Reading the blogs on here these days and the responses to Steve Morgan’s recent statements in the E&S, it’s clear that there are a lot of supporters who are extremely unhappy at the moment.

I don’t know how many exactly, whether it’s the majority or not, but it’s plenty.

Fed up with the quality of football and even more fed up with the results. Week after week, in fact year after year, of being outclassed and what most fans hate most of all, losing.

Are things 'too stable' at Molineux?

Three years ago I fully bought into the official line. Buying only young and hungry players, spending within our means and stability of management and ownership.

An excellent and sensible business plan. But any plan only has merit in that it achieves it’s aims. And the aims of any professional football team is to progress and become better and more successful.

This is patently not the case at Wolves. The team shows no sign of improvement half way into a third season of premiership football. In fact, I would say we are losing ground on many teams.

So we have a lot of very unhappy fans. The problem is the management are far from unhappy.

First you have a CEO whose aim is to run a premiership team as cheaply as possible. And bullseye! He’s the best there is and is often keen to proclaim it. Lowest wage bill, bargain basement buys, optimum ticket pricing. Stay in the league, anywhere out of the bottom three, and coin the money in.

Then you have a manager who loves managing in the premiership. And who wouldn’t? Wonderful ground, training facilities and money to spend. Fantastic support. Most managers would give their right arm to have the privilege of managing our great club.

And Mick can do it his way. He can generally steer clear of foreign players because they take longer to bed in and they’re not always right good lads like the British boys. He doesn’t have to move good players on to get better ones, he can stick with the lads he likes.

He doesn’t have to put up with criticism from the fans or media, he can call them numpties and tell them he’s ready for a fight if they want one. He can refer to our club as ‘my team’ and last, and best of all, he doesn’t have to win. His job is safe, apparently, even if we go down. Yes, a very happy manager.

And finally we have the owner.

A scouser and lifelong Liverpool fan who tried to buy his club but had to settle for Wolves. How much this adventure is about football and how much is about the various building projects which ownership has allowed I don’t know.

But it’s definitely both.

And the bottom line once again is stay in the league, anywhere above the bottom three, and all is well. Plenty of money coming in and his empire growing. Maybe one day, with the ground rebuilt, he’ll sell up and have just enough to get what he really wanted in the first place.

That is the conundrum facing Wolves fans at the moment. Our main priority, a winning team which is good to watch, is not necessarily the priority of the three men who decide our fate.

* Thanks to Martin for sending in this blog. It’s great to get contributions from far and wide so we can express a variety of different opinions. So please don’t hesitate if you fancy a bash at writing something for us. You can find details on the Contact page.

* If you have some spare pennies, please do consider donating to our March to Molineux walk. It’s a wonderful cause and I’d like to raise a couple of hundred quid minimum. As I write this, we’ve got £67, so there’s still a bit to go. You can donate by clicking here.

Now I know this blog’s about football and about our beloved football team in particular (Thomas has made this extremely clear ‘Wolves Blog: It’s a blog about the Wolves’; gotcha Tommo) but I’m going to start with a little bit of cricket and Kevin Pietersen, the South African born free scoring batsmen in particular.

When he burst on the scene a few years ago he was an overnight sensation scoring century after century at an amazing rate and with contemptuous ease. Many of these runs were scored in his own backyard against his former compatriots against a backdrop of huge antipathy and indignation at the ‘betrayal’ of his mother country. Nothing fazed him, he strutted his stuff, recognized no pressure and succeeded time after time. His absolute strength, apart from his obvious athletic gifts, was his huge self confidence, a quality often absent in British sportsmen. But not missing from this man born in Natal. It was there in spades, he knew how good he was and he couldn’t wait to show the world.

Despite spending big on van Damme, Ward remains first choice left-back

So there we have it, a huge talent matched by an equally large self-belief. Nothing could possibly stop him from endless success and becoming possibly the greatest batsman of all time. Except for one small thing, or rather one very large thing; his self belief, his ego, his greatest strength gradually became his weakness. Slowly belief in himself changed to contempt for the opposition, a quality never found in the world’s great sportsmen. What often separates the really great players, not the very ,very good but the absolute great players from the rest is their humility and their total respect for their opponents not just as sportsmen but as people as well – Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Gary Sobers, Bobby Charlton, Pele, Eusebio. They respected their opposition, were magnanimous in defeat but, at the same time, always expected to win. Their greatest strength, their inner confidence in themselves and in their ability to win was enduring and permanent.

