Tomorrow may be a good time for Wolverhampton Wanderers to play Liverpool — no, really, stick with me. There is nothing quite like a meeting with one of the Premier League ’s most daunting opponents to focus minds. And Wolves’ minds ought to be concentrated on one thing in particular when Arne Slot makes his first visit to Molineux.
Advertisement Monday will mark one year since Wolves produced one of last season’s most surprising results when they beat Manchester City 2-1 at Molineux. There would be no better way to usher in the anniversary than by channelling the defensive essence of that display to frustrate Slot’s side on Saturday. That victory was out of keeping with much of what had gone before last season as Wolves head coach Gary O’Neil ripped up his blueprint.
He adopted a low-block, counter-attacking, thou-shalt-not-pass approach to dealing with the Premier League champions. Tomorrow may be the perfect moment to try something similar to galvanise this campaign because, quite simply, Wolves must stem the flow of goals against them. At this point, it is important to point out that Wolves are unlucky to have the Premier League’s joint-worst defensive record of 14 goals conceded from their opening five games (tied with Everton ).
The expected goals (xG) metric does not show the whole picture — especially at this early stage of the season — but it is a useful indicator of how many high-quality chances a team is creating or conceding. Wolves’ xG against.