If the next Wolves manager isn’t going to go the same way as Graham Turner, Dave Jones, Glenn Hoddle and Mick McCarthy, he has to have the one ingredient that they all eventually lacked…

…A talented number two.

Choosing the best boss for the job is a huge task alone, but allowing him to have the best ‘right hand man’ for the job comes a close second in significance.

'It would be lovely' to get a decent assistant, wouldn't it?

For this reason alone, Steve Bruce should be avoided at all costs, as Eric Black – his voice of sanity – is assistant manager at Blackburn.

Dave Jones should know this better than anyone, which is why he should never get another sniff of the job either.

Having found a good thing in John Ward when we got promoted in 2003, Ward mysteriously vanished, as Jones ploughed a lone furrow from each Premier League dugout, with our performances suffering accordingly.

Glenn Hoddle – for all his obvious shortcomings – looked similarly bereft on the bench, so much so that he turned to his late brother Carl to help with training!

Then everything felt so much fresher under Mick, due mainly to his infectious work ethic, but partly due to Taff Evans, surely?

Watching the pair of them off the pitch was a breath of fresh air to match the lads’ achievements on it.

Due to a ‘hip operation’, Taff was never to be seen in the dugout again, as Mick lost a perceptive pair of eyes that he surely could have done with when the going got so tough.

And what about dear old Graham Turner?

When we steamrollered through divisions four and three, the presence of Barry Powell alongside him was a sight that always appeared to reassure and inspire in equal measure.

For reasons I never knew, the exclusively irate Gary Pendry replaced him, a moustachioed Ron Jeremy to Powell’s Ned Flanders.

In the most pointless, least tactical exercise I ever had the fun of laughing at, Gary would drop kick balls at Bully’s shins from 3 yards to ‘improve his first touch’ prior to every single kick-off.

The only difference between Pendrey and the porn star being 10 times the anger and animation from the dug out.

If Turner had kept with the milder mannered Powell, he would have been an even bigger legend – in my unsubstantiated opinion!

Just one look at Harry Redknapp underlines my point, as the future England boss surrounds himself with good men in Joe Jordan, Kevin Bond and Clive Allen. No coincidence?

So while Jez Moxey hastily declares that this job is ‘not for the novice,’ maybe he’s learned that experience can be found in a number of ways. Hence the dithering.

For a club that basks in a ‘long term vision’ as if it invented the very phrase, progress reports on recruiting Mick’s successor should barely sound plausible right now.

According to the Daily Mail, Steve Bruce won’t touch us with a bargepole after Jez and Steve unveiled a new-fangled concept to replace the outmoded old one: ‘The short-term strategy.’

If Paddy McGuiness wasn’t hosting his Saturday night game show, he could have been transported to our London hotel instead.

13 games you say? Hmm

‘Let the tiddly, see the wink,’ shouts Paddy, as Brucey walks into the snug bar.

Cue footage of our mess of a stadium, Steve Morgan’s seething face at home to Liverpool and the rest was history.

‘No likey, no lighty,’ screams Bruce in terror as he joins Alan Curbishley in smashing his switch quicker than a contestant faced with Jo Brand.

Bad enough approaching the mingers that none of us would touch, worse still to offer them the island of Fernando on a 13 game holiday and get it thrown back in our faces!

Whether or not these custard pie rumours are to be believed or not, the fact that the bookies have Mick McCarthy at 25-1 to come back to Molineux tells its own story.

Were it not for the endless smug platitudes from Moxey up until now, some fans might view this appointment process with a modicum of patience.

But when Jez Moxey turned up on Sky Sports News last night to say absolutely nothing of any note whatsoever, such equanimity is harder to find.

Thirteen games to save our season, and a scenario of having no manager in place against Newcastle United, let alone a preferred one.

Some situation for a club that always saw the bigger picture.

After picking up seven points from our first three league games, Jez Moxey said the following:

“Nothing is by chance. You get what you put in in life generally.

