Wolves blog: Can Nuno one-nil his way to success?

If you take into account all 15 of Nuno Espirito Santo’s Wolves games, including friendlies and the League Cup, the stand-out result is a 1-0 win, writes Wolves blogger Tom Tracey.

On six occasions, this has been the scoreline - including four 1-0 wins in a row over Peterborough, Leicester, Middlesbrough and Yeovil.

But Wolves do have goals in their locker as well – looking back to Tuesday and at Hull earlier in the season – they have scored three goals on these two occasions.

In the nine competitive games so far, Wolves have only failed to score in the stalemate at Brentford.

They have remarkably kept a clean sheet in six of those nine games.

By comparison, Wolves kept only five clean sheets in Stale Solbakken’s entire 30-game reign (thanks to George Rinaldi for the stat).

In those three games Wolves have conceded in, they have shipped a rather leaky seven goals.

Only two of these goals have come from open play (both being Cardiff’s) – with two coming from penalties and three from corners.

Clearly, these goals conceded from set pieces need to be cut out, or at least cut down.

The first of the goals conceded from corners, Hull’s first goal, was a corner taken short.

It was whipped back in but a Hull player got across and distracted John Ruddy, allowing the ball to slip past him before it was headed off the line, only for Dawson to nod in.

Bristol City’s first goal was whipped in but Ruddy’s punch failed to clear, leading to a scramble in the box before an inevitable deflection by Aden Flint.

For Bristol City’s third goal on Tuesday night, 6ft 5in Flint was allowed a running jump to get his head onto the ball, hitting the post before the rebound was tucked away.

There are obviously pros and cons to man marking and zonal marking, but Wolves’ use of zonal marking on corners isn’t working at the moment.

They do have the height, strength and ability to win aerial battles in either box, but there is definitely work for Nuno to do to shore up the leaking back line.

At the other end, Wolves have scored four goals from corners – the latter two coming against Bristol on Tuesday.

In all likelihood, whilst great entertainment especially for a usually drab Tuesday night match at Molineux, the 3-3 draw against Bristol will be an anomaly.

On Saturday against Millwall, Wolves looked assured and dominated the game for the most part without showing a killer instinct to score a second goal.

There is some fragility which did lead to a late scare in the game’s closing moments, survived after Ruddy saved a shot that looked like it could have easily crept in.

It certainly would have left us scratching our heads at how we only came away a point – thankfully this wasn’t the case.

Bristol City did cause Wolves problems in spells and penned Wolves in, perhaps raising for the first time questions of Nuno’s formation.

They changed formation during the game and it troubled Wolves - but when Wolves were on top they looked fantastic down the wings.

Matt Doherty and Ivan Cavaleiro had fantastic games on the right-hand side, whilst Vinagre played a superb bended pass to Cavaleiro, who missed the one-on-one but then subsequently put in the corner that led to the second goal.

The addition of Alfred N’Diaye adds further strength and protection to the defence and he will be a vital addition to the team.

But on to this weekend’s game - would anybody else take a nice 1-0 win at Forest?