16 games, two points, minus 26 goals – that sounds more like the league position of a young amateur team for whom promotion to the next division came a bit too soon. A professional team can hardly b...
16 games, two points, minus 26 goals – that sounds more like the league position of a young amateur team for whom promotion to the next division came a bit too soon. A professional team can hardly be that far behind the competition, right?
Well, think again. This horror record belongs to a Premier League team that is currently having a season to forget – and we’re not talking about a newly promoted side.
The Wolverhampton Wanderers are currently breaking one negative record after another. Each of them is symbolic of a historically weak season, even before the winter break.
After just 14 matchdays, the Wolves already had their first record in the bag. Since their 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest, they share the worst points tally after fourteen league games with Sheffield United.
Longest Winless Start in Sight
Particularly worrying: since then, with defeats to Manchester United and Arsenal, they haven’t picked up a single point. So the Wolves continue to languish at the bottom of the table with two points. They are now a hefty eight (!) points behind newly promoted Burnley in second-to-last place. If they don’t win today’s game against Brentford, they’ll match Sheffield United in the next milestone: they would then have the longest winless start to a Premier League season.
The Wolves have suffered nine (!) defeats in a row and their confidence is at rock bottom. Their only two points so far came on matchdays 6 and 7 against Tottenham and Brighton & Hove Albion. That was at the beginning of October. Do the players even remember what it feels like to get something out of a game? We doubt it.
The coaching change card has already been played, but to no effect. After the dismissal of Vítor Pereira, his successor Rob Edwards has yet to earn a single point.
Where did it all go wrong?
Yeah, that’s always the question afterwards.
In short, the Wolves lost their most important players over the summer. Key performers like Matheus Cunha and Rayan Aït-Nouri moved to rivals, and Pablo Sarabia and Nelson Semedo also jumped ship. With Cunha in particular, it’s becoming increasingly clear just how much the club relied on his 15 goals last season.
This season, they have only managed nine goals in total, which is about half a goal per game. The new signings Jørgen Strand Larsen (transfer fee: 27 million euros) and Tolu Arokodare (26 million) have only scored twice between them.
So fans are still waiting for adequate replacements for the departures, and they’re getting increasingly angry.
Even before the match against Manchester United at the start of the month, Wolves fans vented their frustration. They protested against the club owners – a Chinese investment group – and only entered the stadium well after kick-off.
Chairman Jeff Shi has since resigned from his position, but remains the boss of the investment group Fosun Sports Group. His role as club chief has been taken over on an interim basis by Nathan Shi, who is not related to him and has worked for Fosun since 2016.
Even after the departure of the club boss, the mood is unlikely to improve much if you look at calculations from 'Opta'. According to them, the club already has virtually no realistic chance of staying up and has a probability of just over 98 percent of finishing in the bottom three at the end of the season. Given the table, it’s no surprise: they’re already a massive 14 points away from safety. That’s a tough challenge.
Season Goal: Damage Control?!
The goal can almost only be to at least prevent some negative records. The record for the fewest points in a Premier League season currently stands at eleven. There’s also room for improvement in terms of fewest wins: the Wolves would need at least two more victories to surpass the historic low of just one win. Doable, you’d think, until you remember the PL team’s start to the season.
Suddenly, it even seems likely they could lose 30 or more of the 38 Premier League games. In that case, they would match Southampton, who lost almost every game last season – except for eight.
The Wolves have also lost every game so far – except for two. Today they have another chance to finally get their first win, or at least another point – at home against 15th-placed Brentford.
That would be important to avoid, for example, the earliest confirmed relegation in league history. That record is currently held by Derby County, whose relegation in the 2000s was already sealed on March 29.
This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.
📸 Alex Pantling - 2025 Getty Images
Category: General Sports
