It was in the 69th minute when Yeremy Pino wheeled away after doubling Crystal Palace’s lead, his delicious shot from the edge of the area crashing in off the underside of the crossbar. In the away technical area, Oliver Glasner was also on the move, the Palace manager briefly dancing on ice as he almost lost his footing. “Almost,” he said, grinning, “but fortunately I am Austrian, I am a really good skier so I am used to being on slippery surfaces.”
By the end, the delirious away support were asking their goalkeeper Dean Henderson for song suggestions after the substitute Eddie Nketiah went close to adding a third goal. For Wolves and Rob Edwards, this his first game in permanent charge, there was only more pain. Pino scored six minutes after Daniel Muñoz opened the scoring to earn a win that propels Palace into fourth. Wolves remain on two points and rooted to the bottom of the table after a dozen matches; they are the only winless team in the top seven tiers of English football and hurtling towards the Championship.
For Edwards, this was a moment that had felt like a long time coming. He made more than a century of appearances for the club as a defender and returned to the club after retiring as a player, taking the role of Under-18s head coach. Stints as Under-23s and first-team coach followed, as well as two matches in caretaker charge in 2016.
Edwards never strayed too far from the radar of the Wolves hierarchy and this week the chair, Jeff Shi, compared the 42-year-old’s return to that of “an old friend joining us as a leader of the club, to start a new chapter”. Edwards could not hide his smile as Hi Ho Silver Lining thumped over the speakers before kick-off.
All of the prematch sound bites had been encouraging from a Wolves perspective but in the game, save for a period early in the second half where they generated momentum, Palace were superior. Jean-Philippe Mateta should have given Palace the lead after 16 minutes but after a slick move, kick-started by a swish of Adam Wharton’s left foot on halfway, the France striker got his bearings wrong.
Wharton located Pino with a nonchalant first-time pass with the outside of his boot and Pino flicked the ball on to Mateta, who shot wide after racing through on Sam Johnstone’s goal. A few minutes later Johnstone denied Daichi Kamada.
Wolves had a rare sight of goal when João Gomes’s skittled free-kick deflected off Wharton, sparking Henderson into an instinctive save, before the rebound cannoned off Ladislav Krejci and over the bar. Marc Guéhi blocked a lashed David Møller Wolfe shot during that wave of Wolves pressure early in the second half but the substitute Jhon Arias spurned their best opening. Wolfe presented Arias with a golden opportunity a couple of yards out but he got his feet in a muddle.
Edwards insisted there were encouraging signs, including an increase in high-intensity runs and sprints, though he conceded those numbers are ultimately secondary to the result. “I’ve been saying to the lads if we win more duels and we run harder and faster than them: good things will come,” he said. “Unfortunately it hasn’t today.
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“If we got the first goal that maybe would’ve given the lads something to kick on and go and get a result. Crystal Palace are a team at the moment where at 0-0 they’re happy because they’ll think: ‘We’ll get our moment.’ And they are able to take it. Maybe some of our lads don’t feel that way and that’s something we have to try and change. The Premier League is ruthless.”
Muñoz’s goal was a touch fortuitous but it had been coming. After a short corner, Wharton’s shot from the edge of the area sent Johnstone sprawling to his left, but the ball clattered into Maxence Lacroix and it dropped kindly for Muñoz with the goal gaping.
Pino’s strike was a beauty after the Wolves substitute Hwang Hee-chan ran into trouble. Wharton was again influential in the buildup. Pino collected the ball on the edge of the box and after taking a touch to compose himself, what happened next was sumptuous.
