Wolves 4 Blackburn Rovers 2

Aug 4 2008 By David Instone

ONCE more Wolves have to come to terms with managing the high promotion expectations around them.

This time, the optimism isn’t based on big signings or big names – more on the fact that a young squad who finished 2007-08 strongly have clicked so quickly.

If we can assume that the evidence of pre-season friendlies need not always be misleading, then manager Mick McCarthy has his side in excellent shape for a mission that starts for real on Saturday.

Wolves lost against Reading and Villa in corresponding games last summer and the one before but this was an ultimately convincing victory against visitors who made Paul Ince’s first return to Molineux worrying as well as emotional.

As Ince’s name was sung repeatedly from the stands the more Blackburn were squeezed out of the game in a hugely encouraging second half.

So was McCarthy’s for that matter because it was riveting entertainment.

After a frenetic burst of two Wolves’ goals and two Rovers’ equalisers in the opening 24 minutes, the match swung away from last season’s seventh-placed Premier League finishers with the enforced departure through injury of their second scorer Roque Santa Cruz.

From that moment, Wolves stabilised at one end while continuing to threaten at the other, with the result that Chris Iwelumo staked a claim for the hot potato that is the role of Molineux penalty-taker before fellow substitute Matt Jarvis clinically rounded off the scoring.

George Elokobi, with his first goal for the club, and Andy Keogh had earlier got the better of new £3.5million Blackburn keeper Paul Robinson as Michael Kightly and David Jones expertly pulled the strings in midfield.

The only headaches for Wolves, apart from the one Sylvan Ebanks-Blake had from a first-half poke in the eye, were in defence, were Richard Stearman, who had a shaky Molineux baptism, but that didn’t stop McCarthy predicting afterwards: “He’s going to be terrific for us.

“Our defending was bloody awful in the first half on a number of occasions and he had a bit of a tough time. But I think he’ll be fine.’’

Wolves have won five and drawn one of their last six games and competition for places is keen.

WOLVES (4-4-2): Hennessey; Foley, Stearman, Craddock, Elokobi (Harte, 89); Kightly (Edwards, 76), Henry, David Jones (Gray, 76), S Ward (Jarvis, 69); Keogh (Vokes, 65), Ebanks-Blake (Iwelumo, 34).

BLACKBURN (4-4-2): Robinson; Reid, Samba, Mokoena, Warnock (McCarthy, 76); Judge (Treacy, 62), Tugay (Vogel, 69), Dunn (Khizanishvili, 80), Pedersen; Santa Cruz (Roberts, 28), Derbyshire (Fowler, 76).