Wolverhampton Wanderers slumped to their sixth defeat in nine Premier League games on Saturday afternoon as relegation-threatened West Bromwich Albion emerged with all three points at Molineux. 

Sam Allardyce has struggled to turn the tide since arriving at the Hawthorns but he bagged a priceless first win as Baggies boss against a tepid Wolves side. 

The hosts have been markedly below their usual high standards this season both collectively and individually. 

Nuno Espirito Santo will naturally receive a fair slice of the blame for Wolves' ominously diminishing form, but plenty of individuals let the Portuguese manager down on Saturday. 

And one player in particular has been subjected to some damning criticism from respected Wolves journalist Tim Spiers.

While writing in his post-match Q&A column on The Athletic, Spiers responded to a supporter who directed the spotlight on Ruben Neves. 

The frustrated fan described Neves' display as "his worst performance of the season", and Spiers unanimously agreed with the assessment. 

Having written an article in midweek labelling the 23-year-old as "one of the few constants for wobbling Wolves", the respected journalist took responsibility for tempting fate too soon in a scathing verdict. 

"I'll take the blame for that...he was absolutely shocking! Completely overrun, kept giving the ball away. Awful. He's been out-jumped a few times in set pieces recently, he's often marking a players a few inches higher than him. The only solution, as Nuno would say, to that is buy bigger players because they haven't got many have they."

GIVEMESPORT's Jack Saville says...

That Neves was hooked by Nuno in the 60th minute of the game tells its own story. 

The deep-lying playmaker hasn't been substituted any earlier than that during any Premier League game so far this season, while his return of just one tackle and zero interceptions was his lowest combined return across those two metrics in any league game he's started in 2020/21.  

With a total of three full days to recover between the midweek clash with Everton and the weekend fixture against West Brom, it's difficult to cite fatigue as a justification for the abject display. 

As one of the most gifted players at the club, boasting the highest valuation (£45m, per Transfermarkt) of any player within the Wolves squad, the supporters will rightly be expecting a major reaction from Neves in their next league clash against Chelsea in ten days time.