An interesting response to the question posed on this page last week, inviting supporters to highlight an under-discussed issue at Wolves, was a single word: “leadership”.
Under-discussed? Perhaps, but contributor Duncan opens an interesting topic when he suggests it has been under-valued.
“Wolves,” he wrote, “have allowed their club captain to leave in each of the past three summer transfer windows – Conor Coady, Ruben Neves, Max Kilman. When a club actively sells their leaders, there is nobody left to lift the more vulnerable players.”
Rather than being a policy, the annual departure of the captain seems to be a symptom of the conditions under which Wolves have been operating recently, with the need to regularly move high-value players on to generate funds to re-invest, or to counter losses.
The circumstances each time were different, and it is doubtful that leadership qualities have been deliberately under-appreciated, but senior players leaving will likely bring the same result.
That is not to say those left behind are not well motivated. For example, nobody could look at Mario Lemina and see somebody who lacks the desire to do his best for the club. His determination obviously burns him with bad results. We have seen and heard after recent games that Lemina puts everything on the line and no wonder fans think so fondly of him. He is not alone.
Perhaps though, we are slightly confusing leadership with emotion, and Gary O’Neil himself has referred to the dangers of failing to channel that effectively.
“It’s just trying to make sure that they stay really level and use their emotions correctly, because you need them,” he said last month. “There are no robots in there, emotion can be helpful, and we need to use it.”
At Brentford, Wolves fought fiercely to recover from early mistakes, only to immediately make more, and their performance spiralled. Did this expose missing leadership? Not the motivation to put things right – which was obviously there – but the clear thinking under pressure that the best leaders show, and foster in others?
It is easy, and perhaps unfair, to read too much into things from outside. Wolves can be depended on to work ferociously hard in the next section of a demanding season.
But whether they can keep clear minds in stressful situations may be the factor that controls their fate.
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