Good game, that. Wolves were largely the better and more threatening side for long spells, but got their only goal via a calamity from McGregor in nets. Hull, one might suggest, need to work on their passing to each other, particularly up top which seemed to see a large number of arguments between players.
Anyway, thanks for joining us. Now head over to Michael Butler’s MBM of Crystal Palace v Arsenal, here.
Full time: Wolves 1-1 Hull
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
90 mins + 2: There appears to be some sort of unofficial truce between the two sides. They’ll take the draw and shake hands, it seems.
90 mins: Hull are finishing this as the stronger team, here. Again Akpom drives at goal, and again he ignores the runs of several colleagues to shoot at goal, and again it goes over. Two minutes of added time, and Adam Le Fondre comes on for Dicko.
88 mins: Akpom tries to create something from the left, and attempts a surprise shot from the left but it doesn’t catch out Martinez in nets at the near post.
86 mins: Could be more strife between Akpom and Jelavic after the former ignores the latter’s run to fire a shot at goal, which is straight at Martinez who batters it away.
83 mins: Tremendous work from Aluko, as he wriggles and turns his way out of bother in the middle, but his attempted ball through to Akpom hits Jelavic’s ankles and dribbles away. Meanwhile, Clucas is replaced by the marvellously-named Calaum Jahraldo-Martin.
81 mins: Clucas, having recovered sufficiently it seems, is lucky not to give away a free kick/get a booking after sticking his studs on McDonald’s instep just outside the box.
79 mins: Clucas is down having been barrelled over by Edwards, but he’s probably going to be OK. Alex Neil is in the crowd - who’s he watching, then?
77 mins: Coady tries to thread the needle, the eye in this case being the Hull defence, but the thread/ball doesn’t quite make it through. Maybe he needs to moisten the end of the thread in order to make it easier to fit through. What - you’ve never sewed?
75 mins: A change for each side - Ojo does now come on, replacing Henry, while Hull withdraw Elmohamady in place of Eni Aluko’s brother.
74 mins: Brilliant defending from McDonald, taking a chance away from Meyler after he’s played in on the left side of the box by a terrific reverse pass from Jelavic.
72 mins: Hull hit the post! Brilliant stuff from Meyler and Jelavic, the former playing in the latter with a neat ball, which is slightly over-hit and Jelavic spins on the floor to keep it in and cut back to Akpom, who smacks a left-footed strike against the frame of the goal.
70 mins: Another miss! McDonald plays in Afobe, who clips across goal for Dicko, but he can’t get the header on goal when it was technically open.
69 mins: Wolves are playing well here but could probably do with something a little extra. Sheyi Ojo looked like he was going to come on before the goal, and something like him could be the answer.
67 mins: By jiminy it must be a bloody nightmare to play against Dicko and Afobe. The latter is busy again in the right channel, shoots from a relatively tight angle but given McGregor’s wavering confidence it was worth a stab. A solid enough save that time, though.
66 mins: Meyler has Hull’s first shot on target in what seems like eons, but it’s low and from range and not especially powerful, and Martinez saves.
65 mins: Close again from Wolves. Iorfa and his massive legs belt down the right, played in by Dicko, then crosses low to Edwards in the box but he can’t quite get enough on the shot and it goes through to the far post and away.
64 mins: Exceptional work from Afobe who sits Dawson down with a splendid turn in the box, but Robertson is there to clean up and clear.
63 mins: Bit of a barney between Akpom and Jelavic. Not entirely clear why to be honest - perhaps the former objecting to a lack of support from the latter? Anyway, Akpom wins a free kick just outside the area that Huddlestone puts over.
62 mins: There must be something about that end of the Molineux pitch. This happened there last season.
61 mins: Olé! Edwards heads a fairly weak, looping one towards goal and it’s another routine catch for McGregor, but he actually does catch this one.
59 mins: Ach, Gordon Strachan is here to watch McGregor, too. Bad news.
58 mins: Fire up the circus music. Dicko whips over a cross from the left, and it looks like a routine claim for McGregor but he lets it slip through his hands, and Henry is there to tap it home. The Wolves fans, who have been objecting quite vocally to McGregor’s leisurely approach to goal kicks, rather enjoyed that.
GOAL! Wolves 1-1 Henry (Henry 58)
Oh lord, remarkable slapstick...
