The shortest honeymoon period since Liz Truss was in Downing Street is well and truly over.
After a little over a month in charge, Vitor Pereira is in crisis management mode at Wolverhampton Wanderers. Welcome to Molineux, coach.
At a generous estimate, Pereira’s period of grace lasted three and a half games, if we accept that his team played well in the first 45 minutes against Nottingham Forest despite conceding two goals.
Since then, with the exception of 25 minutes of dominance against Championship side Bristol City in the FA Cup, Pereira’s Wolves have once more spiralled out of control.
The new head coach had already witnessed his side’s defending regress to levels akin to the final days of Gary O’Neil’s tenure and has seen the club’s former captain opt out and then kind of opt back in after deciding he had had enough of life at Molineux.
And now Pereira is facing his biggest challenge yet, with his goalscoring talisman and most important dressing-room general suddenly looking like he would rather be anywhere else than digging in to help Wolves avoid relegation from the Premier League.
“I don’t like this body language,” said Pereira in his post-match news conference when asked about Matheus Cunha’s stroppy demeanour during and after Monday night’s 3-1 defeat at Chelsea.
“I want someone as a captain trying to help the team; running, suffering, fighting, together. This (frustration) is something I can understand. (But) next time I will not understand.”
Whether Pereira was wise to answer quite so honestly when discussing Cunha is a matter of opinion. Perhaps it was a window into the world of a Wolves head coach with a history of clashing with players at previous clubs.
But it was hard to take issue with the substance of his comments. Cunha might not be wearing the armband — that honour still belongs to Nelson Semedo after O’Neil stripped Lemina of the captaincy in one of his final acts as boss — but Cunha has become the de facto leader of the pack.
And Monday night’s show of frustration and occasional petulance at Stamford Bridge was precisely the kind of example Pereira does not need from a player supposed to set an example for others to follow.
There was a moment in the second half when Jorgen Strand Larsen was played through one-on-one with Robert Sanchez and saw his near-post shot from a difficult angle beaten away by the Chelsea goalkeeper.
Cunha reacted with a petulant bout of foot-stamping and flailing of arms in response to not receiving a cutback to the edge of the box. The reality was that the pass was a much tougher option than the shot and Strand Larsen, despite some recent struggles, was perfectly justified in going for goal.
Cunha cut a frustrated figure against Chelsea (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Cunha’s bizarre actions in removing the glasses from the face of an Ipswich staff member in what turned out to be O’Neil’s final game in charge hinted at a player unable to keep a lid on his emotions and his body language since returning from his two-match ban has been less than ideal.
Only the Brazilian will know whether his mood is linked to discussions over a new contract, which seemed likely to be agreed a few weeks ago but currently remains unsigned.
But regardless of any private discussions, Wolves need their infectiously enthusiastic forward back in the game.
Getting Cunha’s mind back firmly on football will be a key man-management challenge for Pereira, who has already written off Lemina for at least the remainder of the January transfer window despite the former skipper reversing his earlier decision to make himself unavailable for selection following his verbal transfer request.
“If a player is, with his mind, out and in, it means he has doubt if he stays,” said Pereira. “For me, it’s very easy. He’s out until the end of the market.
“When the market closes, OK, I will see if he’s my player and (if) he is, it’s a problem I will solve.”
If Lemina’s future is a potential issue for February 4 — the morning after the transfer deadline — then stemming the flow of goals against his side is an issue to solve immediately.
After the first two games of the Pereira era, it was tempting to believe that Wolves had turned a corner. They had not.
They have now conceded three goals in each of their last three Premier League fixtures and the defending, both from the team and from their three central defenders, has been as poor as anything they produced in the depressing dying days of O’Neil’s reign.
Lemina has been left out of Wolves’ last three matchday squads (David Rogers/Getty Images)
There was one bright spot on Monday as recent signing Emmanuel Agbadou produced the best of his three performances so far in Wolves colours with a combination of power, athleticism and calm decision-making and use of the ball.
But the solid display from the Ivory Coast international was not enough to prevent Wolves from conceding three more very poor goals.
Rayan Ait-Nouri’s efforts to stop Noni Madueke in the opening exchanges went so badly that he and fellow wing-back Nelson Semedo were ordered to change flanks for the remainder of the game.
But even then, Ait-Nouri’s dreadful night culminated in him losing Marc Cucurella as the Spain international ghosted in to score Chelsea’s second goal after Matt Doherty had cancelled out Tosin Adarabioyo’s opener for the hosts.
And then Wolves’ primary Achilles’ heel struck again as they conceded a 19th set-piece goal of the season from Madueke’s close-range finish to take their overall tally to a league-worst 51 goals against.
There were promising signs from the month’s one signing so far, but Pereira needs at least one more centre-back and, he believes, a change of attitude from those already in place.
“Set pieces are something that we work on a lot,” he said. “It’s not because of the positional game. It is because we lose duels we cannot lose. We must be strong in the body. We need to be more aggressive.”
There are reasons for Wolves supporters still to hope. All three promoted teams look incapable of climbing clear of relegation danger and, with Southampton already looking doomed and Leicester in danger of following, there might soon be just one relegation spot to avoid.
And at the completion of their latest brutal spell of fixtures in mid-February, their team can look forward to a kinder run-in than many of their rivals.
But right now, Pereira’s huge challenge is to ensure Wolves get there without a complete implosion.
GO DEEPER
Lemina’s downfall at Wolves has been dramatic – and it seems there is no way back now
(Top photo: Jack Thomas – WWFC/Wolves via Getty Images)
