If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. In Wolves’ case, try again 174 times.
When they arrived at Nottingham Forest on Saturday, they had gone 497 days without a Premier League goal from outside the penalty area.
That span included 47 league games and 173 unsuccessful efforts on goal from outside the box.
At the City Ground, the 174th time turned out to be the charm for Jean-Ricner Bellegarde.
When Matheus Cunha scored Wolves’ previous goal from outside the area, in a 2-1 defeat at Leicester City on April 22, 2023, Julen Lopetegui was the manager, Gary O’Neil was still in charge of Bournemouth, Wolves were battling to avoid relegation, five of Saturday’s starting line-up were not at the club and Liam Gallagher was referring on social media to his big brother Noel as an “angry squirt”.
By Saturday, when Bellegarde ended the long wait for another outside-the-box goal, Lopetegui was at West Ham, Wolves felt very much like O’Neil’s side, three of that Leicester XI were no longer at Wolves and Noel and Liam… well, they probably still can’t stand each other, despite arranging a comeback tour.
When it came to long-range rockets last season, Wolverhampton was the barren wasteland of Europe.
Wolves were the only club in Europe’s top five leagues not to score from outside the box with Bournemouth, on five, the Premier League club to push them closest for the bottom spot.
Getafe in Spain (one), Montpellier, Clermont and Strasbourg in France (two), Udinese in Italy and Cologne, Augsburg and Freiburg in Germany (all three) ran them close, but no one else managed a complete blank.
In the same campaign, Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain registered 15 goals from outside the area and even Burnley managed 10.
Between Cunha’s goal at Leicester and Bellegarde’s at Forest, the Brazilian was Wolves’ most prolific long-range shooter, with 26 attempts from outside the area.
Pablo Sarabia was next on 21 and Mario Lemina third on 20. Bellegarde had just five attempts so, on the evidence of Saturday, he should probably wind up a few more. He’s not bad at them.
In fact, it was Bellegarde who came closest to avoiding last season’s unwanted statistical quirk. His fine goal in the controversial defeat at Sheffield United in November came just millimetres inside the area.
On a map of Wolves’ shots from the whole of O’Neil’s first campaign, Bellegarde’s strike is the red dot closest to the edge of the penalty area and surrounded by a sea of unsuccessful efforts.
This season, from a very small sample size, his strike at the City Ground takes pride of place as the most spectacular of his side’s 32 shots so far.
Wolves’ average shot distance, increased from 15.5 yards last season to 18.4 so far this term, might be an indication that they have decided to try pot shots.
Or it might be a reflection that they have already faced Arsenal and Chelsea and were taking their shots where they could get them.
More likely, it is too early in the season to draw any definitive conclusions other than every football fan enjoys seeing their team register what Wolves fans on social media were quick on Saturday to call a ‘thunderb******’, and it has been too long since they got to celebrate one.
What few right-minded fans could dispute is that Bellegarde’s rocket past a helpless Matz Sels and into the top corner in front of the Trent End gave Wolves a point they thoroughly deserved from a performance that showed signs of improvement from the chastening 6-2 defeat to Chelsea six days earlier.
New signing Sam Johnstone pulled off a couple of excellent saves on an assured Wolves debut, captain Lemina reprised his Duracell Bunny impression in the second half when his side appeared to be flagging, and the restoration of Craig Dawson to the starting XI was akin to O’Neil erecting a forcefield on the edge of Wolves’ penalty area.
The 34-year-old centre-back might not allow Wolves to play the high-press, high-line brand of football that O’Neil envisaged at the start of the season when new defenders were expected to arrive in the transfer window, but the former West Brom and West Ham centre-back can still head and kick the ball away from his own goal as well as any defender in the league.
It might sound basic, but it proved handy on Saturday that Dawson displayed that uncanny knack of standing in the right place to defend.
There remains much for O’Neil to improve. The cohesion between new attacking focal point Jorgen Strand Larsen and his attacking colleagues remains a work in progress, Wolves’ defensive structure is still worryingly open at times and, if he intends to persist with four at the back, the choice at left-back between a natural wing-back in Rayan Ait-Nouri, a natural centre-back in Toti and a natural right-footer in Matt Doherty is far from ideal.
But with one emphatic strike of Bellegarde’s right boot, Wolves got at least one monkey off their back. And if all else fails, a few more ‘thunderb******s’ would be most welcome.
(Top photo: David Rogers/Getty Images)
