Wolverhampton Wanderers are staring their very last chance at Premier League survival in the face.
Wednesday's game against Nottingham Forest is all they have left. Wolves have eight points this season. Forest have 26. If Forest win at the City Ground, the Black Country side will be 21 points from safety with 26 matches played.
To cut a long story short, Wolves are done. Lose on Wednesday and they're even more done. The Championship awaits and it's been checking its watch every week for the last four months.
BREAKING NEWS: Wolves aren't scoring enough goals
It's obvious that Wolves are dealing with a multitude of problems, some on the pitch and others behind the scenes, and their second-tier destiny can't be explained away with one simple statistic.
At least, it can't be fully explained away. The thing about goals, the thing some people in positions of influence in the game would do well to remember, is that they're the whole point. Without them, you're not just in trouble – your fans are going to feel their absence.
Wolves are tracking to score 24 or 25 goals in the Premier League this season. That's going to get them relegated and make their supporters miserable. It's a goal drought double whammy.
Between sacked manager Vitor Pereira and successor Rob Edwards, Wolves have scored 16 goals in 25 matches. Conceding 48 is a factor too, of course, and there are many others, but scoring at this rate is signed, sealed and delivered relegation.
100 teams have been relegated from the Premier League, and 58 of them went down having scored less than a goal per game. Just five relegated teams have scored fewer goals on average than Wolves this season.
The list is short and makes painful reading. Derby County went down with 11 points in 2007/08 and scored 29 goals, the worst points total and the lowest goal average in Premier League history.
Sunderland's 2005/06 relegation is the second-worst season in terms of points. They scored 26 goals, more than Wolves would achieve if they maintained their season-long rate all the way to the final whistle in May.
Is it possible to avoid relegation without scoring a goal per game?
44 teams have survived in the Premier League despite averaging less than a goal per game but every one of them, from the eight teams who stayed up in a 38-game season with 37 goals to Huddersfield Town and Leeds United and their 28-goal not-so-great escapes, scored more on average than Wolves in 2025/26.
There's no point pretending that an atrocious points total is the rawest manifestation of the multifarious issues at Molineux in the last few years but 16 Goals is poking its head out from behind 8 Points and laughing at Edwards and Wolves before sneaking back off into the shadows to tell 1 Win All Season what it's done.
10 Wolves players have scored a Premier League goal this season. Five of them have scored twice: Hwang Hee-chan, Ladislav Krejci, Mateus Mane, Santiago Bueno and Tolu Arokodare. At least they've mostly been at home.
The emergence of Mane is a worthwhile bonus, but that's a bleak list. Jorgen Strand Larsen was sold to Crystal Palace last month, having scored once this season.
Wolves have scored nine goals from open play in 2025/26. Nobody's staying up with a record like that in the middle of February.
Interim chairman Nathan Shi and ownership group Fosun International have already made their moves. Strand Larsen was sold at a profit, Pereira sacked, and Edwards installed with a view to attacking next season with a bit of intent.
What's difficult to stomach from a supporter's perspective is that even as it felt as if performances were improving and outside observers started to notice where Edwards was having an impact, even as the team seemed to be competing in matches, goals and therefore results didn't follow.
If Molineux is to be a happier place in 2026/27, regularly hitting the net is going to be the key ingredient – and not only because teams that can't score tend to be in trouble in the Championship too.
