Marketing plan misfires

Wolves 0 v Charlton Athletic 0

Picture the scene. It’s a drab Wednesday morning in October and Jez Moxey is meeting with his marketing team brainstorming revenue raising ideas. There’s a whiteboard on which have been written some fairly prosaic suggestions when all of a sudden one of the team pipe’s up. “How does this sound. We’ve got spare capacity in the ground. Why don’t we offer a season ticket for the second half of the season and as a hook to land the catch how about giving every season ticket holder the chance to bring a guest in for free. They’ll be that impressed with the football they’ll sign up the next day”.

There’s a saying in TV that you should never work with animals because of their inherent unpredictability. Well that premise can now be extended to include eleven men in gold and black for as puppy dogs sales go, this one failed to hit the mark. If portions of last week’s game were soporific, then this one would guarantee a night of uninterrupted slumber.

It’s not that Wolves were particularly inept. They were not, controlling the game for long portions through good ball retention. It’s just that they failed to move it sufficiently quickly to unsettle Charlton such that only two real opportunities were created neither of which really extended Marko Dmitrovic in the Charlton goal.

As for the opposition for all their lack of possession they still managed to look the more dangerous, striker Callum Harriot stretching Carl Ikeme from 25 yards with a good strike on 50 minutes. The same player was involved again fifteen minutes later when his neat through ball picked out Igor Vetokele whose shot was also well save by Ikeme. Given Harriot’s contribution it was thus a bit of a surprise when in minute 69 debut manager Guy Luzon chose to substitute him.

But let’s not get too exercised by the lack of excitement on the pitch. Wolves have still garnered 17 points from a potential 21 which is a tremendous run given how poor their form had been prior to that. Furthermore the return of Scott Golbourne offers a more potent attacking threat down the left and if Benik Afobe can get better service then a play-off place is still very much on the cards.

As for Jez’s marking ruse I think it’s back to the drawing board.

Wolves: Ikeme 6, Iorfa 6 Sub Doherty, Batth 6, Stearman 6, Hause 6 Sub Golbourne , Henry 6 Sub Dicko, McDonald 6, Price 7, Edwards 6, van la Parra 7, Afobe 6

Charlton: Dmitrovic 6, Solly 6, Ben Haim 6, Bikey 6, Fox 6, Buyens 6, Berg Gudmundsson 7, Veljkovic 6 Sub Gomez, Cousins 6, Harriot 7 Sub Watt, Vetokele 6 Sub Church

Attendance: 23,487

Referee: Andy D’Urso 9

MB