7 Together, 42 Apart: Wolves’ Strike-Partner Divide
Wolverhampton Wanderers score twice as often and concede less than half as often when Emanuel Rodríguez and Baltazar Šusterajter start together.
Seven games together have brought Wolverhampton Wanderers four wins, two draws and one defeat. In the other 42 matches this season in which one of the strike partners has been absent, Wolves have won 14, drawn nine and lost 19. The comparison leaves little room for diplomatic interpretation: Rodríguez and Šusterajter make this a stronger side together.
With the pair, Wolves have scored 2.0 goals a game and conceded 0.6. Without one of them, those figures are 1.0 and 1.4. The partnership doubles the scoring rate and cuts the rate of goals conceded by more than half. It is a tidy bit of arithmetic, and less tidy news for the team whenever one is missing.
The numbers extend the pattern set out in March, when the first six games together were already a persuasive sample. The seventh has not diluted it. Nor does it make the comparison a forecast: seven games are seven games. But against 42 without one of the pair, the season so far has supplied a substantial counterweight.
The Argentinian has 79 goals in 285 Wolves games, while the Croatian has scored twice in 43 appearances for the club this season. Their partnership’s strongest figure is not a personal tally, however, but the team’s 0.6 conceded per game when they play together.
Both men are listed as not happy, a condition that has not prevented the figures from looking unusually contented. Šusterajter has a close relationship with manager Andy Breuer; Rodríguez’s private ledger is less accommodating, with Máximo Puga among those he dislikes. Neither detail explains a result, and neither needs to. The seven-game split says more about the shared work than a mood report can.
The recent European story has supplied another reason for Wolves to want the partnership intact. Three days ago, they beat Paris Saint-Germain 2-0 in the UEFA Europa Conference League, answering the first-leg defeat noted in the coverage before that tie. That competition result belongs to its own account; the partnership figures describe the season’s broader pattern, not a league-table change.
Wolves reach that fixture with a useful pair and a strikingly less useful comparison: with both, four wins from seven; without one, 14 from 42. The better number is the one that comes with the pair, and it is not especially close.