Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 v Newcastle United 1

I am not aware that you can suffer jet lag by flying back from Malaga. But for much of this evening Wolves played as if they were. That or they were struggling to rouse themselves from their pool side sun loungers. The Spanish break may have been due reward for a positive start to 2019 but for most of this game v struggling Newcastle it looked as if it had backfired. Then, with three and a half of the allotted four minutes of added time having passed, Willy Boly rose at the back post to head home. It was “get out of gaol” writ large and evidence that at times football can be a cruel game.

Much of what had passed in the previous 93 minutes had been generally uneventful, the game having the feel of a slow Monday morning at the office following a long commute. It partially spluttered into life in minute 17 when Raul Jimenez went down in the...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 3 v West Ham United 0

Three second half goals, a brace by Raul Jimenez to add to Romain Saiss’s opener, were due reward for a dominant Wolves performance against a West Ham side who looked thoroughly dispirited by the games end. It had not always been so following a first half in which they had shared the spoils but had benefitted from the home side’s inability to take their chances. First Castro Otto headed wide following a cross from Jimenez. Then Leander Dendoncka scored only for Jimenez to be ruled off side. Cultured when in possession West Ham rarely troubled Rui Patricio in the Wolves goal, a theme that was to be repeated during a second half when they all but fell apart.

The rot set in when Manager Pellegrini, a man who has the look of someone who should be in charge of a luxury car marque rather than a football team from the East End of London...

Roberto Di Mateo. Remember him. Assistant to Andre Villas-Boas when the latter was appointed as manager of Chelsea in 2011. Villas-Boas, you will recall, lasted barely nine months before being sacked in the March of 2012 for a thoroughly lackluster tenure defined by over prescriptive tactics. In the aftermath of his dismissal his post was filled by the man who had sat alongside him in the dugout – Roberto Di Mateo.

And what happened under the new interim manager? In the three months that remained of the season, Di Mateo engineered the most remarkable turnaround. On the 5th May Chelsea won the FA Cup by beating Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool 2-1 at Wembley. A couple of weeks later his Chelsea side defeated Bayern Munich - on their own ground - in the Champions League Final to claim their first European crown. With the Stamford Bridge faithful now clamouring for his permanent appointment...

Manchester City 3 v Wolverhampton Wanderers 0

The last time Manchester City took to the field in anger they put nine passed lowly Burton Albion. I then heard that the average weekly wage of a squad member at Burton is £2,500 as opposed to £150,000 at Manchester City. You get what you pay for I suppose.

The journey to these riches has been delightfully explained in a new book out this week called The Club; How the Premier League Became the Richest Most Disruptive Business in Sport by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg. Back in 2008 Manchester City were on their uppers. Though their owner Thaksin Shinawatra had $1.4billion in assets a Thai court had frozen his bank accounts. In his absence he had been sentenced to two years in prison for his role in a crooked land deal. Step forward Sheik Mansour of Abu Dhabi whose nation at that time was eight years younger than Mark Hughes, the...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 0 v Crystal Palace 2

Nuno Espirito Santo may have recently aired his disquiet about a demanding Christmas fixture list, but December has been a month of much bounty for Wolverhampton Wanderers. Starting with a rousing fight back against a Roman Abramovich XI and ending in emphatic style away at Tottenham, Wolves have claimed thirteen points from a possible eighteen. Significant or not their wins have come against top sides whom they have more than matched and in some cases outplayed. If there has been a failing then it occurred during ”the blip”, against sides from their peer group who made life difficult by adopting a more muscular approach. Thus, as the passage of time brought forth a new year, would Crystal Palace cause similar disruption?

The answer, somewhat predictably, is yes. Nuno may have aired his disquiet about a demanding fixture list but as I write...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 0 v Liverpool FC 2

Once upon a time Liverpool FC was the best football club in Europe. But for all their undoubted achievement on the field, as an impressionable teenager growing up in the seventies, they failed to draw any sense of affection from me. Yet they will forever be associated with the Brennand’s annual Whit Week holiday to the Langdales Hotel at Chapel Stile in the Lake District. For that week tended to coincide with the European Cup Final which in 1977 v Borussia Monchengladbach and in 1978 v Club Brugge Liverpool won. In an era when hotel bedrooms were not fitted with televisions as standard this presented a problem. How to ensure that we bagged the tv room before some old dear who held a candle for James Ellis on Z Cars nabbed the remote. On most evenings my mother and father would settle down in the bar to enjoy the odd gin and tonic before...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 v AFC Bournemouth 0

Can there be two more contrasting managers in the Premier League? The one short, blond and clean shaven. The other tall, dark and munificent of beard. Yet from such divergent physical manifestations comes a common purpose in the way that the game should be played. Expansive, attacking, easy on the eye football. Wolves fans are familiar with Nuno. Less so with Eddie Howe. In his nine years in charge at AFC Bournemouth he not only rescued them from potential relegation out of the Football League but he then embarked on a rise to the top. And after three years in the Premier League Howe is now building a team where the balance in favour of them staying up is greater than them going down. By any reckoning a remarkable achievement and an indication that on a rare Saturday outing, Wolves were in for a difficult afternoon.

Whether difficult...

Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 v Chelsea 1

At 5.20pm this evening I received a phone call from a good mate of mine. We’d been exchanging emails during the week about the plight of Wolverhampton Wanderers. It would be stretching it to say that we felt their current circumstance was just a minor blip from which they would recover. We agreed that Manager Nuno’s set up was far too expansive with forwards who were too often isolated and easily dispossessed. We therefore also agreed that he needed to tighten things up by going to something like 4,5,1 a system last used with some success by Mick McCarthy.

My mate’s call was to ask my how I thought Wolves would fair in the evening’s encounter with Chelsea. Based on a somewhat patchy record I said that I didn’t make predictions. But what I did say was that Wolves were the underdogs and that when the pressure is off they tend to play better than in...

Cardiff City 2 v Wolverhampton Wanderers 1

As a little lad growing up in Grimsby I recall watching episodes of Doctor Who from behind the sofa. As a post middle aged man living in Wolverhampton I watched much of this evening’s game from a similar location. Much good that it did me.

• Outmuscled Part II
• 3,4,3 not working
• 1 shot on target
• Disjointed football with poor ball retention up front
• Barry Douglas sold too precipitately
• Lack of experienced heads
• Confidence gone
• Chelsea up next

Oh what fun it is to ride on a one horse open sleigh… heh!

©Mark Brennand

Wolverhampton Wanderers 0 v Huddersfield Town 2

One senses you are being set up for a fall when the national press start writing complimentary pieces about you. The first was an article in Wednesday’s Mail which outlined the depth of Wolves ambition now that they have secured a berth in the Premier League. Whereas the bonus pool offer to the players of Cardiff for just staying in the league is £10m the equivalent sum at Wolves is £3m. Only for attaining a slot in the Intertoto Cup will the squad share £10m. I know. For mere mortals these sums are ridiculous. But credit to Wolves for setting the target and skewing the emphasis this way. The second article came in today’s Times with a considered piece praising the innovative coaching methods of Nuno Espirito Santo and how this was heralding a return to the late 50’s when Wolves were the best side in the country.

Then along come bottom...