Three wise men?

January 23, 2012 By

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.

Wolves 2 Villa 3

January 21, 2012 By

In the end, it was a picture that only the three M’s could have imagined, let alone painted.

Beneath the glare of the biggest of white elephants the team in white won, inspired by a home grown hero whose local rivals now call their own.

One team playing in the Premier League while the other plays in a parallel world altogether, losing for the umpteenth time on the pitch as the most feckless building project of all is shelved in favour of 50 odd houses off it.

Only Wolves could cobble together such a script, featuring a fabricated line about Compton progression, when our very own manager steadfastly objects to the very notion in the first place.

Not Mark Davies for example, who was leap-frogging Bolton above us with a man-of-the-match display at the Reebok, instead of maintaining our momentum once Frimpong departed.

If it wasn’t so chronically sad we’d all laugh.

Darren Bent tells us how many stands will be built at Molineux

But when a current board member boasts about signing off the North Bank redevelopment three days before the last day of last season, we really shouldn’t be surprised.

A monstrosity of a stand which Jez Moxey said would look ‘ridiculous’ to begin with and a team which Steve Morgan, ‘with a crystal ball, might have strengthened.’

Talk about planning.

The biggest irony of all was that for a 30 minute spell, we looked as good as we have all season, on the day we plunged to 19th position.

Michael Kightly proved why the club has stayed patient over his injury lay-off for so long, terrorising Villa and scoring a wonderful goal to partly erase the memory of Berra’s early indecision for the penalty.

The wonderfully mobile Frimpong exuded confidence and talent, controlling the midfield with Henry with right back Kevin Foley reminding us why he won a player of the year award as a right back. Funny that.

We thoroughly deserved a 2-1 lead at the break through Edwards’ flick from Johnson’s header and if anything, will regret profligacy for not being at least 4-1 ahead instead.

Both Fletcher and Edwards shot tamely at Given beforehand, when a yard either side would have yielded more joy.

But in a game of two halves, Wolves failed to reappear after the break and either looked slow out of the blocks, or just bereft of experience in actually defending a lead.

Keane’s equaliser underlined two things:

  1. Our chronic inability to keep the ball, this time underlined by Matt Jarvis
  2. Wayne Hennessey’s not-so-happy knack at conceding long range goals, later admitting he was to blame for this one

From then on the wheels came off and a game that we previously looked in control of took a turn for the worse when Frimpong was stretchered off.

With Stephen Warnock already brought on for Agbonlahor to specifically shackle Kightly, we suddenly looked laboured.

And when referee Michaal Oliver gleefully sent off Henry after first impeding a quick free kick and then ignoring a 5 second Albrighton offence, you sensed the game was heading one way.

That our very own Robbie Keane confirmed such a thought was either cruel beyond compare, or just rewards for a club with warped priorities.

With Blues beating us in the cup, our stadium redevelopment shelved and a housing development taking preference, Mick McCarthy could have been talking about the last seven days as a Wolves fan instead of these painful 90 minutes.

“Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.”

Wolves Vs Aston Villa Preview

January 20, 2012 By

There’s been very little to separate Wolves and Villa in recent times.

In the last five meetings, both sides have managed a win by the odd goal and the other three matches have been hard fought draws.

Heskey does his Shearer impression to win last season's fixture

I don’t envisage this game bucking the trend either.

Villa have played 10 away matches to date and drawn 6 of them, whereas Wolves have also shared the points in 4 of their last 5 Premier League fixtures.

Another draw wouldn’t be a disaster for Wolves, but without question we need to pick up a win sooner rather than later.

It’s a mighty shame our meek cup exit put a dampner on a fantastic result at White Hart Lane.

Still, with 10 fresh faces to come back in, we can hope for considerably better than the dross of Wednesday night and hopefully a big response.

The Team

Assuming everyone is sit, the team picks itself for tomorrow:

Hennessey, Foley, Johnson, Berra, Ward, Frimpong, Henry, Jarvis, Edwards, Kightly, Fletcher

I hope Mick can field that side tomorrow, as I think there’s a real balance to it and should give us every chance of getting a win.

Dave Edwards seems to be the biggest injury concern and if he doesn’t make it perhaps Milijas or Guedioura will profit? I certainly hope Hunt isn’t shifted in to plug the gap though, based on his poor showing on Wednesday.

Prediction League

Most people thought we’d get tonked by Spurs last time out, which I suppose isn’t unsurprising. The end result though is that only 6 people picked up any points.

