At the start of the season, we were complaining about a lack of goals, but the floodgates have opened and nothing seems to be able to stop Wolves now. Another high-scoring game saw them crush Everton 1-3 at Goodison Park on Saturday, with goals from Rúben Neves, Raúl Jiménez and Leander Dendoncker. We’re going to take a look at the match statistics to see what happened.
Overall Purformance
While the stats may look like Everton were unlucky, the truth is that despite only keeping 36% of the possession, Wolves outplayed Everton.
They had eight shots, four on target and three of course ended in goals. They committed more fouls than Everton but only picked up one card, compared to Everton’s three.
Wolves were smarter, sleeker and much more determined to win. After Wolves went in front from the penalty spot, Everton’s André Gomes scored an absolute rocket to level things up, but it ended up being nothing more than a consolation goal.
Wolves missed two big chances throughout the match so the scoreline could potentially have been even bigger. They didn’t win as many tackles, duels or aerials as their opposition but in the long run, it didn’t matter. They did enough in attack to comfortably take all three points home with them.
Dazzling Dendoncker
After his goal against West Ham was disallowed, Dendoncker made sure it counted this time, as he fired the ball into the net to claim his first goal in the Old Gold shirt. He may have only made his league debut in December, but he has been impressing the masses and has proven himself to be a valuable asset for Wolves.
Saturday saw him pull out all of the stops to boost Wolves to another win. Everyone played well from a Wolves perspective but we have to pinpoint Dendoncker because he was just incredible.
Alongside his goal, he had two other shots (one on target, one off), he had 71% passing accuracy and made two impressive dribbles. Not only this but he put in a massive shift defensively, making four clearances, blocking one shot, winning three out of five tackles, 10 out of 13 duels and committing one foul.
If these statistics aren’t enough to wow you, go and watch him play because I assure you, you will be impressed.
CATastrophe for Everton
One little fellow stole the spotlight from Wolves in a hilarious pitch invasion. That’s right a black cat appeared on the pitch, and as no one looked willing to move him, he was left to run around for quite some time.
There were some jokes that he ran further than some of the Everton players did in 90 minutes, and caused Rui Patricio more problems too. It even went as far as someone creating a heat map for our furry friend.
As you can see he covered quite some distance and had the run around of both penalty areas.
Black cats are generally seen as a bad luck charm, which seemed to be the case for Everton, and despite Wolves comfortably beating the Toffee’s, Nuno seemed a little spooked about it afterwards.
Conclusion
Wolves’ first win at Goodison Park in 40 years proved to be a special one, and in the little mid-table mini league, Wolves are performing well. Having beaten Leicester, West Ham and Everton all in a matter of weeks, you’d fancy them to take seventh place.
There are only thirteen games left to go in this Premier League season (how quickly has that gone?!), and so far Wolves have been incredible. Yes, there have been a few hiccups but they’ve certainly made a point that they mean business.
Up next, it’s Shrewsbury Town at home in the FA Cup fourth-round replay, and I hope they come out fighting. Give me a solid league finish and an impressive cup run any day.
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