Express & Star

Bully: Defeat out of the way

Wolves’ unbeaten run finally came to an end this week – I’d rather it happened in the FA Cup than the league.

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A Cup run would have been nice if it didn’t impact on the league form but sadly it wasn’t to be.

They certainly ran Swansea close after edging them in the first game and considering they made loads of changes Nuno will be pretty pleased with how they competed against a Premier League squad.

He’ll have had a good look at his fringe players too, the likes of Morgan Gibbs-White, Will Norris, Bright Enobakhare and Kortney Hause, to see what they’re all about. I’m sure he’ll have learned a lot.

On a dreary night in Wales they gave it a good go but paid for a slow start. For me they haven’t been as sharp for about a month now and it’s taken its toll.

In the past couple of weeks they’ve drawn a couple and then lost on Wednesday so they’ll be looking to get back to winning ways today. The good thing about the Cup exit is they’ve got a few weeks with no midweek game now until the middle of February.

I think that’s come at a good time. They’ve got the busy Christmas period out the way and now they can get a proper rest in between matches and focus on one competition.

With a few more wins they can start to think about the finishing line and obviously everyone wants them to do it sooner rather than later.

They’ve got 19 games left – win nine of those and they’ll be on 89 points which would surely be enough.

It’s certainly not over yet though. People keep telling me we’re going up and I just have to tell them not to count their chickens – I know what Wolves are like!

Nottingham Forest are the visitors today and an early goal would be lovely. Wolves were doing that time and again earlier in the season – getting an early goal and then making the rest of the match look easy. We’ve seen them chasing games a bit more, like against Bristol City and Millwall.

Molineux will pay tribute to Cyrille Regis today, as will grounds all across the country, which shows the stature of the man.

He was a gentleman, he had an aura in the dressing room and he was a total professional who will certainly be missed.