Julen Lopetegui survived El Sackico and I think he’s bought himself a couple of weeks to try to turn things around. But whether or not he’ll still be our manager after Christmas will depend on what the performances are like as well as the results.
I’m writing this before our next game against Bournemouth and I think how we perform there, as well as the home game against Brighton will certainly have a bearing on his future. As for our game against Wolves, I’d said before the game that the game was set up for us to win with Antonio being injured after his car crash.
When we went one up, it felt like another goal would kill off the game but there was that nervousness after our disallowed goal, which is always going to be the case. But even with them scoring an equaliser, everything seemed to work in our favour.
It helped that we started on the front foot and kept that way, and in truth, Wolves weren’t particularly great. The crowd was really behind the team too.
With how important the game was and with what happened to Antonio, they were behind the players from the off. And it felt like when it got to the ninth minute and everyone clapped for Antonio, it really raised the team.
It’s moments like this that pull everyone together. Even if the players didn’t want to put on a performance and get the result for the manager, they would’ve wanted to do it for Michail, and I think that came across in the performance.
With Antonio likely to be out for a long time, I think Bowen will remain up top for now. I guess it’ll depend on the fitness of Fullkrug as to when he might get a run of games up top and Bowen will move back out to the wing.
Either way, we’ve just got to try to build on this now, that’s the key. There are plenty of sides like us – like Newcastle – that are winning one week, and losing the next. Brentford are the same, they can’t seem to win away from home but always win at their own ground.
If we can be that team to put a run together now, we can really surge up the table, and I hope the result against Wolves will give us the confidence to do that. I think Summerville was positive against Wolves. He was always looking to drive forward and carry the ball towards their goal.
He perhaps didn’t have the final product on the night but he gave us momentum, and I think the manager now needs to look at picking the same side rather than chopping and changing. We’ve got plenty of games coming up over the next month and we’re going to need everyone in the squad at some point but if we can, I’d hope we can play with a bit more of a settled side.
There’s one thing for sure, I wouldn’t have us down for too many clean sheets at the moment.
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