Wolves have completed the signing of Hull defender Steven Mouyokolo for a reported £2.5 million (although, as always with Wolves, the official fee is ‘undisclosed’).

Read the full story on the Wolves site here.

It’s nice to see the defence bolstered with a pacy center-half, who by all accounts was one of Hull’s best players last season, despite their relegation and horrendous defensive record.

Considering he’s so highly rated, you’d assume he’ll be pushing hard for a starting place, so it will be interesting to see if he can force his way into the side.

With three solid additions already in the bag, along with Adlene Guedioura, the loan signing of Bia and the prospect of one or two more still to come, I’m happy with how the Wolves squad is shaping up.

Is everyone else equally content?

Not a lot of people know of Steven Mouyokolo, which is actually quite comforting in some ways.

After all, we all knew precisely who Mark Atkins and Cedric Roussell were, and look how they ended up.

Whether we sign this Hull City centre half remains to be seen, but isn’t it nice to be in talks with players that a) don’t come with a reputation and ego bigger than their paypacket, and b) players that virtually every teams’ fans are loathed to lose?

First it was Steven Fletcher who all Burnley supporters were lamenting the loss of, and now this unpronounceable chap from another relegated Premier League club.

Having just spoken to a lifelong Hull fan and journalist of some repute, I am told that Steven Mouyokolo is a class act, and a player they are all desperate to keep.

Infact, Steven Mouyokolo is a player that Hull’s new manager (whoever he will be) should build the whole side around. Along with Stephen Hunt by all accounts. Ha!

The more this big man is described, the more he sounds like Ronald Zubar, which is no bad thing surely?

Phil Brown – doubtless using ridiculous Janet Jackson style microphone to announce the selection – deployed the Frenchman as a right back in an early season fixture, only to watch the Tigers get mauled 5-0.

Instead of reading the riot act on the pitch, or popping into Goals on Sunday with a pink jumper round his shoulders the following morning, Brown reacted slightly more inconspicuously.

He droppedg Mouyokolo, and drove home to Tantastic.

It was only when the player was brought back into the fold as a centre back late in the season that all Hull fans thought: “Where have you been all this time?”

A little bit like Zubar perhaps, who also looked fantastic when he entered the fray for us in the New Year.

Whether we get this guy remains to be seen, but it is lovely to be linked with a player who even the world’s best Championship Managers haven’t heard of.

Better still is that the few fans who have seen enough of him are already crying into their beers at the prospect of losing him.

The holding midfield position is an unattractive role. It is rarely filled by a player who scores goals. They don’t even try killer passes. And yet it is a key position in the modern game, so much so that this World Cup is seeing many sides operate with two functional stoppers in a 4-2-3-1 formation.

England, however, bucked the trend by fielding Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard centrally in a two-man midfield against USA. One of the criticisms of that partnership is their unwillingness to concentrate on ball retention – simple passes to team-mates that keep things ticking over and are an important part of a successful side at the highest level. Gerrard plays with Mascherano and the much-criticised Lucas filling the role at Liverpool while Chelsea have Mikel and Essien with Lampard at Stamford Bridge.

In 2002, England went with Nicky Butt in the holding midfield role at the World Cup. He had an impressive time, with Pele even improbably naming him as his player of the tournament ahead of the quarter final with Brazil. In 2006, Owen Hargreaves was entrusted with the job and was England’s official Player of the World Cup, earning the FIFA man of the match award in the quarter final defeat to Portugal. Let us hope Gareth Barry can provide a similar base for our stars to play from in 2010.

Wolves have their own player in this position, the captain himself, Karl Henry. He has come in for criticism – ‘the crab’ is one of the kinder nicknames – and has been on the receiving end of the odd boo here and there. What he does do is keep hold of the ball as the statistics for the win over Fulham at Molineux show:

These passes may not be incisive through balls to Matt Jarvis or Kevin Doyle but the idea behind the role is that these passes find the full-backs in space or perhaps a more progressive midfield player who can create something. The problem for Wolves was not Karl Henry but more the fact that the players he passed the ball to, say George Elokobi, would then often play an aimless long ball, making you wish Henry had tried to do something himself! With further investment in players expected in the coming years, there is every reason to think Karl Henry will be a player that grows in importance and effectiveness as quality players are added around him. Indeed, as Gabriele Marcotti of The Times recently noted when speculating as to the strength in the depth in the Premier League, maybe there could be a role for our captain on a grander stage – Euro 2012 anyone?

* Segment from Gabriele Marcotti’s piece in The Times

It’s always the bloody way…Just when you get a bit of good news, you hear something completely demoralizing to kill the mood.

I once heard that a girl at school fancied me, cue a cheeky little boner and an untucked shirt for five minutes. My trusted ‘friend’ then told me her name was Jo King and the moment passed.

Or the time I made my highest ever cricket score for my college, only to skip over to the scorebox for the straight ‘A’ maths swat on the book to tell me he’d forgot to mark my runs. Prat. (he could work out the hypotenuse of a nuclear warhead using 3.14 pie and algebra though, funnily enough)

It’s always been the way with Wolves too. Just when I hear we’ve signed Fletcher, I’m panicking that Doyle is quite obviously leaving to go to Arsenal. Moment killed!

Just when the Two Step Dance Academy finally limber up in front of our stand, the tubby chunky chick hogs the bit of grass nearest to my seat. MOVE!

