeled off last spring under Wetherspoons’ highest-profile customer.
But, in another detour from the pattern of 2024-25, which ended with four straight defeats, they have modestly picked up by drawing three of their final quartet of matches.
As recoveries go, it is small beer and, when the first ball is kicked in August, it will already be 16 months since Wolves won away in the League. But, at the end of a season like this, what we have seen and heard in these last few weeks has lifted a little of the gloom prior to what we assume will be a summer of major rebuilding.