'Beyond me' - Tim Spiers left baffled as Wolves boss Lage snubs £40.5m worth of talent vs Palace

Wolves journalist Tim Spiers admitted that he was baffled that Bruno Lage left Leander Dendoncker and Rayan Ait-Nouri on the bench against Crystal Palace on Saturday afternoon. 

The Old Gold lost 2-0 against Patrick Vieira’s side at Molineux, further damaging their European ambitions. It’s now three straight defeats for Lage’s side, who are two points behind seventh-placed Spurs despite having played two games more.

The 45-year-old selected Joao Moutinho and Ruben Neves ahead of the £27m-rated Dendoncker in midfield, and Fernando Marcal ahead of the £13.5m-rated Ait-Nouri at left wing-back.

Lage had to make his first change after just 25 minutes when Ki-Jana Hoever picked up an injury (Jonny Otto replaced him), and he then opted to send on Raul Jimenez and Chiquinho in the second half.

Writing on The Athletic’s matchday discussion board, Spiers expressed at his bewilderment at Lage’s snub of the duo, saying: “How Dendoncker and Ait-Nouri don’t feature at all today is beyond me.”

In a tweet, he added it was ‘amazing’ that Lage had overlooked Dendoncker for both games against Palace this season ‘given their physical prowess’.

In fairness, the statistics suggest that Marcal enjoyed a fairly good game at left wing-back. At 7.6/10, he outperformed all of his outfield team-mates in the SofaScore rating system.

He won eight of his 10 ground duels, made five tackles, completed all three of his dribbles and also created two chances.

You can therefore understand why Lage didn’t make that particular change, but you could also make the case that he should have used a 3-5-2 shape, as he has done on five occasions this season, with Dendoncker slotting into a three alongside Neves and Moutinho.

That would theoretically have matched up