Jimenez Secures Late Victory for Wolves at Bramall Lane

Raul Jimenez stepped off the bench and ripped up the script at Bramall Lane, striking a 90th-minute winner to snatch a 1-0 victory for Wolves and leave Sheffield United stunned.

One swing of his right foot. One moment of quality in a game that had spent almost the entire afternoon searching for it.

Jimenez the difference in tight Bramall Lane battle

For long spells this never looked like a contest destined for late drama. Sheffield United, usually chaos merchants at home with goals at both ends, barely laid a glove on Wolves before the break.

Chris Wilder’s side had just two touches in the Wolves box in the first half and produced a meagre 0.06 xG. That told its own story. The hosts were neat enough in patches, but rarely incisive.

Wolves were not exactly rampant either, yet they carried the greater threat. Marshall Munetsi twice found promising positions, the best of them on 19 minutes when Rodrigo Gomes whipped in a sharp cross and the midfielder met it first time. The contact was clean, the shot powerful, but it went straight at Michael Cooper. A warning, not a wound.

The game needed a spark. What it got instead was controversy.

Penalty storm as Blades denied

Five minutes after the restart, Mateus Mane flicked the ball towards goal inside the Sheffield United box. Mark McGuinness stretched out an arm, the ball clearly struck it and spun behind.

Everyone in red and white appealed. Referee Rob Jones pointed to the corner flag.

No penalty. No VAR. Just fury.

On Sky Sports, co-commentator Gary Rowett did not dance around it. “His arm comes out, it hits him on the end of the arm. I think Sheffield United have probably got away with one there,” he said. Bramall Lane agreed.

The sense of injustice briefly jolted the Blades. The tempo lifted, the tackles bit harder, and Wolves had to ride out a spell of pressure.

Hugo Bueno almost silenced the home crowd on 55 minutes when he latched onto a loose ball on the edge of the area and curled a shot just wide of Cooper’s right-hand post. It was close enough to draw a collective intake of breath from three sides of the ground.

At the other end, the Blades finally carved out the chance they craved.

Ayew nearly the hero on debut

On 67 minutes, debutant Jordan Ayew burst in from the right, driving at Wolves with the kind of intent Bramall Lane had been begging for. He opted for a vicious ball across the face of goal that doubled as a shot, skidding just past the far post with Jose Sa scrambling.

It felt like a moment that could tilt the match. Instead, it turned out to be Sheffield United’s big miss.

Ladislav Krejci, already booked, flirted with disaster when he hauled down Sydie Peck on the hour, but escaped a second yellow. It kept Wolves at full strength for the closing stages – and that proved crucial.

Because while the game tightened, Cesar Peixoto went to his bench.

Peixoto’s changes pay off

Peixoto had spoken before about the need to manage his squad through a three-game week. That meant Jimenez, 35 now and captain, started among the substitutes. It also meant that when the game drifted towards stalemate, Wolves still had their most ruthless finisher to call on.

The visitors kept probing, nudging the Blades back without ever peppering Cooper’s goal. Wilder’s men, as he later pointed out, restricted a very attacking Wolves side to very little in the second half. For 89 minutes, it looked like enough.

Then Wolves finally stitched together the move they had been searching for all afternoon.

Andre found Kieran Trippier, who slid the ball into Tommy Doyle in a pocket of space. Doyle looked up and picked the obvious pass: Jimenez, lurking where strikers make their careers, in that corridor between hope and despair for defenders.

One touch, one sweep, and the ball was in the net from close range. The away end exploded. The home stands sagged.

Wilder left to rue fine margins

“It’s top-end Championship football when you’re playing teams like we have done today. They punish you if you just switch off for a moment,” Wilder told Sky Sports afterwards.

He had a point. Sheffield United had largely contained Wolves after the break, limiting clear openings and keeping Cooper’s workload light. But they never found the quality in the final third to tilt the match their way.

“Especially in the second half, we limited a very attacking team to virtually nothing. I don’t think Michael had a save to make,” Wilder said. “It’s just disappointing, with the positions we’ve got into, that we’ve not found that little bit of quality to get our noses in front.”

Instead, they were the ones caught cold.

Jimenez still the reference point

Peixoto, by contrast, walked away with vindication for his selection and his substitutions.

“It’s an important win for us. We knew it was going to be difficult to play in this stadium against this team,” he said. “It was important the guys who came from the bench pushed in the last minutes to try to score. We scored and we won.

“I think we deserved it because we were the better team, but it was a difficult game for us.”

On Jimenez, his message was clear. This is a player Wolves must handle carefully, but cannot do without.

“He’s 35 years old, so we have to manage him the best way. He’s a key player for us,” Peixoto added. “This week, we have three games, so we had to manage the options. Raul, as a captain, helped the team from the bench, not only with the goal he scored, but he helped to defend the set-pieces.”

Three goals for the season now, and this one the most dramatic of the lot.

On a day when Sheffield United’s usual Bramall Lane chaos finally broke its pattern, it was the oldest story in the book that decided it: switch off once against a striker like Jimenez, and the Championship will show you no mercy.