And just when Stourbridge Wolf tells me we’re the fourth biggest club in the entire Football League, (courtesy of statto.com) I get a league table from Thomas saying that we’re actually 6th – in terms of our season ticket prices!

To start with Stourbridge’s news, Statto.com have calculated that in an overall league table of league games ever played in the history of the game, we’ve won 1,232 and amassed 5,218 points in the process.

When you consider that we’ve had a gut wrenchingly shit 30 years – apart from the last couple of seasons and a play-off win – that’s some achievement.

Only Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal can lay a glove on us. Surely we qualify for the Champions League by default?!

Maybe our proud, rich heritage can account for our cheapest season tickets being so much more than the likes of Everton? (see table)

With Villa, Newcastle, Sunderland and Man City (to name but four) offering cheaper prices, shouldn’t we all be cursing our chief executive?

Yes, he offered us the Early Bird prices (a day or two after we beat Spurs 1-0 funnily enough) but he couldn’t afford not to when we were loitering in 16th place at the time could he?

You’ll note that he’s told us not to expect any more early bird offers from now on too, which would suggest that £522 behind the goal will be the going rate, if not more in future.

So do you agree with the pricing policy?

I comforted myself by thinking upon me and Dad as some sort of Burghers of Calais, sacrificing £1,200 for the greater good of the club. After all, this money will go towards Fletcher’s wages and Stephen Ward’s contract extension, right?

I soon stopped thinking that when all of our season ticket sales amount to a rough figure of £10 million, compared to about £80 million in TV revenues.

The truth is that the club doesn’t have to charge such sums of money. But it can and it does.

The truth is that we’re also the fourth most successful club in the history of English football, so I suppose I should be grateful!

Of all the chants directed at the home side at Molineux this past season, ”Just Like Watching Brazil” was not, as far as I am aware, one of them. Thirteen goals all season at home and only four since switching to a functional ’4-5-1′ around the turn of the year, it was a case of getting the job done and accumulating points.

So it is something of a surprise to discover an ally in the most extraordinary of places… the Samba Kings themselves, Brazil. Respected pundits have been queueing up to describe and analyse their unusual system. Such was the level of debate, The Guardian’s tactics guru Jonathan Wilson wrote a fantastic piece last summer discussing precisely what type of 4-2-3-1 it was Brazil were playing at the Confederations Cup that year. The popular ‘nerd nirvana’ website Zonal Marking,  that features some of the most in-depth tactical analysis ever seen, noted that their unusual system was a ”formation [that] cannot be described accurately by mere numbers”. The article was followed up some time later by a fascinating breakdown of the formation, analysing how it shifted from one perceived formation to the next.

Notation aside, most seem to view it something like this:?

Luis Fabiano is the sole spearhead of the attack. Robinho is operating in an advanced position on the left-wing but able to provide a goal threat cutting in on his right foot. There is no like-for-like player on the other flank where Ramires (or perhaps Elano) will be asked to tuck inside to help bolster the options in midfield. This enables the forward-thinking Maicon to power on into the wide open spaces down the right-flank. Centrally, there is disappointment in Brazil at the presence of both Felipe Melo & Gilberto Silva – two holding-midfielders with little creative spark who are entrusted to sit in front of the defence, snuffing out the threat from midfield runners and playing simple no-nonsense passes with an emphasis on ball retention. Gilberto, a former central defender in his youth, sometimes even drops into the back line, effectively forming a back three as the wide defenders almost become wing-backs.

At this point you may need to suspend your disbelief because, for some Wolves fans at least, this newfangled Brazil system will start to ring a few bells. One up front: Kevin Doyle. An advanced right-footed left-winger: Matt Jarvis. A tucked inside right-midfielder bolstering the midfield and allowing the full-back to advance: Kevin Foley & Ronald Zubar. Two out-and-out holding midfielders, one a converted centre-back capable of dropping back into defence: Karl Henry & Michael Mancienne.

To illustrate the point, look at the average position data for the visit of Manchester United to Molineux early this year:

Wolves, playing from left to right on this diagram, have Jarvis playing in almost as advanced a position as the centre-forward Doyle. Despite being described by most onlookers as a 4-5-1 there is certainly no sense in which could argue Kevin Foley on the other flank is playing anything like the same role for the team. The average position data shows him operating in a very similar position to Adlene Guedioura, giving an additional presence in midfield. This is allowing Zubar, the right-back (shown at the bottom of this diagram), to operate in such an advanced position he is actually further forward than Henry, Wolves’ most defensive midfielder in this game with Mancienne left on the bench. In other words, this is much like how Ramires shuttles infield freeing Maicon while Gilberto Silva covers him with a defensive brief.

Now I am not saying David Jones is Kaka (although on the diagram that is Jones playing just off Doyle in a surprisingly advanced midfield role) and if you’re not laughing at me already, you would be if I told you Jody Craddock was Wolves’ very own Lucio. However, when the various World Cup pundits write ad nauseam about just how unique and distinctive Brazil’s assymetrical formation is, you might want to forgive Mick McCarthy a raised eyebrow or two. He is never likely to be a coach hailed for his forward-thinking tactical innovations. Indeed, this very formation was stumbled upon more by accident than through design. And yet even so, while the quality of play we may expect to see from Brazil this summer is a far cry from the fare on offer at Molineux, the key elements of both formations are clear to see. You heard it here first - and probably last – ”it’s just like watching Brazil”!

Adam Bate – Ghostgoal