Kevin Pietersen’s confidence was not built on such solid foundations. It started to change into arrogance and so this strength slowly became a weakness. When he decided he could walk down the wicket to Glenn McGrath, one of the world’s great bowlers, treat him like a spinner and dispatch him into the stand, he suffered a blow to the body and a broken rib. Basically his confidence became over confidence, an illusion, a misrepresentation of reality and ultimately his greatest weakness. Something which will probably deny him the true greatness he might otherwise have achieved.

Now those of you who are still reading and, so I assume, are also still awake, will be pleased to know that this is where football comes in and our dear old Mick McCarthy.

Mick’s had a fair amount of success as a manager over the years, culminating with the pretty decent achievement of getting us back to the top level. So to what do we attribute this success? Well, I would say, it’s not based on huge tactical nous or clever practice ground routines. I would say, rather, it’s based much more on his general human qualities. He likes hardworking, honest, genuine players who work for the team. He stays loyal to them and they to him and the result of it all is a team spirit and camaraderie which is second to none. Which is great in itself.

The problem arises when loyalty and friendship become the major driving force. All the great managers over the years, Stein, Shankly, Ferguson, Wenger, would have tried to encourage these strengths and, to differing degrees would have succeeded. Ultimately though, all would have understood that they had only one real responsibility, to send out a football team which would come back with the three points. Not three points for the players or the manager but for the club, which ultimately means us, the supporters. We, for whom success or failure of the team we love means so much. It’s the difference between enjoying your Saturday evening or not, stroking the cat or kicking him up the arse, waking up with a smile on your face or a pain in your gut.

Ferguson has no time for sentimentality; he would spit at the idea of staying loyal to a player who was letting the team down. The axe would fall without a passing thought and so it should. Managers are not paid to worry over players except to the extent it affects team performance. If Ferguson sees a weakness it is cut out like a tumour. Friendship and familiarity count for nothing. He merely continues his tireless pursuit of the next win, the next title. He continues to do what he’s paid to do – win football matches.

Mick’s strength as a manager is based on creating team spirit and loyalty within a group. It’s now proving to be a serious weakness. Three months into our second premier league season, Mick is still sending out teams full of players from our championship winning season, largely playing championship standard football. This is despite being given, and spending, pretty serious amounts of cash.

Some of the money, as with Stefan Maierhoffer, looks to have been poorly spent (although, was even he really given a proper chance)? More often, though, McCarthy has seemed reluctant to play new signings even though they look better, more skillful players. Milijas is probably the most glaring example although the list is long. Zubar had to wait and wait, Mouyokolo, Fletcher and now Van Damme (the left back who mustn’t play there!) warm the bench. Even USA, who transformed our defence, had to wait until it was almost too late. And we must not forget Mujangi Bia. From what I’ve seen, he’s got real pace, scores goals and creates chances, yet he doesn’t get a sniff.

And finally, of course, the Stephen Ward fiasco. For all of us who are not personally involved, it is clear to see that our biggest weakness as a team is at left back. We need a new one, something that was supposed to be addressed last summer. Perseverance with this one player, woefully out of his depth, is costing us vital points in itself. There is now real reason to believe that McCarthy’s inability to select teams purely on their footballing ability may ultimately cost us our premiership status and he his job. Loyalty in this case has no merit and is misplaced. As manager, his only loyalty can be to this great club. Anything else is a dereliction of duty.

As we know all too well, it’s been a miserable few weeks for Wolves supporters. Four defeats on the bounce, a serious injury to a vital member of the squad and a stupid sending off for the team captain. Couple that with a little club down the road giving football lessons to Arsenal in their own backyard and, well, it’s all a bit depressing isn’t it?

Mick always divides opinion

Recently I asked what we all thought of Mick as a manager and where he might take the club. The response was very largely positive. I think it’s fair to say that most fans like him, think he’s a good bloke and that he has achieved a lot so far. Of course, that was before our last two defeats and there has definitely been more criticism since, some even calling for his head now.

As they say, football’s all about opinions. We all see things differently regarding styles of play, players and managers as well. So the debate on Mick will continue while we all desperately hope for a change in fortune.