4 of those 6 got the 1-1 scoreline and get the maximum 3 points. Well done to gebb, Super Kev Doyle, Mark G Davies and kinhaven.

Crazy Pete and Charlieee get a single point.

I’ll go for it this weekend a predict a narrow home win.

2-1.

If you’re at Molineux tomorrow, have a great time and get right behind the lads.

Up The Wolves.

Wolves 0 Birmingham 1

January 19, 2012 By

You could probably just about tolerate 180 minutes of turgid, one-paced cup football if your team at least emerged victorious from the tie.

With that in mind, Blues fans will probably feel satisfied with their night’s work. Good luck to them I say. I don’t begrudge them the win.

For Wolves and Mick McCarthy there’s no such consolation.

Terrible goal wins terrible match

We were awful, both individually and as a team.

But lets start with the former.

Elokobi was a liability throughout. Yes, he made a vital goal-saving lunge in the first half (which I thought was a foul by the way) but his total lack of awareness and incompetence on the ball make me shudder everytime he has possession.

Sadly though George, you narrowly miss out on the numpty of the match champagne.

No, that’s most definitely reserved for another deserving culprit.

Step forward Stephen Hunt.

We all know he’s been woefully anonymous in recent times, but his performance last night was taking the flippin’ Michael.

He sauntered around, half a yard off the pace and quite obviously just couldn’t be arsed.

You can normally tell within the first 10-15 minutes of any match whether he’s up for it or not. If he is, ala Blues at home last season, you’ve got a real player on your hands.

80% of the time though, he doesn’t show anywhere near those levels of interest and isn’t the type of player who can operate effectively in cruise control.

He was easily the worst of a very poor bunch.

Still, however bad individuals were, the manager must shoulder much of the blame for the team performance.

Anyone who comes out two days before the game has even kicked off and proclaims ‘It’ll be Doyler and Sylvan up top’ as if that’s some sort of declaration of attacking intent is living in cloud cuckoo land.

That says to me, that in his head it doesn’t matter who else he plays because two out of form forwards, both dining off past accomplishments as opposed to anything they’ve done recently, will get the job done.

That was never, ever going to be the case.

I said in my preview I’d play 451 because we needed to make better use of the ball in the middle of the pitch and not just hoof it long to the forwards.

Well low and behold what did we do?

The same thing we always do in a 442 of course, pass it around the back four, run out of ideas and shell it long.

Nice one Mick.

He got two bites of the cherry in this tie and patently didn’t learn his lesson from the first taster.

I despair.

You can only imagine what the millions who tuned into ITV made of it.

Like them, I’d rather have watched Coronation Street.

Wolves Vs Birmingham FA Cup Preview

January 17, 2012 By

So, 11 days after cancelling each other out at St. Andrew’s (you’ll yawn just thinking about it), Wolves and Birmingham lock horns once again – and on prime time television no less.

No way through

Perhaps ITV’s logic is that the first game was so painfully awful, the replay is destined to be a cracker.

Probably a shade optimistic but I certainly don’t think it could be any worse.

Blues have collected back-to-back wins since the first encounter, including a 6-0 bashing of Millwall to temporarily elevate them into the play-off places.

I think you’ve got to tip your hat to Chris Hughton – he’s done an excellent job there.

Even if his side don’t make it back to the Premiership this season, surely one of the top flight clubs will eventually take a punt on a manager who obviously knows what he’s doing?

The Team

Both managers will probably ring the changes once again, but as it’s a night game, on a decent pitch it should really be a better spectacle regardless.

This is the team I would field:

de Vries, Foley, Johnson, Stearman, Elokobi, Jonnson, Milijas, Guedioura, Hunt, Hammill, Doyle

So that’s wholesale changes to the team that started at Spurs, but the same shape.

I see Villa as a massive opportunity to get 3 points on Saturday, so don’t want to risk many of the definite starters for that one.

451 because I’d like to see us pass it around a bit more and with a 442, we tend to hoof. Milijas will give us the necessary craft and giving Guedioura (remember him?) a more advanced role behind the striker should suit his game.

In reality though, I think Mick will likely play 442 with both Doyle and SEB up front, as he did in the first game.

Prediction

Remember, no points on offer here for the league. Just for a larf.

I think we’ll just about scrape through this one, but I’m not expecting it to be easy, especially with the incentive of an away trip to Sheffiled United in the next round up for grabs (sarcasm).

Another tight game, but with a few goals shared – 2-1 Wolves.

If you’re making the trip to Molineux, have a great time and get behind the lads.

Up The Wolves.

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