Is planet Premiership the be all and end all?
I fell into that particular trap last week when I wrote the Albion blog (no amount of showers will ever wash away the shame).
Whereas my blogging brethren Jarrod so eloquently mused over Wolves latest pursuit of Premiership mediocrity, my lack of Championship knowledge, meant a trip down memory lane and a retrospective look back at our Black Country rivalry.
I couldn’t really talk about Albion’s season or the Championship with any real conviction and I’m sure I’m not alone amongst Wolves fans.
I get the feeling that most Wolves fans are so consumed with finishing in that 17th spot that we haven’t stopped to consider the alternative.
Let’s be honest, the Wolves board haven’t learnt a thing since our first venture into Premiership waters back in 2003.
This time around we’ve bought players with labels such as ‘potential’ or ‘one for the future’ because they were cheap enough to fit into our Championship wage structure.
Kevin Doyle and Marcus Hanhnemann apart, a lot of cash has been wasted on players who have as much right to play at this level as John Terry does to run a class on morals.
We have been outbid on players like Scott Dann and countless others and we now have a square pegged 4-5-1 Championship-level team giving everything for a shot a Premiership survival.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the Premiership and all the ridiculous hoopla that goes with it. And I know that finishing 17th would be deemed as successful this season, I’m sure that we might even see another pitch invasion if it happened.
Some would say that it’s a crying shame that finishing 17th in the top flight for Wolves can even be deemed as a success and that the Doog, Cullis and Wright’s of this world will be spinning in their graves at our lack of ambition.
However, because football has sold its soul to the devil or SKY TV to give them their correct appellation, we will probably never again compete on an even keel as we did back in the day of Wolves’ greatest successes.
So perhaps we should see 17th as a success. It would give us a platform to build on for next season. But and it’s a big but, as Sir Mix-a-lot would say, do we have the infrastructure or the ambition to learn from this season’s mistakes if we do stay up?
As I stated at the top, for me the Wolves board and most importantly Jez Moxey doesn’t appear to have learnt enough from our last Premiership adventure.
Financially secure Wolves may be and Jez should take a lot of credit for that.
But if we don’t clear the decks of the deadwood in the summer and bring in quality players that are better than what we have, then it’s sadly going to be more of the same next season.
Surely the 3Ms will realise that the signings of Maierhofer, Surman, Castillio and Halford have proven to be just as fruitless as Silas, Luzhny, Okoronkwo and Gudjohnsson were back in 2003?
Big difference is that this time around Mick wasted a large chunk on transfers whereas back in 2003 Dave Jones hands were tied and he had to delve mainly into the free transfers market.
But the Premiership has changed massively since our first visit to become the Brobdingnagian that it is today, which for those not familiar with the world of Brobdingnagian, is a world populated by giants of which Wolves haven’t been one since I was in nappies.
Mick needs to be ruthless and pragmatic. If we survive this season, it will because dross like Burnley and Hull have gone down, but they will be replaced for the next campaign by stronger teams like Newcastle and although it pains me to say it, Albion.
The money we saved in the winter transfer window, added to the money we can get for selling at least 10 players back to the Championship, should give Mick a nice pot to work with in the summer.
I may not be his biggest fan, but if Mick somehow keeps us in this division then I will be the first to buy him a pint, not that he will ever join me at the bar!
The alternative to staying up, which I’m sure, the more astute of you will have probably worked out, is a drop back down to the league of fizzy pop.
Is there a bright side to relegation? Since supporting the club in the Eighties, the 2nd tier of English football is where I have spent nearly all of my Wolves life watching my beloved team.
To me, the Championship is a bit like a comfort blanket. It’s a happy place where we know Wolves will score goals and will usually be competing for promotion or a play-off place at worst.
Don’t get me wrong, of course I would be gutted if Wolves drop out of the Premiership this season, but perhaps paradoxically I would also be excited about the different challenge the Championship would bring.
Another stay in the league of the behemoths could begin with a win in arguably our biggest fixture of the season (so far) when we make the 100 mile trip up to Burnley this weekend.
My last visit to Turf Moor was back in 2002. My abiding memories of that day were watching Gazza with a heavy heart as he struggled to cope with the pace of football in his mid-thirties and Wolves subsequently going into the break 3-0.
I also remember vividly crouching behind a Wolves travel coach in the middle of Burnley town centre as the pub opposite came out to shower it with gifts of bricks, bottles and pint glasses.
Ah, such happy memories.
Beat Burnley, which our performance against United suggests we are more than capable of, and then pick up a point or two from our two tricky away games at West Ham and Villa and I think we will be in good shape for survival.
And lastly, as you can see from the picture above, I visited the World Cup trophy tour yesterday as it stopped by in London. I would have stayed to have listened to the Wayne Rooney Q&A, but I had to be back in Wolves to see the fantastic Nik Kershaw perform a cracking acoustic gig.
Have a bostin weekend.
UTW!
@Wolvesblogger 