However, although I am largely behind the manager, I am increasingly finding myself bemused and bewildered by decisions on transfers, selections, formations and injuries. I just have so many questions and no answers for the likes of:

1. Having established we desperately need a new left back, how can he sign a player that can’t play left back?

2. Having replaced Ward in the Villa game to save him and the crowd further punishment, how can he play him in the next match after Elokobi largely solved the problem?

3. Why doesn’t he try Mancienne at left back?

4. How could anyone think a returning Edwards was a better bet than a fit Guedioura wide on the right?

5. Why have we spent tens of millions of pounds on new players and are still largely playing our championship team?

6. Why do we need such a large squad of average players for 38 league games? Most are just getting paid to train whereas we could have better players on the pitch.

7. Why, with all our medical and fitness staff and our state of the art fitness ‘laboratory’, are so many players suffering injuries for so long and, often, so mysteriously?

8. What has Mick got against Mujangi Bia now he’s had his hair cut?

9. How can he hope to stay in the premier league if he won’t play the few class players we’ve got?

10. Why have four strikers when we need five in midfield to have any sort of possession?

11. Why did he not spend the money on what we really need, a quality central midfielder? You could have Drogba up front for us and still lose 1-0.

12. Why didn’t he check out Maierhofer’s web site BEFORE he signed him?

You can probably add to the list. But please, any answers anyone?

Following back-to-back defeats in the league, the usual ‘Mick-out’ brigade have been making their voices heard. In response, Martin takes a more pragmatic look at how long our manger might remain with the club.

Could anyone have done better than Mick has?

Having asked the question, let me say straight away, I think the bloke’s top drawer. If I was appointing a manager in any business, many of the qualities I would be looking for, McCarthy holds in spades- honesty, fairness, hard work etc. And his achievement in getting us into, and staying in, the Premiership in just a few years has been remarkable.

I was pleased when he got the job over Ince. I remember thinking, this guy will connect with the club and the supporters – no nonsense, straight talking and to the point. Just what we needed after the Hoddle experience.

And he came with a pretty impressive CV as well; promotions to the Premiership, as well as international experience. He was a pretty decent player as well, for those who can remember him. Whether you wanted him or not, it would be hard to criticise his achievements so far. Statistically, as I write, we are the fifteenth best team in the country rather than languishing in the depths of the Championship as we were when he arrived.

But no manager stays forever. There are only two constants at a football club – the shirt and the fans to whom it means so much. I’m not suggesting anyone at the club is, or should be, thinking of replacing him either now or in the immediate future. As I say, we lie fifteenth in the table and have had a fairly solid start. None of his new signings have been injury free and, of course, Hunt hasn’t played at all yet. I’m expecting him to make a big difference. I think he will suit Mick’s style perfectly and will add tempo and a continued attacking threat we dearly need. Who knows, he may transform us into a fairly high scoring team. That would be nice!

I think we should also remember that this success on the field has been achieved whilst adhering to the chairman’s long-term strategy. Which has meant:-

1) Only buying players who are young enough to develop and become a greater asset, not a liability, on the pitch and financially. Prior to Morgan taking over, I can hardly remember us buying a player and selling him later for a profit. It was all quick fix over-the-hill has-beens (usually £1million a go) who eventually succumbed to injury and left on free transfers. Even when we had assets to sell, like Keane and Lescott, we sold ourselves short with no sell-on clause etc.

2) Only buying players within an affordable price range and, even more importantly, within a wage structure which is sensible and fair throughout the team. Any idiot can spend £5m on Jimmy Bullard (that reminds me, we’re having chicken legs tonight), put him on £40,000 a week and pray you’re not in the Championship next season.

3) Whilst spending fairly heavily on the team, at the same time keeping financial reserves for an exciting stadium redevelopment, spread over a number of years, depending on results. If things go to plan initially, we will have a revamped 37,000 seat stadium to be proud of. It will mean we have maintained our Premiership status and it will be then that we can start planning for the next stage. With the extra income from the new stadium, we will be able to spend more on players and their wages. In fact, filling the stadium will depend on providing better players and an exciting winning team.

But all that is some way off at the moment. Mick has had to cut his cloth accordingly. Sure, he’s spent fairly heavily on young emerging talent, such as Fletcher, plus a wonderful bit of business with Doyle. But attracting the more established players to our club with our wage structure is pretty much a non-starter at the moment. Personally, I think this is almost a strength rather than a weakness.