Updated
55 mins: Ouch. Golbourne goes up with Odubajo for a header and sticks his studs into his opponent’s hip. Lucky to escape a booking, there. Meyler replaces Isaac Hayden.
54 mins: Hull are still just about hanging in there. Looks like David Meyler is about to come on to beef things up a tad.
52 mins: The resultant corner is an ersatz Anderton-Sheringham job, with Afobe again shooting low, but it doesn’t make it through the sea of legs and torsos along the edge of the six-yard box.
51 mins: Iorfa barrels forwards and plays into Afobe on the edge of the box, some neat footwork creates a bit of space for the forward and he shoots, but it’s blocked by the throat of Davies. Which looked like it hurt.
49 mins: And again. It’s nearly, nearly, nearly for them as Edwards tries to play in Afobe but the ball clips heels and eventually dribbles harmlessly away.
47 mins: More of the same from Wolves, as Dicko tries a pass across the edge of the area, it’s deflected into the path of Edwards on the edge of the box who swings a left hoof but it sails over the bar.
46 mins: And we are very much off and running again.
The bloke on Sky keeps banging on about that being Jelavic’s first goal in six months, which seems a little harsh given that two of those months were spent not playing football, he was injured for a spell last season and his last goal was actually only seven games ago. Anyway, the players are out.
Well, that’s a minor mugging from Hull. They have created a few chances, but Wolves have been the better side overall, but interestingly for them haven’t been able to carve out many clear-cut chances from their fine build-up play. One imagines they will have better luck if they continue in this manner after the break, mind.
Half time: Wolves 0-1 Hull
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
Updated
45 mins + 1: Hull counter through Jelavic, but he can’t get a clear sight at goal and slips in Elmohamady, but he shoots low and it’s blocked.
45 mins: More frustration for Wolves as they go all across the edge of the box trying to create some space/a chance, but Coady’s flipped ball over the top comes to nowt.
43 mins: More nice work from Wolves down the left on the counter-attack, with Golbourne and Dicko interchanging superbly, but the former’s eventual low cross is cleared.
42 mins: Suddenly Akpom finds himself away down the inside-left channel and advances on goal, but Martinez is out of his goal whippet-fast, and slaps away his Arsenal colleague’s chipped finish. Cracking keeping, that.
40 mins: Clucas gets down the left, but is very firmly shut down by the impressive Iorfa before he can get a cross away. From the corner, Iorfa is there again to head away with Dawson lurking.
38 mins: Bruce is waving his arms around and swearing again. Shall we just assume that’s the case all the time, and I’ll tell you if he isn’t? Cool.
36 mins: “What is Andre Marriner doing reffing a Championship game? Did he get relegated?” asks JR in Illinois. “OK, so he may not be able to tell some players apart (like Gibbs and Oxlade-Chamberlain) but he’s got to be better than that butcher Simon Hooper who, in his first Premier League game last week, single-handedly inflicted a loss on poor Norwich.”
The simple and relatively tedious answer is that Premier League officials tend to ref a few Football League games a season, to keep them honest in the scruffy divisions for a bit.
35 mins: Henry tries a clipped/sliced ball over the inside-left channel looking for the run of Golbourne, but it’s just too long for the advancing left-back, and it goes out.
32 mins: Akpom looks like he’s going to tar and feather Clucas at half-time, after the winger hit a profoundly limp shot towards goal when the Arsenal loanee was in absolutely acres to his left.
30 mins: Wolves getting a bit frustrated now. Edwards tries a low cross from the right, but nobody is really available in the middle and it’s easily cleared.
28 mins: Another mildly lucky escape for Hull, as Coady shoots from range that takes two deflections, which could’ve taken it anywhere, but mercifully for them it drifts just wide of the post and wide of goal.
26 mins: How on earth did that not go in. Henry clips a brilliant, floating cross in that drifts over to the back stick, Dicko heads back across goal taking McGregor out of the equation, but Edwards arrives a millisecond too late and can’t get a toe on the ball to divert it home. We’re talking Gazza v Germany in 1996 close, there.
24 mins: Wolves straight back at things, and Conor Coady tries to measure a sidefooted shot from about 25 yards out, which McGregor gets down and pushes away with relative ease in the end.
