It would be harsh to describe Wolves as a one-man team but Matheus Cunha is the key reason they have kept their heads above water in the Premier League. In his absence, they lacked imagination and quality in the final third, mustering a deserved draw against Everton when there was an opportunity to win.
Wolves are six points clear of the relegation zone, but on a weekend where Southampton and Ipswich had already lost, while Leicester face a difficult trip to Chelsea on Sunday, it felt like a missed opportunity. There were individual milestones as Jack Harrison scored his first goal in over a year for Everton and Marshall Munetsi opened his account for Wolves but it was a turgid affair at Molineux.
It was a low quality affair from the start and the opening goal arrived through a mixture of incompetence and luck. Emmanuel Agbadou’s dreadful clearance was headed straight back by James Tarkowski to Jesper Lindstrøm. The right winger slipped when seeking out Harrison on the other side but the ball still found him, allowing him to control and shoot, with the ball nestling in the bottom corner thanks to a Matt Doherty deflection.
Jean-Ricner Bellegarde was the most likely candidate to provide dynamism in the final third for Wolves in unha’s absence. He flashed a shot inches wide from the edge of the box before initiating the equaliser. The Frenchman drove down the middle and slipped a pass into the area, it looked like Branthwaite had it covered but he got his feet in a muddle, allowing Munetsi to capitalise from close range seven minutes after the opener.
Injury prevented Munetsi from returning for the second half, although he did not miss much. Everton were equally as blunt as the hosts, missing their own spark in Iliman Ndiaye, forcing David Moyes to send on Carlos Alcaraz to sharpen up their attack. He created his side’s best chance of the second half by instigating a break and sending Beto through one-on-one but the goalkeeper José Sá got down quickly to his left and secured a point for his team.
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Everton are eight unbeaten in the league and are no longer part of the relegation conversation after Moyes’s appointment two months ago. “If you’d given me that before we came in, I’d have been saying you were off your head,” Moyes said.
“We’re actually quite disappointed with the last three games drawn against Manchester United and Brentford away. Today, I see it slightly different. I think today’s a good point, whereas the other two games, I was thinking how we could have probably had more from.
“Today’s game, I think that we had to dig deep to keep the point, and the players showed something which maybe they hadn’t been doing before, so they stuck at it really good.”