For the first time in my 50 years of following Wolves, I can see the club has a clear long-term plan and no business can be successful without one. I honestly think Morgan has a dream of establishing Wolves as one of the powerhouses of the game and such dreams don’t happen in the blink of an eye. What is happening at Wolves is very much evolution, not revolution. It is being built from the bottom up on very firm foundations.

The training complex, the fitness laboratory, the re-laid pitches, the extended scouting system and, of course, the stadium redevelopment – all this isn’t happening by chance. A lot of intelligent planning has gone into this and I think we should all be excited and proud of what’s going on. You think of how many other teams got into the Premiership, spent wildly on so-called stars and their wages, and are now trawling the lower echelons of the football league.

So, given the parameters within which Mick has been asked to operate, I’d say he’s done a pretty decent job so far. He’s transformed us into a Premiership club, with a young team just about holding their own at this level. But there are definite areas for concern. For one, any results are achieved largely through Mick’s old favourite, ‘putting a shift in’. I would say that, as far as creative, flowing football is concerned, we’re right down there at the bottom. This even includes teams like Blackpool, who have spent far less than us, and McCarthy and Connor have got to take some responsibility for this. Whilst the team is filled with runners and tacklers, a player like Milijas sits on the bench and watches. All teams have to have balance and, at this level, you have to keep the ball. Instead, we spend most of the game trying to get it back (and in the process gain a reputation for being over-physical). It’s up to the manager to find a way to fit the class players into the team.

For all his strengths, McCarthy is no master tactician and I also wonder if the coaching is up to Premiership level. Everyone likes Terry Connor but we often look so totally devoid of attacking ideas, I wonder what they do learn on the training pitch. We all desperately want us to stay in the Premiership but, ultimately, we watch football for entertainment. There’s a limit to how long you can endure watching your team being outplayed and outclassed. If we are going to stay in this division, we need to start playing Premiership football. His prime responsibility this season is to keep us up, but there have to be signs that we are starting to belong here through ability and not just graft, not least so we can actually enjoy the games.

McCarthy will always be remembered fondly by most Wolves supporters for what he has already achieved. Whether he can take us on from here to another level, we will have to wait and see. I think the man at least deserves the chance to try. The question is, for how long.

After a week of Wolves making the headlines for their so-called physical approach, Martin reflects on the changing attitude towards the game.

Those who read my first Wolves blog will know I’m not in the first flush of youth. In fact, I’m getting on a bit. OK, I’m bleedin’ ancient. I’m so old, when I started playing, they were still using the W formation (any youngsters should ask their granddads), studs were hammered in with nails (honest) and balls were made of uncoated leather with a thick lace to hold them together. This meant that on a wet day the ball weighed about a stone and a half and players (especially centre halves and centre forwards ) were sometimes seen tottering around the pitch, in varying degrees of consciousness, with impressions of the lace imprinted on their forehead.

Henry has found himself at the center of some unjustified allegations this week

Well, this set me to wondering. You see, I used to head the ball a lot myself and I’m wondering if this explains why my memory seems to be getting progressively worse. I mean, I used to know all the rules of football without a thought, but when I watch games now, I realise I don’t know them at all. Here are a few examples:-

Obstruction

I used to think you obstructed another player by deliberately stepping into his line of play anywhere on the pitch. Now I realise that this general rule does not apply, if the ball is rolling towards the goal line. In this circumstance, a defender may jump in front of the attacker from any position. He is then allowed, by using the combined method of standing arms akimbo and sticking his arse out like a ruptured duck, to escort the ball carefully towards the line. This operation can be fairly lengthy and is, of course, fully in accordance with FIFA’s vision for a fast and flowing game. When the ball does finally cross the line, the referee, in full agreement with his assistant, shall award a goal kick as no obstruction has occurred. On the other hand, if such conduct occurs in general play, it will be deemed as flagrant obstruction and a free kick awarded.

Use of hands

I used to think that if you were an outfield player, your hands could be used for three things:

• both hands to take a throw in

• one or two hands to plead for a pass

• one hand to raise triumphantly à la Denis Law when you’ve just scored a sensational goal (i.e. bounced in off your arse when you were looking at something else).