Vaguely surreal email from Peter Higginson, who has an eatery recommendation in the Wolverhampton area: “If you’re actually at the ground, can I recommend that after the game you pop down to ‘The Newbridge Inn’ on Tettenhall Rd for a Sunday carvery? It’s about £7 and is excellent value.”
OK.
GOAL! Wolves 0-1 Hull (Jelavic 22)
To say that was against the run of play is a heroic understatement. Jelavic goes straight down the middle, just avoiding Martinez’s legs.
Updated
PENALTY!
Hull get a spot kick after Davies is bundled over, attacking a corner...
18 mins: Hull are trying to get something working in the manner of someone trying to handcrank an old car into a start. A couple of crosses and passes from midfield go awry, and no ground is made.
17 mins: Courtney Hause holds off Jelavic in the manner of a sixth former holding a first year by the head and watching him swing impotently. To say that was a mismatch would be quite the understatement.
15 mins: Brucie is going a brand new shade of purple on the touchline as Edwards wipes out Odubajo in much the same way as the Hull man did but a few minutes ago, only this time there’s no yellow card from the referee. Hmmmm.
13 mins: First booking of the day, as Dicko baffles Moses Odubajo with a smart spin down the left, and he receives his caution for the subsequent scything.
12 mins: Two 4-4-2s on show here. It’s like we’re playing in the dark ages. Although of course in the dark ages the prevalent system was a WM with inverted wingers and three false nines.
10 mins: Smart work by Afobe, making a nice run behind Davies and then quite literally holds the defender off to make some space, but Davies eventually manages to smuggle the ball away from him.
9 mins: Hull’s attempt to get something going is somewhat less artful. A long, crossfield pass from the left is vaguely aimed towards Jelavic, but it floats gently and harmlessly over his head. Steve Bruce swears with some gusto.
7 mins: Wolves move the ball around nicely on the left, but the massed Hull ranks are massed in such a way as to prevent anything from getting through, and James Henry’s cross is cleared.
4 mins: Hull go close, as Clucas gets down the left and dinks in a cross, but Chuba Akpom can’t quite get the header on goal. Lively old start in this one. No Saturday hangovers in evidence on the pitch, as there is on the minute-by-minute.
2 mins: And they almost score again from the resultant corner. It’s half-cleared out wide, then Huddlestone tries to hoof it further up the pitch but it’s blocked into the path of Dicko free in the box, but he snatches at the shot rather and it goes over.
1 mins: Extraordinary start as Wolves very nearly take the lead in slapstick fashion. Tom Huddlestone is dispossessed in midfield, then Sam Clucas plays a suicidal pass back to Alan McGregor in nets, which is way too weak and intercepted by Benik Afobe, but the the sting is taken out of his shot and Curtis Davies nips in to mop up the trouble before it reaches the line.
The players are out on the pitch and we’re about to go Johnny go go go go. Hull, incidentally, are sponsored by Flamingo Land.
As you may well know, Steve Bruce has an alternative career to fall back on if this football business goes breasts up. Here’s a bit on his trilogy of football novels in a recent Joy of Six:
Striker!, which was rather deliciously described in one review as a “fizzing geyser of hot nonsense”, tells the tale of our hero Bru … sorry, Barnes, as he is accused of stabbing a forward named Pat Duffy to death. Along the way Barnes has to deal with armed thugs, a sassy secretary, a cartoonishly camp nightclub owner (“It was clear from his words, his manner, that Terry Causton was no ladies man”), colleagues out to do him wrong and assorted other obstacles on the way to finding out who the real killer is. Which, of course, he eventually does. It’s full of literary passages which will boggle the mind, the choicest of which are too numerous to mention but can be found here.
We’ve got an answer on the eyelashes thing, from Edward Chukwurah: “Eyelashes DO grow back; I once cut mine short to stop them from getting too heavy and falling off into my eyes. All that resulted in was sharp digs in my eyelids every time I blinked.”
Excellent knowledge.
One Wolves man to keep an eye on is right-back Dominic Iorfa, who’s making a great impression at Molineux despite the presence of some excellent options in his position at the club. Here’s what Kenny Jackett had to say about him in the Express and Star in May.
He’s made a fantastic impression and the supporters have taken to him,
“I don’t know many right-backs that have got a song about them – it’s usually the centre-forward isn’t it? That just shows you how well he’s done and how popular he is.