“Sometimes you don’t get what you deserve, or what you put in. But when you get an opportunity, and this is a horrible phrase: ‘when preparation meets opportunity’ – or whichever way it is! – you get this offspring called good fortune, or good luck.

“And we believe about making your own good fortune or luck in life. But to do that you’ve just got to work your socks off 24/7.”

That Wolves appear to be having no luck in this most miserable of manager hunts tells its own story.

Thirteen games. Everything by chance. And barely a manager left in the studio with his light on.

It’s difficult to know what fact is more surprising.

Neil Warnock being shortlisted for the British Sports Book Award in 2008, or Neil Warnock being shortlisted for the Wolves job in 2012.

Despite seven promotions on seven shoestrings, not a lot of fans appear to like the man whose boots Mick used to clean.

But if any bloke would use a dissenting blog or two as motivation, Warnock would appear to be he.

Warnock kicking down a London hotel door

Factor in no loss of love for one of his main challengers for the Molineux hotseat and Moxey and Morgan might have stumbled upon a spicy interview process.

It was Alan Curbishley who relegated Warnock’s Sheffield United on the last day of the 2007 season when West Ham beat Man United through Carlos Tevez, ‘football’s equivalent of a murderer on bail.’

Warnock never forgot. Neither did he forget Curbishley’s agent Phil Smith calling him before that final weekend, warning about a ‘flat cap collusion’ with Wigan, whom the Blades would  eventually lose to.

He said: “It made me laugh. I was still thinking about Fergie presenting Curbishley with those first class tickets to New Zealand the year before (as a present for his last game as Charlton boss).

“Curbishley must hope he gets United on the last game of every season. In 2005/06 it was plane tickets, the next season it’s six players missing from Ferguson’s first team,” added Warnock.

Whether the ‘Two Ms’ realised this when they hastily drew up their shortlist is doubtful, but one thing is for sure…

…Warnock will be obsessing over finally getting his own back.

Whatever the interview process entails, such history might just make Warnock an unlikely winner from this whole process – once the DNA tests come back from the lab of course.

Steve Bruce will certainly have a say, and will be doing so right now. But his Mick-like ability to marginalise better players that he actually bought (for Hammill and Guedioura read McClean and Gardner), and an unwanted reference in the form Sunderland’s current Premier League position, the job might just be down to two.

And with all three men trying desperately to shake off stigmas in a London hotel this weekend, it might just come down to who wants the job more. In which case, there’d only be one winner.

That most of us don’t want Neil Warnock wouldn’t bother Jez Moxey either. It certainly wouldn’t bother the Yorkshireman, who’d go at it like a ‘red rag to a bull.’

If he says anything like the following in his pitch – having gone through his career achievements as a manager – then Moxey and Morgan’s faces are bound to be a picture.

“I realised that what I do best is to make poor players play averagely and average players play well. I make people believe.

“My challenge is this: With very little money, I want to finish above teams who have got everything – everything, that is, except the one ingredient they need, which I can provide. You can’t patent that ingredient.”

If Morgan and Moxey choose not to judge a book by its cover, then this managerial race might not be as nailed on as many might think.

It was July 2006 when the plight of our beloved club was typified by my guffawing Sunday League pub manager.

Training on St Edmund’s School’s pitches, the gaffer took one look at a similar shambles on the Compton field next door and chortled: “I’d ask them for a game lads, but they’ve only got nine men!”

Nine players, one proud Yorkshireman and the task of fashioning a silk purse from a complete pig’s ear.

In delivering the ‘impossible dream’, Mick McCarthy did something even more remarkable – he created a romance between team and fans that a Sherpa Van couldn’t even deliver.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, the love affair is over, in the saddest ending of all.

Where Shakespeare does tragedy, comedy and romance, Mick McCarthy did all three, quite often at the same time.

A no-nonsense Romeo back in 2008/9, Mick leaves the stage like King Lear, all alone, exposed and nowhere left to go.

