Statistically speaking

I've got some stats for you too with regards to centre back pairings.

First half of the season:

Pairing.......Played..Goals conceded..Goals per game

Batth/Iorfa......7....................9..........................1.3
Batth/Hause..10.................12.........................1.2
Iorfa/Hause.....2...................3..........................1.5
Batth/Stears....7.................12.........................1.7
Stears/Hause..1..................2..........................2.0

Second half of the season

Batth/Hause.....9...............10..........................1.1
Batth/Stears.....7.................7..........................1.0
Stears/Hause...2.................3..........................1.5
Wil'ms'n/Hause.4................5........................1.25
Wil'ms'n/Stears.2................0............................0

Which all goes to prove that Stearman/ Williamson is the best pairing we have and everyone plays better when they don't play with Kortney Hause.
No surprises there then.

Not sure I would take 2 games as concrete proof Williamson and Stearman is the best partnership, and I do wonder if either will be here next season. Didn't think Williamson played well on Saturday but that applied to most of the team.

As for Hause the jury is still out really. There have been games this season when he has looked a good centre half in the making, and others where he has looked error prone. I know Tam has said that's what you get with young defenders and I will go along with that, but I do have friends that don't rate him at all.

Just had a quick look at a comparison between the Wolves stats above and the Brighton stats.

Many are very similar including possession, shots per game, tackles per game.

Two areas where they are much better than us;

Firstly passing accuracy - our average is around 70% and there's 77%. They have a number of players with over 80% and we don't have any. Clearly the likes of Saiss and Saville would not be getting games with Brighton with their averages of around 70%. But also their defenders like Bruno and Dunk are far better at distributing the ball than any of our defenders. Those two have over 80% while Batth and Hause are less than 70%.

The other main difference is of course the obvious one. Our two main strikers Bodvarsson and Dicko have 6 goals between them. Murray and Knockaert have 37.

Thought Bruno and Dunk were in a different class to any of our defenders at the bread and butter side of being a defender too. I'd imagine there will be bids for Dunk from clubs like West Brom, West Ham, Southampton this summer.

And Knockaert is not even a striker.
I suppose a better comparison is Costa and Edwards but we are still light years behind Brighton as their goal difference is 39 better than ours.

Agree about Bruno and Dunk, lizard, I thought they both looked very good players at Molineux. Couldn't believe it when I read Bruno is 36. Still plenty of life in him and he is a quality player

feel sure that just two players, a class creative midfielder and a good striker would have at least got us challenging for the playoffs, add a good cb and fullback and we'd definitely have been top 6

Strange season had by Wolves U18 team. Didn't win a single match between beginning of October to early March. 1 draw and 16 defeats.

In March they joined an 8 team merit league and their win over Newcastle today made it 5 wins and 1 draw so far and they have already won the league with one game to come. Hopefully another good batch of youngsters coming through from our academy.

DJ, Do you knowi if that dramatic turn round happened with the same, or a new influx of, players ?

Don't know how much the team has changed but the improvement followed a change in coach. Jerry Gill moved on and Darren Ryan took over.

He's a journeyman lower division and Welsh league player who then managed Newtown and Airbus in the Welsh league before joining our academy training staff