Why Wolves v Brentford is the biggest game of the season so far | OneFootball

You would be forgiven for thinking Wolves v Brentford isn’t much of a big deal this weekend. A team that will definitely be relegated against a team that almost certainly won’t.

Bit of interest for those watching to see if Wolves can really give the most infamous Premier League record of all a proper crack this season and knock Derby County off their f*cking perch, but that’s about it, surely.

No. It’s massive. It has to go down as one of Wolves’ most winnable looking games of the season so far, because Brentford are okay but did manage to lose a Premier League game at Spurs – something not even Wolves themselves could pull off.

But even that’s not it. The reason Wolves v Brentford is the biggest game of the season so far is that if Wolves can indeed pick up their long-awaited first league win of the season then we will already, before half the season has been played, have a complete 20-team Circle of Parity.

For those unfamiliar, a Circle of Parity occurs when a never-ending chain of results can be formed to prove categorically that anyone really can beat anyone. We’re extremely excited just to have proof that anyone else can beat anyone else because it’s quite literally the best you can hope for in a league where one team demonstrably thus far cannot beat anyone.

The current 19-team Circle of Parity looks like this. Deep breath and:

Newcastle beat Manchester City…

who beat Leeds…

…who beat Chelsea…

…who beat Tottenham…

…who beat West Ham…

…who beat Burnley…

…who beat Sunderland…

…who beat Bournemouth…

…who beat Brighton…

…who beat Nottingham Forest…

…who beat Liverpool…

…who beat Everton…

…who beat Manchester United…

…who beat Crystal Palace…

…who beat Fulham…

…who beat Brentford…

who beat Aston Villa…

who beat Arsenal…

…who swallowed a fly beat Newcastle. And around and around it goes. You can start anywhere in the chain, of course, because that is the nature of the beast. We started and ended with Newcastle because that’s where our increasingly ineligible and deranged notes – some of them daubed in our own sh*t – led us, but any starting point is as good as any other here.

Now if Wolves can pull their finger out for just 90 little minutes and beat Brentford, they slot straight in between Fulham and Brentford, and all is right with the world.

There is danger on the horizon, though. Obviously, almost by definition, Wolves should be easy to slot in if and when they actually win a game, because they have lost to almost everybody.

But of course that ‘almost’ is waiting to bite us directly on the arse, isn’t it? And you might have guessed it would be London’s two most relentlessly unserious clubs at the heart of the issue.

After Brentford, Wolves’ next two games are against Man United and Liverpool. We’re not expecting the win drought to end there. But their first Premier League game of 2026 is at home against West Ham.

Now that’s definitely winnable, isn’t it? Even more so, if anything, than Brentford.

The problem? West Ham’s place in the Circle of Parity is next to Tottenham isn’t it? One of only two Premier League clubs thus far whose relentless commitment to banter has extended to not beating Wolves this season.

Now by January 3 it’s entirely possible other routes have opened up from other results. We’re not going to get into too much detail here because even we’re extremely bored by now, but it would be helpful if we are indeed still waiting for a full 20 by then for Arsenal to beat Bournemouth that day.

But it’s just nevertheless so on-brand for absolutely everyone involved that we’ve discovered something that is instantly of enormous importance to us only to discover that it could very easily be ruined by Tottenham f*cking Hotspur.