“He’s showed fantastic improvement, development and potential and we feel and I’m sure the supporters feel, there’s big improvements to come as well. His pace and athleticism are terrific.”
Quick question arising from an office conversation - do eyelashes grow back? Possibly a stupid one, but we’re vexed by this one.
Team news
Wolverhampton Wanderers
Martinez; Iorfa, Stearman (c), Hause, Golbourne; Henry, McDonald, Coady, Edwards; Afobe, Dicko. Subs: Ikeme, Ebanks-Landell, Doherty, Price, van La Parra, Ojo, Le Fondre.
Hull City
McGregor; Odubajo, Dawson (c), Davies, Robertson; Elmohamady, Hayden, Huddlestone, Clucas; Akpom, Jelavic. Subs: Jakupovic, Meyler, Taylor, Maguire, Aluko, Luer, Jahraldo-Martin.
Preamble
If you ask people to name the best managers outside the Premier League, the chances are you’ll get either the established names, like yer Mick McCarthys, yer Sean Dyches, or a young up & comer, such as Karl Robinson or Paul Tisdale (even though the latter has been around for a decade or so now). Not that many will say Kenny Jackett, but there’s a pretty good case to be made for the Wolves boss. For Jackett has essentially rebuilt a club, from the mess that was the Dean Saunders/Ståle Solbakken calamity, with an overpaid an utterly poisonous squad to basically torch and start again. And while doing that, he got them promoted from League One at the first attempt and last season came within a hair of making the playoffs.
Things look even better this term, with a full season of Nouha Dicko and Benik Afobe ahead, pound-for-pound probably the best strike partnership in the country, admittedly in an era when strike partnerships are unfashionable. Jackett’s men are among the favourites for promotion, even after losing Bakary Sako, and rightly so.
It’s a little more difficult to get a proper read on Hull, down from the Premier League after a curious season in which their relegation simultaneously almost looked overdue and very unlucky. Steve Bruce will tell you over and over that they were torpedoed by a calamitous injury list, which was indeed fairly calamitous, but it’s tricky to escape the feeling that it was poor spending that was responsible for their demotion as much as their collective ailments. Still, with their coterie of Arsenal loanees it’ll be a surprise if they too are not up there, jostling in the hugely undignified but enormously entertaining bunfight that is the Championship promotion tussle.
Wolves beat Blackburn last week down to an outrageously poor refereeing decision, with even Dave Edwards sheepishly admitting that he had punched, rather than the regulation kicked/headed/chested/bottomed the ball into the net. But at least he had the grace to look embarrassed by the whole affair.
This is a way of saying most things, if not quite perhaps anything, could happen at this one. Stay tuned.
Kick-off: 12 noon BST
Nick will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s a roundup of yesterday’s action from Alan Smith:
• There may only be two rounds completed but already there remains only one team with a 100% record – Brighton and Hove Albion, who backed up their opening night win over Nottingham Forest with a late smash and grab at Fulham. Chris Hughton’s team led through Sam Baldock on the half hour. Tom Cairney equalised for the hosts two minutes before the break but the Seagulls, more used to stealing fish and chips from tourists on the pier, robbed all three points thanks to Tomer Hemed’s 94th-minute penalty.
Matt Taylor’s free-kick claims point for Burnley in draw with BirminghamRead more
• Middlesbrough were very impressive when pummelling Bolton at the Riverside. Kike scored twice along with another from Diego Fabbrini, leaving the manager, Aitor Karanka, to purr: “It could be the best half we’ve played in my time in charge.” Charlton, after Tony Watt had given them the lead, were pegged back at Derby County thanks to Chris Martin’s equaliser, while Huddersfield and Blackburn also finished 1-1.
• Brentford fans could be excused for having some slight worries when travelling to Bristol City this morning after that midweek League Cup hammering at the hands of Oxford. They also got off to a poor start but – having been 1-0 and 2-1 down – ended up 4-2 victors at Ashton Gate, punishing the newly-promoted City after Luke Freeman was shown a straight red 35 minutes for a horror challenge.
• The battle of the other two newly-promoted teams went in favour of Preston, with Paul Gallagher’s goal enough to take the spoils at Milton Keynes despite the visitors ending with 10 men. Nottingham Forest came from a goal down to win at home to Rotherham, who sit bottom after back-to-back defeats.