In remembering the good times, I recall that 5-1 thrashing of Nottingham Forest at home, by a team I’ll never forget.

That his last game ended in the same scoreline is too poetic for words.

Even his most halcyon days were often played out in wonder, as Nigel Quashie came in, Mark Davies went out and Chris Iwelumo was dropped altogether.

As is ever the case with Mick McCarthy, he always did things his way.

And just like the great Frank Sinatra himself, maybe we should just remember the good times and not these miserable latter ones.

Frank occasionally forgot the words, stopped hitting the hardest notes and eventually fell over on a Virginia stage.

So while today’s announcement is music to many fans’ ears, it certainly isn’t to mine, however much I agree with it.

Emulating Mick McCarthy in 2012 isn’t the hard part anymore.

Emulating him back in the day would have been nigh-impossible, but not even Ol’ Blue Eyes could hold that note forever.

What many Wolves fans might lack in tales of sordid, sexy football right now, they more than make up for in crackpot superstition.

Maybe the football has driven us to such levels of eccentricity, but when it comes to our pre-match rituals, a pair of lucky pants doesn’t tell half the story, does it?

If I hold my thumb at 85° we should get a cleansheet

My twitches and tics verge on Tourette proportions during games, while our esteemed Wolves Blog founder Thomas has one step in the lunatic asylum already, judging by his antics while watching the QPR game on Saturday!

I have both superstitions and twitches and I cling to each and every one of them as if they really make a difference to the outcome on the pitch.

They are devised to bring about luck while preventing any kisses of death and I can track them back to 1988 and a bloke called Dean Edwards.

As we tore up division 3 like a tank driving Mr T on Snickers, lowly division 4 fodder Torquay United shuffled into Molineux for the Sherpa Van Trophy area final second leg, days after Bully inspired us to a 2-1 win at their place.

We were holders, champions elect and Dad was plotting the Ford Sierra’s route to Wembley like Wincey Willis on a Treasure Hunt.

We should have known what happened next…

…Torquay United won 2-0 at Molineux to scupper his best laid plan, with the goals coming from an ex-player by the name of Dean Edwards, who was born in Wolverhampton!

It is this very twist of fate like that prompted my mental wheel of irrationality to make its first inexorable turn. It has barely stopped turning since.

Such were my levels of superstition and downright paranoia that I once thought my life was being played out in a Molineux Trueman Show.

With the umpteenth team coasting to victory on our home patch, the away fans piped up with a painfully familiar rendition of ‘wanky Wanderers.’

‘My three-a-day habit is not only being laughed at, but the lads are losing as a result of it,’ I thought.

I stopped wanking immediately thereafter, in a selfless act that actually coincided with an upturn in the team’s fortunes.

I stayed off the ham shanks for a good two weeks until we lost again and realised I may as well enjoy myself away from the ground, with a lack of any satisfaction in it.

When we are actually winning, I’ll go to all sorts of levels to maintain the dynamic.

As I sidestepped down to my seat in an FA Cup match of early 2000s, George Ndah sidestepped past an entire Leicester City defence from the halfway line.

As the ball hit the net, my foot flicked an empty balti pie dish, which span like a foily wheel of fortune.

I spent the next 90 odd minutes on all fours, trying to repeat the flick as the piece of litter lay crumpled four seats away.

‘SIT DOWN’ bellowed the natives, as I got in the way of a bloody good thrashing.

A thrashing it was though, and my hideous action was clearly justified.

And then there are radio twitches, which take footballing ritual to a whole new paradigm.

If the opposition’s goal threat coincides with me standing up, I sit back down in the exact position I began. (And vice-versa)

If we score while I hold my mug of tea, Wolves’ cup has clearly runneth over, meaning that it stays locked in my hand for the rest of the game.

Most people would brandish such behaviour as downright insane, but logical thinking doesn’t always come easy to the average football fanatic, let alone a Wolves one.