The saddest thing about the chants from the Wolves supporters at Goodison Park was the sense of inevitability that surrounded them.
From the moment Ashley Young curled a free kick around a badly-placed defensive wall and through the hapless grasp of Jose Sa, it felt like a grim evening had been preordained.
That is how Gary O’Neil’s Molineux reign has been for a while now — a tenure once brimming with promise heading inexorably towards its grisly conclusion amid growing frustration and enmity from both the head coach and the club’s exasperated fans.
O’Neil has faced criticism before from sections of a fanbase who have made up their minds about him but, during a 4-0 defeat on Merseyside that could have been so much worse, the criticism reached new levels of ferocity.
And little wonder, because supporters know that something has to change or the club are heading for the Championship after seven Premier League seasons.
This was as bad as things have been under O’Neil — even worse than the dismal display just a few days ago at home to Bournemouth and the capitulation at Brentford in October.
It was a defeat born of basic errors; of a failure to compete in the fundamentals of the game and of players looking bereft of belief. It was a defeat that was bad enough at 4-0 but could actually have been even more emphatic with Everton having two further goals ruled out by borderline VAR calls. Wolves lost heavily and yet escaped relatively lightly.
They ended the night with their goal difference shredded even if they are just three points adrift of Crystal Palace, in 17th, and with more games to come against fellow bottom-half teams in the next few weeks. Yet it feels both obvious and important to point out that they are doomed to relegation if they continue shipping goals at their current rate.
The 36 conceded is their most after 14 games of a top-flight campaign since 1964-65, when they had shipped 40 at the same stage and ended up relegated. Their nine defeats at this stage is their most in a season in the elite since 2010-11, when they clawed it back to avoid the drop by one place.
As it stands, the trajectory of their season is heading only one way. Something needs to change if Wolves are to avoid relegation.
While the club have been reluctant to part with O’Neil, the cleanest change currently would appear to be in the manager’s office. In truth, it is beginning to feel inevitable that O’Neil’s time at Molineux is coming to an end.
Despite the well-established mitigating factors that have hampered him so severely — injuries, an onerous early run of fixtures and transfer window failures — the run of results since early spring are such that most managers would already be gone.
And now the majority of supporters have turned against him, reviving his reign would require the kind of winning run of which his side do not appear remotely capable.
If he does remain in charge for Monday’s trip to West Ham United, for whom he played for two years, it still seems inevitable that results will eventually force a change.
O’Neil did his best to strike a defiant tone in his post-match press conference, but his comments did little to suggest he knows how to arrest his team’s dismal form.
“We got a real shocker at Brentford a few months ago and this one feels on a similar level to that to me because I know the work that goes into prepping the team for every little bit that was going to be thrown at them this evening,” he said. “The same as against Bournemouth.
“And we still weren’t able to cope with it. Everton didn’t do anything complicated. It was really direct stuff, really low risk, a group of players winning duels, winning second balls. We have to find a way to be able to compete with stuff like that.
“I’ve used every centre-back pairing. I’ve used two (centre-backs), I’ve used three. We’ve used (Goncalo) Guedes, we’ve used (Carlos) Forbs, we’ve used Rodrigo Gomes, we’ve used Channy (Hwang Hee-chan), so I think we’ve used pretty much every option so far available to us and none of those options have consistently given us a platform to win football matches.”
O’Neil’s implied criticism of the tools at his disposal is justified. He was left badly short of defenders by Wolves’ failure to add the players he wanted in the summer transfer window.
And with Toti left out of last night’s starting line-up after a recent dip in form, both Craig Dawson and Santiago Bueno delivered their worst games in Wolves colours with Dawson marking his 300th top-flight appearance by becoming only the fifth player to score multiple own goals in the same Premier League match.
The pair looked flat-footed and uncertain of their roles and, with Mario Lemina again struggling as a makeshift centre-back in the first-half back three, the centre-back cupboard now looks more bare than ever.
O’Neil can feel unfortunate at the repeated individual errors from experienced players that have repeatedly cost his team, with Everton’s opening goal, when Sa failed to line up his wall correctly and then grasped unconvincingly at Young’s free-kick, the most embarrassing of the season to date.
Yet many of the errors now seem to be symptoms of a squad not entirely sure about the overall plan. For much of his first season in charge, O’Neil engendered a strong, collective purpose in his side. That seems to have dissipated.
There have been no signs from within the camp of fall-outs or a breakdown in relations between O’Neil and his players. But, right now, his message is clearly falling on deaf ears and his players look lost.
If they are to save their season, Wolves must make a dramatic change. And worryingly for O’Neil, the most impactful change available is beginning to look clear.
(Top photo: Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
