Six months ago, most Wolverhampton Wanderers fans had never heard of Emmanuel Agbadou. A few might have seen Nasser Djiga playing in the Champions League but he, too, was a relative unknown to an English audience.
You’d struggle to find many Wolves supporters who had ever considered Matt Doherty as a right-sided centre-back or thought of Toti as an indispensable starter, and the majority saw Craig Dawson as a key figure for at least another year and were willing to give Santiago Bueno the benefit of the doubt.
All of this is a vaguely long-winded way of making a simple point — the outlook for Wolves’ defence has changed dramatically over the course of this season.
Dawson no longer makes matchday squads never mind the team, Bueno is almost out of chances, Agbadou is a lynchpin, Doherty is now a fixture in the back three, Toti makes Wolves markedly better when he plays and Djiga is next in line for a starting place. Maximilian Kilman, who was captain and an ever-present player a year ago, is barely discussed anymore having been sold to West Ham last July, and we have not even mentioned Yerson Mosquera yet.
The picture has changed at a dizzying rate, and with another huge summer ahead for Wolves, the changes are likely to continue.
What happened last summer?
Signing a centre-back was Wolves’ priority throughout the summer window, yet somehow they failed to land one.
Kilman moved to West Ham on July 6, and the club knew that deal was likely to go through for a few weeks beforehand.
Gary O’Neil, Wolves’ head coach at the time, had nagging concerns about both Dawson’s age — he turned 34 in the final month of last season — and Bueno’s ability to handle the physicality of the Premier League so was desperate to add a central defender with Premier League experience to the ranks.
Wolves were close to a deal to sign Dara O’Shea from Burnley but refused to find some extra cash at the 11th hour and the Irishman moved to Ipswich Town instead. Other players were considered but none of those deals came off, so O’Neil went into the season with Dawson, Bueno, Mosquera and Toti as his centre-backs.
How did things change after the season started?
For reasons that remain a little unclear, O’Neil opted to abandon a system that had been largely successful last season by switching to a four-man defence and trying to introduce a higher press into the game plan.
His concerns about Dawson’s pace and Bueno’s physical weaknesses meant he started off with a centre-back pairing of Toti and Mosquera — the former a player who had rarely played in a back four and the latter a player who had never made a Premier League appearance.
When Mosquera suffered a long-term anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury in September, the high-press plans had to be abandoned, and when the goals kept flooding into Wolves’ net, so did playing with a back four. A more familiar back three returned, but with Toti out of form and Bueno struggling for any consistency, Dawson was again left as the lynchpin.
After he shut out Manchester City’s Erling Haaland at Molineux for the second successive season in October, there was hope the veteran could hold Wolves’ defence together for another season. But when his legs appeared to falter in real time on a grim evening at Everton’s Goodison Park in early December, his career with the club was effectively over, the wider Wolves defence was in tatters and O’Neil was on borrowed time.
What impact has Pereira had?
Even before O’Neil was sacked and Vitor Pereira appointed in the middle of December, Wolves were lining up deals to sign centre-backs in the winter transfer window.
But Pereira arrived with a clear vision of the profile of defenders he wanted — one that changed the kinds of players Wolves targeted in that window. The new head coach prizes athletic centre-backs who defend on the front foot and have the speed to cover space left in-behind. Crucially, he wants members of a three-man defence to be able to play out from the back.
That is the reason why Pereira chose Agbadou over Kevin Danso at the start of the winter window despite the latter having been at the top of Wolves’ target list for a while — they did go back in for Danso at the end of the month, only to lose out to Tottenham Hotspur.
And his lack of pace is why Dawson was omitted from the club’s 25-man Premier League squad at the end of the winter transfer window, albeit the former West Ham United favourite is still on the payroll with no agreement yet in place to bring a contract that expires in June to an early end.
Dawson appears to have made his last Wolves appearance on December 29 (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
The change in approach can be seen in some basic data, which shows the average of 2.2 interceptions by centre-backs per Premier League game during O’Neil’s reign rise to 3.8 so far under Pereira. Wolves centre-backs are also making an average of two tackles per game in the middle third of the pitch since Pereira’s appointment compared to 0.9 when O’Neil was the coach.
What could the future hold?
Dawson’s future is clear. With Pereira’s blessing, he is no longer even coming in to the training ground so will soon end his time at Wolves, either when his contract expires at the end of the season or before then if a deal to tear it up can be struck. Bueno appears to have a fragile position at Molineux. His lack of physical presence was an issue for O’Neil but his game is even further removed from Pereira’s vision of an ideal centre-back, so a parting of the ways there in the summer also appears likely.
Mosquera is currently on course to be fit for pre-season in July after his ACL rupture. The 23-year-old Colombia international seems an ideal fit for Pereira’s way of playing, potentially on the right side of the back three. “What I know about Mosquera is that he is aggressive and he has a profile I like,” Pereira said in a recent press conference. “I hope he recovers and can help us next season and we’ll all be here talking about the Premier League.”
One complication for Wolves is that former right-back and right wing-back Doherty has made a good fist of operating on the right of the back three and is under contract for next season, while Djiga was signed from Crvena Zvezda in the winter window primarily to compete for that role.
So unless Mosquera can be coached to push Agbadou for the central position in the trio, Wolves might be over-staffed on that right side.
It is different on the left of the three, where Toti’s recent return from a hamstring injury has transformed the way Pereira’s side look, offering a natural balance that was lacking when the right-footed Agbadou filled in there.
“It’s important, because playing with a left foot on the left side is easier,” said Pereira. “I want Toti to make overlaps, to cross and create superiority from the back and to do it with a right foot is difficult on the left. So we need to find another (left-footed) one. We need two with this profile.”
It means that, once more this summer, adding a centre-back will be a priority, providing Wolves avoid relegation from the Premier League and Pereira is allowed to continue his overhaul of the team.
A specialist understudy to Agbadou in that central position in the back line might also be required.
So, while the picture has already changed dramatically in three months under Pereira, Wolves’ back three remains a work in progress.
(Top photo of Emmanuel Agbadou; Michael Steele/Getty Images)
