‘Losing every week starts to affect the mentality’

Having a depleted squad does make the job tougher, but the current situation Wolves find themselves in is a down to a bit more than that.

They have conceded 21 goals already this season and, even though you don’t have the foundation you would necessarily want with signings and the changes happening at the club, the nature of some of those defeats – especially against Brentford which Gary O’Neil took on the chin himself – are tough to take.

The international break is a chance for O’Neil and his coaches to think about what they can do in this next stage of the season because they are on pace for a historically bad one.

Yes, statistically they had the toughest opening games of the campaign, but the head coach and his players would have expected to have taken more from it.

You can coach players to do well but, at some point, losing every week starts to affect the mentality. It becomes harder to get results because, for everything that you have going against you, it also gives the opposition a boost when they believe you are fragile.

With their end to last season, you could argue this is something that has been going on longer than just the start of this campaign.

There was a lot of positive noise around them with the good start but then it got tougher with significant injuries and having to play players out of position. It was a trend and, unfortunately for them, it has continued into this year.

We all know the offseason is the point to make a plan and everyone believes it can be better, but 20 teams cannot all be better in the next season, can they? For Wolves, they could not get lower than one point from seven games and 21 goals conceded right now.

I’m fortunate enough to know Gary and speak with him every so often and the way the club is going through a change in how they operate, you did not feel like he was under pressure.

The club understood the difficulties of it, but O’Neil himself will know that he wants to do better and the team can do better.

From what I hear, the players are still on side, so it does not feel as much of an ‘under pressure’ situation as at some other clubs in similar difficulties.

Nedum Onuoha was speaking to BBC Sport’s Nicola Pearson