Wolves beat Stoke City 4-1 at Molineux Stadium in the Championship regular season, a result that keeps the hosts in second place while Stoke remain rooted at the bottom with zero points after three matches.
Sam Gallagher gave Stoke the lead after two minutes, a surprise early strike that left everyone watching the build-up rather than the finish. Then here's the thing — Wolves responded without panic. Rodrigo Gomes scored twice in quick succession, nineteen and twenty-two minutes, turning a moment of shock into momentum the visitors never quite recovered from.
Stoke's yellow cards started accumulating from fifteen minutes onwards, Jun-Ho Bae among them, and by then the game was slipping away. Raúl Jiménez added a penalty at fifty-five, a straightforward conversion after Wolves had been keeping the pressure on. Jordan James made it four at eighty-four, and the match was effectively over.
The substitutions told their own story. Wolves brought on André and Jiménez together at seventy-three, then brought off Gomes at seventy-seven to rest him. Stoke tried to change things with Hirst and Munetsi, but the pattern was already written across the pitch.
Wolves statistics: 53 per cent possession, 84 attacks, six big chances created against one for Stoke. Eight shots on target with only three for the visitors, and expected goals of 2.64 to 0.88. They won twenty-one tackles and made 345 successful passes, though accuracy was 0.44 on shots. Stoke completed 310 passes but created little of note in the final third.
Wolves move to seven points from three games, two wins and a draw, while Stoke's defeat means they have lost all three matches. The gap is already twelve points, and the table is only three games in. To be fair, they still have time, but the foundation of this season is being laid now.
