'Catching up to midfield group will require a busy summer'
One problem with 'dead' games at the end of the season - aside from the unsatisfactory description - is that the apparently low stakes leave too much time for wandering thoughts, reading things between the lines of the teamsheet that might not be there.Hence, after the team news dropped at Selhurst Park, it was tempting to look for deeper meaning in it, especially bearing in mind that Vitor Pereira had said he would not be giving "gifts" of places in the team to fringe players as some sort of thanks for training patiently in the background."It is time to understand what they can give to us," Pereira told me afterwards, and that seems a perfectly sensible use of the last week of the season in the circumstances, notwithstanding the financial value of every position in the final table.Players are scrutinised in training as never before, but the best way to measure the progress that, for example, Nasser Djiga has made since joining the club was to give him his first Premier League start. It is by no means certain that even the 'strongest available' team would have won anyway, against a confident Crystal Palace side.Whatever Pereira learned about individual players, the past two games have at least indicated the scale of the work to be done to meet the ambitions he shares with the supporters. As Pereira pointed out recently, their past three opponents of the season - Brighton, Palace and Brentford - are all in the bracket of clubs he believes Wolves should be capable of joining.They have been quite comfortably outpointed by the first two. "They have tactical quality and they have very good players - that's why they did the season that they did and we must be in our best level," said Pereira in the Selhurst Park media room, regretting his team's mistakes.These games, then, are 'dead' only in the sense of no overall jeopardy. For all the players given a rare opportunity, they are very much live - their best chance to show Pereira there is no need to buy a new starter in that position.Could the manager really, as I heard it suggested later, have selected a team to make a point to his employers about the need to spend? It seems unlikely he would need to do that. But the past two games - and the league table, with 12 clubs now over 50 points - suggest the midfield group has become stronger this season, and catching up will require a busy summer.Listen to full commentary of Wolves v Brentford at 16:00 BST on Sunday on BBC Radio WM [DAB Black Country]Tune into The West Midlands Football Phone-In from 18:00 on weeknights
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