Whereas, now, I realise hands can be used for a whole host of things, such as:

• Pushing away another player who is trying to make a legitimate tackle. This is known as ‘using your strength’.

• Grabbing an opponent’s shirt to prevent him from making a dangerous run or from performing a piece of exquisite skill to entertain the crowd. This, of course, is fully in accordance with FIFA’s vision for a fast and flowing game. In fairness, referees do occasionally penalise this but not always because, you know, the players do it so cleverly and they’ve been getting away with it for so long and they all do it these days anyway, don’t they?

• Holding a player at a corner who might otherwise score a goal and unnecessarily excite and entertain the crowd, which is fully in accordance with FIFA’s etc. (In Champions League matches, bigger, richer clubs such as Inter Milan, who can afford to send players on sumo and Cumbrian wrestling classes, may also utilise the bear hug). Obviously, the referee can’t penalise such behaviour because, well, that would be a penalty and you can’t give a penalty for every corner, because the scores would get silly and it would be against FIFA’s vision for etc. etc. I mean, they’ve been getting away with it for so long and they all do it anyway, don’t they?

There is, however, one player who needs to think twice about using his hands and this, of course, is the goalkeeper. Any keeper who attempts to dive on the ball and accidentally catches the player shall, of course, be penalised and a penalty awarded. The goalkeeper shall, of course, also be sent to the stands. Once the penalty has been converted, the match becomes a completely one- sided, meaningless bore (this, of course, is fully in line with FIFA’s etc.) and spectators might just as well have stayed down the pub and spent the huge cost of the entrance fee on getting pleasantly rat-arsed. But, of course, these rather draconian measures only apply to misdemeanours inside the box. If goalies will insist on standing, well, um, in front of their goal, it serves them right, dunnit?

And it’s not just the rules I’ve forgotten, it’s the words as well. There’s a whole language called ‘AndyGrayish’ which I have no memory of at all. I really need to learn it, though, if I want to carry on discussing Wolves intelligently. And I’ve made a start. I know the erstwhile mentioned ‘using your strength’ (pushing away someone who is trying to make a fair tackle). Oh, and I particularly like the one for deliberately falling over if you have lost control of the ball, or you think you might get a penalty – ‘going to ground’. Silly me, I thought we called that cheating.

OK, you’ve guessed it; I haven’t really forgotten the rules. It just drives me crazy the players don’t have to play to them anymore. You can’t blame FIFA though, can you? They’re doing their best to advance good sporting behaviour. I mean, whatever sneaky, devious, cheating methods players are allowed to get away with during the game, they’d bloomin’ well better make sure they shake hands before it.

I know what you youngsters are thinking; this old git’s living in the past. Football’s a much better standard these days and cloggers like Chopper Harris and Norman ‘bite yer legs’ Hunter (who?) can’t get away with it anymore. And you’re absolutely right. Good riddance to those players who took pride in trying to cripple the opposition. But it’s a great sadness to me that, after largely ridding our beautiful game of this thuggery, FIFA have allowed endemic cheating to replace it. Holding, shirt pulling, diving, feigning injury, time-wasting, abusing the referee, trying to get players sent off – the list is endless. And there is absolutely no need for it. FIFA could eradicate it by upholding the rules, by giving penalties for holding in the area, by consistently booking and sending off players who deliberately pull opponents back. By giving long bans to players who feign injury when video evidence proves they haven’t been touched. They would soon stop if they were losing an advantage, not gaining one.

The real sadness to me, though, is that if you don’t cheat in football these days, you’re never going to win anything. There is no coincidence in the fact that the higher the league the more cheating you see. You only have to watch Champions league matches. Wonderful skill but appalling deceit. And who were the biggest cheats last year? Well, the winners of course, Inter Milan.

Football is still a wonderful game but don’t you think it could be so much better if the game was more honest? As it stands, though, our beloved Wolves are going to have to learn all the tricks PDQ if they want to survive and progress at this level. One little example; there was some discussion on this blog recently, about why Jarvis didn’t get a penalty against Newcastle. I’ll tell you why. Because he got straight up again. Next time, Jarvo, do the right thing, cheat. Stay down and writhe in agony like the top players would. Probable result: penalty and two more vital points. Oh and if you do it really well you might even get the bugger sent off.

Perfect!