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Régis Le Bris looked concerned. “We can feel the danger,” said Sunderland’s manager last week as he suggested that a Wolves renaissance could be just round the corner.
If so, that old gold revival suffered a damaging delay on an an afternoon when Le Bris’s fears proved groundless as Sunderland registered their fourth Premier League win in eight games since promotion. It leaves them with 14 points and surely set fair for survival.
The horizon seems considerably cloudier for a Wolves team still without a win and stuck to the bottom of the table on just two points. Small wonder their head coach, Vítor Pereira, spent much of the match shaking his head as Dan Ballard’s marking reduced his key striker, Jørgen Strand Larsen, to anonymity and Enzo Le Fée’s intelligence destabilised a visiting ensemble that has evidently forgotten how to test a goalkeeper, let alone secure a victory.
Although a superb, tightly angled, finish from Wilson Isidor soon saw the Wolves goalkeeper Sam Johnstone picking the ball out of the back of his net, the Sunderland striker was left smiling ruefully as an offside flag denied him a goal.
No matter; Isidor quickly had cause to congratulate Nordi Mukiele after a slick move instigated by Le Fée’s defence confounding swivel and stellar reverse pass cleared the way for a one-two involving Trai Hume and Mukiele.
It all concluded with the former Paris Saint-Germain defender’s accomplished right foot finish evading Johnstone as a by now familiar look of weary resignation spread across Pereira’s face.
Pereira’s side have failed to keep a clean sheet in the Premier League this season and their latest concession merely served to confirm the fragility in a Wolves backline that had looked vulnerable every time Mukiele directed one of his mighty long throws into their box.
One of those Mukiele missiles very nearly prefaced Sunderland doubling their advantage but Hume headed against a post after meeting Ballard’s flick on. Ballard might subsequently have scored himself had he not headed Granit Xhaka’s corner straight at Johnstone after out-leaping a visiting defence repeatedly destabilised by Le Fée’s left wing manoeuvres.
Despite the odd loose pass from a dominant, yet sometimes slightly slapdash, Sunderland, Wolves left Robin Roefs virtually unemployed for protracted periods.
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Le Bris’s goalkeeper had still not been tested properly when, at the outset of the second half, João Gomes and then Rodrigo Gomes dragged shots wide from an inviting positions.
Yet if Ballard continued to do a good job in subduing Strand Larsen, the Norway striker’s teammates upped their game in a second period featuring increasing edginess among Sunderland’s now nervous support.
Not that Wolves were able to justify such anxiety. Indeed it was not until the 70th minute that Pereira’s side directed their first shot on target when Roefs’ fine save kept Marshall Munetsi’s volley out.
If that prompted relief, stoppage time rapture was assured when Ladislav Krejci’s horribly sliced attempted clearance in the face of substitute Chemsdine Talbi’s attempted cross ended up in the back of his own net after flying beyond a wrongfooted Johnstone.
