Platitudes and praise – however genuine – are of little use to Gary O’Neil. Points are what he desires most, and, unfortunately for him and Wolves, they are severely lacking on that front.
Their tally eight games into this Premier League season? Count it on a single finger.
True, Wolves were 27 seconds away from doubling that tally against Manchester City on Sunday. It would have been a deserved point. Football, though, is not a game where fair gains are dolloped out.
O'Neil has Wolves fans' support - even in this awful run of form
And so back to the point. Wolves’ single point. In this #modernera, a world of ‘now’ not ‘later’, any manager with such a record is going to feel a little extra warmth.
It is usually about now that fractures between supporters and players appear. When further cracks break out within the changing room’s confines, owners tend to smash the red button.
But while there are some Wolves fans banging the ‘O’Neil out’ gong, particularly on, you guessed it, social media, on the ground the mood felt different. Just before 4pm on Sunday, after the obligatory post-match boos aimed at the officials had subsided, a spontaneous round of applause rang out around Molineux. It was a show of appreciation from a fan base seemingly set on giving their backing – despite the current malaise at the club.
And the sniff test suggests O’Neil retains the players’ faith, too. After the embarrassing 5-3 defeat at Brentford pre-international break, Mario Lemina said only “liars and cheaters” would blame O’Neil for Wolves current predicament.
Then there was Pablo Sarabia on Sunday. The forward was one of Wolves’ most influential attacking forces last season but has found himself on the periphery gazing in longingly this year. Someone with his CV – 27 Spain caps and spells at PSG and Lisbon CP - might easily become sulky and detached.
His incandescent rage, a face as claret as City’s away strip, when John Stones planted his late header past Jose Sa, suggested otherwise, though. Sarabia was fuming a foul had not been given a few minutes earlier when Goncalo Guedes poured forward.
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For a while, a reprieve appeared to have arrived via the raising of the offside flag. But Chris Kavanagh, on consulting the pitch-side monitor, determined Bernardo Silva, while in an offside position, was not actively involved.
It was cruel and meant that rather than a point, O’Neil had to draw his satisfaction from a performance. One of defiance and detail over dazzle and daring. One of muscle over magic. One that buys him time?
“There is an awful lot of good work going on, and I hope they can see that,” O’Neil said afterwards. “I’ve bumped into a lot of people in the last two weeks around Wolves - every single message I received was supportive. They understand the situation. They understand the transfers and what we’re trying to do with the younger players – trying to get them up to Premier League level. And the fixture list. There are loads of things out there that make it tough at the moment, but I am responsible for everything.”
Wolves had led early via Jorgen Strand Larsen, one of the game's two hulking Norwegian forwards. As for the other? Craig Dawson followed Erling Haaland around the penalty box like an annoying fly, and Haaland simply could not swat him away.
City’s equaliser was, not for the first time, a beauty from Josko Gvardiol’s wrong foot. But they otherwise struggled to break their opponents down, and it felt like Pep Guardiola’s late introduction of ex-Wolves man Matheus Nunes was as much for the narrative factor as anything.
O’Neil’s hope over the summer was that he could evolve a side that ultimately finished 14th but for a while were touted as having a sniff of European football. O’Neil himself was mentioned as a potential outside runner for the Manager of the Season award. But Wolves lost Max Kilman to West Ham and did not adequately replace him. They, like others, felt the bounds of PSR. And the picture looks markedly different now.
Wolves are not the first side this season to suffer a Stones-inflicted blow in the final minute of injury-time: just ask Arsenal, who will have been almost as hurt by this result as the hosts.
But the thoughts and feelings of others are of no concern to O’Neil. Wolves visit Brighton next weekend, by which time they will have faced seven of the current top eight in their opening nine games. The ‘random’ fixture generator has not been kind. What it has done is break their season down into natural chunks, with the octet of matches that then follow all against sides they could realistically wish to be around and above by May.
A season cannot start in November, but it can be broken by the time the clocks go back. Fortunately for Wolves, that does not, despite the lack of points, appear to be the case. Tinkering is required, yes, but not a new fuse box.
In any case, where else would they turn? The era of the fixer is over, and it feels unlikely that a Graham Potter, a man who has chosen to ‘sit tight and see’ for a while, would choose a club with a high probability of relegation as their return project. Then what do you have? Some 29-year-old whose team sit eighth in the French equivalent of the National League but play a lovely brand of football? O’Neil it is then.
