There is a particular kind of sorrow that settles over a football club when hope has been extinguished. It is not the sharp pain of a last-minute defeat, nor the frustration of a controversial decision. It is something quieter, more insidious – the gradual acceptance that nothing will change, that every Saturday (or Tuesday, in this case) brings only a new chapter of the same miserable story.
Wolverhampton Wanderers will carry that weight to Old Trafford tonight.
Two points from eighteen matches. Zero victories. Sixteen points adrift of safety with half a season already gone. As we asked just yesterday, is there anyone left who can save them?
The answer, increasingly, appears to be no.
A manager running out of words
Rob Edwards arrived at Molineux in November with the energy of a man who believed he could work miracles. Seven games later, the miracle-worker has produced only seven defeats. Not a single point collected. The transformation he promised has become merely a continuation of despair under a different voice.
After Saturday's 2-1 loss at Liverpool, Edwards sat before the cameras with the hollow eyes of someone who has seen the same nightmare too many times.
"I said to the lads I'm getting really fed up of this," he admitted, the words carrying more exhaustion than anger. "I know they're hurting as well."
There is something profoundly human in that admission – the manager stripped of tactical jargon, speaking simply as someone who has grown tired of losing. Football, at its cruelest, reduces even professionals to this: people who are just... fed up.
The Theatre of Dreams awaits
Old Trafford has witnessed many dramas over the decades. Tonight, it will host what feels less like a football match and more like a funeral procession.
Just three weeks ago, Manchester United dismantled Wolves 4-1 at Molineux. Bruno Fernandes orchestrated the destruction with the casual brilliance of a conductor who knows the symphony by heart. Wolves offered resistance for perhaps thirty minutes before the inevitable collapse.
The Portuguese playmaker will not be present tonight – a soft tissue injury keeping him sidelined. Yet his absence matters little against opponents who have forgotten how to win. Ruben Amorim could field the youth team and still expect three points.
"There is no chance he is going to play against Wolves, you can write that," Amorim smiled when asked about Fernandes. The confidence was telling. This is not a fixture that keeps managers awake at night.
Ghosts of seasons past
What makes Wolves' decline so poignant is the memory of what came before. Last April, they arrived at Old Trafford and won. Pablo Sarabia's free-kick sealed a 1-0 victory, part of a six-game winning streak that ensured survival. There was resilience then. Belief. The sense that Wolverhampton would always find a way.
That club feels like a distant relative now – someone you recognise in old photographs but would struggle to identify in person.
Tonight, they arrive without André, their Brazilian midfielder suspended after collecting his fifth yellow card at Anfield. It is a telling detail: one of their few quality players, unavailable at precisely the moment they need every capable body.
Edwards will survey his options and find them depressingly limited. Rodrigo Gomes injured. Toti Gomes injured. Bellegarde injured. Munetsi injured. Emmanuel Agbadou away at the Africa Cup of Nations. The treatment room has become the busiest part of the training ground.
The weight of unwanted history
If Wolves lose tonight, they will become the first team in Premier League history to go half a season without a single victory. They will join Bolton Wanderers of 1902-03 as the only top-flight sides to remain winless after eighteen matches.
History, which should inspire, has become merely another burden to carry.
They have already lost 25 league games in 2025. One more defeat matches Ipswich Town's record of 26 losses in a calendar year, set thirty-one years ago when the Premier League was a different beast entirely.
Records, when you are collecting the wrong kind, offer no comfort.
A glimmer in the darkness?
Edwards, ever the optimist, pointed to second-half performances that showed fight. Against Liverpool, Wolves improved considerably after the break. Against Brentford, they were level at halftime before capitulating.
"What I saw was a team that was full of running, endeavour, brave, took risks and showed a lot of quality," he reflected. "We need to harness that."
Perhaps. But quality in patches cannot save a club drowning in the deep end. Wolves need sustained excellence across ninety minutes, and there is nothing in their season to suggest they are capable of it.
Tonight, under the Old Trafford floodlights, they will take the pitch knowing that defeat is expected, that survival is essentially impossible, that the season has become an exercise in damage limitation.
And somewhere in the stands, among the travelling supporters who made the journey despite everything, there will be those who remember better days. Who remember Nuno Espírito Santo's Wolves, who remember European nights, who remember when this club dreamed of more than mere survival.
Football's beauty has always been intertwined with its melancholy. Tonight, at 20:15, Molineux's faithful will experience the latter in its purest form.
