Heaven is at Molineux and that’s where we come from. And after yesterday’s fantastic news, it looks like Wolves will be staying on the same spot long after we are all worm food.
And so begins yet another chapter in our illustrious history as we wait with baited breath to see the plans for a rumoured 40,000 capacity stadium.
Well done to the council – not words I say often – for not selling out. I would hate for Steve Morgan to be forced down the out-of-town stadia route, like Pride Park, which is a soulless plastic shed compared to the atmosphere of the great Baseball Ground.
I remember all too well the excitement that surrounded the last time the stadium was being rebuilt at the hands of Sir Jack.
The picture above was taken from the newly built Billy Wright stand on the opening game of the season in August 1993. I remember listening to the Beverley Sisters playing on the pitch and proudly looking over at the continued rebirth of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
A couple of goals that day from Bully helped the Wolves to a 3-1 win over Bristol City. And by December that year, the rebirth was complete and the redeveloped Molineux welcomed a memorable game against Honved with both Billy and the Hungarian Ferenc Puskás making an appearance before the game.
We’d come along way from me putting my pocket money into a rattling tin – to help save Wolves from extinction at the hands of the incompetent Bhatti Brothers in the early Eighties – to a new dawn and surely plenty of top flight football.
Although the Premiership football we all craved took a while to follow the redeveloped stadium, we certainly had some exciting seasons trying to get there.
And now as we stand on the precipice of Premiership survival and another stay in this chimerical division, I’m feeling the same excitement as I did back in 1993.
We are now just one point shy of where we finished in our first Premiership campaign, but this time we have six more games to reach safety and a rather splendid five point gap (six with goal difference) between ourselves and the bottom three.
I said in my last blog about counting chickens and all that, and I know I should still have a cautious approach to staying up.
But even if we get nothing from a post-Barcelona Arsenal team at the Emirates, I don’t expect Burnley or Hull to get any points either at the weekend given their tricky respective fixtures.
With Portsmouth as good as gone, the two other current incumbents of the relegation places play each other next Saturday before we face Stoke on Sunday lunchtime.
If Burnley and Hull would be kind enough to both lose at the weekend and then if Burnley could beat Hull next Saturday, a victory for Wolves on Sunday could give us an eight point gap (nine with the goal difference).
And although we wouldn’t be mathematically safe – a word only ever used this time of year- I don’t think we would be caught.
Lots of ifs and maybes, but the slightly fortuitous point against Everton made it eight points in our last four games – games where Wolves have finally been rewarded with some points to match their excellent football of late.
It’s been a remarkable change of fortunes that now find us sitting at the dizzy heights of 14th and just six points behind Roy Hodgson’s Fulham, who are supposedly having a good season – haven’t we already beaten them at Molineux?
When Mick changed things to a 4-5-1 to play to the club’s obvious strengths in personnel, it took a few games to bed in with the team, but that formation looks like being one of the key reasons to our probable survival.
I think the measure of Mick’s success is that he is now being touted as an outside bet for the Celtic job. Contrary to what many of you think, I would actually be gutted if he left, not that I think there is a cat in hell’s chance that will happen.
And until Mick and the team have ‘mathematically’ kept us up, I won’t start talking about where the team needs strengthening for next season.
Instead, I promised I would ask what the readers think about the pre-match and half-time entertainment at Molineux. I would love to send some feedback to the club because at the moment they rarely get it right.
The game against Everton was a classic example of them getting it as wrong as an Ashley Cole text message. The organisers, and I use that word loosely, tried to cram about 30 minutes into a halftime slot that is barely 15 minutes long as it is.
Jackie Graham may have been a good soul singer in her day, but it doesn’t work when her voice is screeching through the 15 watt Tandy speakers in the Steve Bull Stand.
It was also disgraceful that more time wasn’t awarded to the special presentation with Billy Harrison’s great grandson and Bobby Thomson’s family, which sadly almost went unnoticed.
Instead we had the overkill of Jackie Graham and her daughter rambling through some birthday announcements, young Wolves doing a training session and the Sportingbet challenge.
I’m not legally obliged to say so, but I do like the SportingBet challenge, especially when someone with a bit of a personality, like Don Goodman, is having a bit of banter with the contestant.
Don is back for the Stoke game and although it might be a little tricky to prise him away from his employees at Sky, I’d certainly like to see him down at the Molineux more often.
For me, you can keep all the other fluff. Personally, I just want to know the other half-time scores and I certainly don’t need the latest tune from HMV deafening me.
We know that the screens probably are not going back on until the redevelopment takes place and although I do enjoy it when the odd dancer falls on her backside from the 2-step dance academy, do they really add anything?
We’ve all seen that away from Molineux, most Premiership clubs do it better than we do.
Saturday was probably the worst it’s been all season and I’m beginning to think it’s just a ploy by the club to get everybody down in the concourse to buy their overpriced pies.
We are a Premiership club and I think who ever organises the entertainment at the club needs to realise it. So, answers on a postcard as to what you would like to see changed.
On to the weekend’s game and having seen Andrey Arshavin, William Gallas and Cesc Fabregas all limp off against Barcelona, Saturday isn’t looking quite so daunting down at the Emirates.
Arsenal still have bags of quality even without that trio, but with our tails up, who knows what might happen in North London on Saturday, a point would be most welcome.
Thanks to Marrs-guitar from the Molineux Mix for identifying the team in the photo and have a cracking Easter weekend.
UTW!
@Wolvesblogger 