Wolves 2-2 Blackburn Rovers: Jiménez marks Molineux return with stoppage-time leveller
Wolves squander a two-goal lead before a stoppage-time penalty from their prodigal striker rescues a point on the opening day of the Championship season
By Dr Talal Osman at Molineux
Friday 14 August 2026
There is a particular kind of theatre reserved for a returning hero, and Raúl Jiménez duly obliged. Three years after he last wore old gold in earnest, the Mexican, now 35 and back at Molineux as a free agent alongside fellow reclamation project Kieran Trippier, stepped up in the fourth minute of stoppage time and sent Blackburn's goalkeeper the wrong way to salvage a 2-2 draw for Wolves on the opening day of their first season back in the Championship. It was an ending that flattered a home performance which, for long stretches, had drifted well away from its early promise.
Wolves could not have asked for a tidier start. Fer Lopez, given the freedom of Molineux's inside-right channel, threaded a pass through Blackburn's back line in the 18th minute for Marshall Munetsi to finish with the composure of a man who had done this before, sending 30,984 home supporters into raptures and suggesting a straightforward evening lay ahead for Cesar Peixoto's side in his first competitive match in the away dugout turned home tenure.
It did not stay straightforward for long. Blackburn, promoted expectation notwithstanding after a summer in which relegation was avoided by rather more comfortable a margin than many predicted, responded with conviction. Ryoya Morishita's cross from the right was met by Sean McLoughlin, unmarked at the back post, whose header on 28 minutes levelled the scores and served warning that Tony Mowbray's side had not travelled to the Black Country merely to make up the numbers. Rovers pressed home their advantage four minutes into the second half, Andri Guðjohnsen turning in a close-range finish to put the visitors ahead for the first time and leave the home crowd searching for answers.
Wolves huffed and pushed but could not locate the second wind that might have salvaged the game inside normal time, and as the clock ticked past 90 minutes a draw looked the most gettable outcome — until Jackson Tchatchoua's left-wing delivery struck the arm of Ryan Alebiosu inside the area. The referee pointed to the spot without hesitation, to Mowbray's evident and voluble disagreement, and Jiménez did the rest, rolling his effort down the middle to complete an afternoon that had begun, for him, with a guard of honour of sorts from a crowd still delighted simply to have him back.
"It's amazing to be back, scoring in the first game," Jiménez said afterwards, careful even in triumph not to overstate a performance he knew had fallen short of the standard required. "We need to learn from this."
Peixoto, denied victory in his first Championship fixture in charge, was blunter still in his diagnosis of what went wrong after Munetsi's early goal. "We played more with heart than with our heads or brain," he said. "We lost organisation." It is a familiar complaint for newly relegated clubs discovering that Championship opponents do not politely make way for reputation, and Blackburn well-drilled and direct under Mowbray offered a timely reminder of the graft this division demands.
Mowbray, for his part, left the field aggrieved rather than deflated, his focus on the officiating rather than the two points that slipped away in stoppage time. "It looks outside the box to me," he said of the penalty award, a decision that will likely occupy phone-ins on both sides of the divide long after the final whistle. Whatever the rights of the incident, Blackburn will feel they did enough over 93 minutes to have taken all three points back up the M6, and on another day they might have.
For Wolves, there is instruction as much as relief in a result that keeps the unbeaten record intact but exposes fragilities Peixoto will need to address quickly if this is to be the one-season stay in the second tier the club's hierarchy has promised its supporters. Jiménez's return goal will dominate the back pages, and rightly so — but the manner in which a two-goal cushion turned into a two-goal deficit inside the space of half an hour will be the more instructive footage when Peixoto reviews the tape.
Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 (Munetsi 18, Jiménez 90+3 pen) Blackburn Rovers 2 (McLoughlin 28, Guðjohnsen 49) Attendance: 30,984 at Molineux
