I’ve always thought that among Wolves fans and supporters I hold a very rare place. You see I am one of the 348 fans that didn’t go to watch Wolves in the FA Cup against Chorley…that infamous early 80’s FA Cup where nearly 197,291 Wolves fans braved the wastes of the bitter North to watch us get humbled by a bunch of no neck clarnets that were Chorley FC or whatever. So you don’t need to listen to me about my thoughts about our current loss of form and belief. What has gone wrong? We were all shiny and beautiful. We had a Nuno with a Holy beard. We had Chinesers who made all the right noises (when they can be arsed to make any noise). We had shiny sexy players whose names ended in ‘O’. We had Social Media accounts that had sexy Wolves photos, new clueless fans who haven’t got a clue about football yet alone Wulvoism. Families for fucks sake. Families of people we had never seen before scrambling up the subway or Molineux alley dressed in everything the club shop could throw at them. They couldn’t put it on fast enough. The empty shirt wrappers swirled around the sky and were shoved in every available hole they could find. All those new Karens and Steves aren’t happy mate. We are suddenly shit. Now bear with me here I haven’t written about football in ages…shit…Raul dude, I wept for you. Strength dude.
But are we really? What makes the difference here? What has gone wrong? You will have to excuse me for not knowing quite what goes on in the plush corridors of Molineux or Compton. Some of course have inside lines, whispers that have come to them from people in the know. Information about this player and that player. Or about what Nuno thinks this week. These people are the best ones to go and read if you want. They have websites where they have slick graphics and slicker haircuts. Beards too most of them. These are the people that do actually care about the results because their dickhead revenue is closely connected to how Wolves are performing. Clicks mate, views and traffic. So they make baity comments to wind you up, get you clicking and interacting with their crap. Journos man, what a bunch of rare poor bastards they are.
I’ve walked around Molineux much during this Lockdown. It’s not a big hassle to walk up the cut from Wendyland and arrive at the stadium. It nestles in the shadow of the City and is ‘comfortable’ in it’s position. I say comfortable because many stadiums look like they have just been dumped like a shit load of Lego in the only available space they had. Molineux looks like it grew there. I can’t explain the absolute joy of seeing it and every time I went up and sat quiet outside I felt that all the bullshit just couldn’t actually wash over what Molineux and Wolves are to some of us. It was my playground as a kid. We used to ‘break in’ on some nights just so we could sit in the Southbank in the dark, safe from the madness happening outside in the world. Passing the odd soggy cigarette between us. In those days of course we could tell the rot was beginning to settle into the club. We had just won the League cup but we knew…you could feel it through your feet as you scrambled up the wall in Molineux alley to get into the dark and the vastness of the old ground. I don’t feel like that now. I don’t feel the same as I did in those days. I don’t feel a darkness settling in. I don’t feel that bad moon rising again. Not yet. I still trust Nuno, I will always trust him even when things seem to have a constant darkness about them. He is our Leader, he leads us, we follow.
It’s just gone a bit normal. I watched the Southampton game, not in a rage, not even that engaged with it to be honest. What was that game? What are any of the games this season? We knew this year was going to be transitional. Shapes, players, tactics all jumbled up into something that resembles (there’s a keyword) a football team. In essence during our first and bits of the second season in the Premier League we were spoiled (at times) by the efficacy of our intent. What flowing beautiful football this was. We certainly put the wind up a few teams, the FA and the Reptiles in the media. I mean we loved it but by Christ we didn’t really recognise any of it. Away days playing the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal? Big Six teams. Humbling them sometimes. We had a message from the Holy Bearded one, “Make your ideas greater than theirs” and we did too. Sometimes. But to make these ideas greater and more betterer than theirs we have to formulate them. We have to create them, mold them, develop them, even nurture them while they are in their most vulnerable state. We could have done that this year and I half expected everything to go…not brilliant but I was sure the absolute professionalism of the people that make up the brain of our club would stagger through the rampant crookedness of the VAR problem and the Septicness of the Covid aggravation and we would emerge in May still in the Premier League (albeit a bit low down) but still there and chugging along while the Nuno continues to try and smash some sort of shape out of his team. I said at the start of this season we should write it off. It’s a project and now it’s time to look forensically at the project and see where we are. Are we shit? No, but things have to change, things have to develop. Ideas have to be re-interpreted.
What’s it like for the teamio? Those poor bastards we dragged from the wastes of Spain and Portugal, the warm sunny places we grabbed the odd player from? Poor sods. Playing in an empty stadium with piped in crowd noise. Playing in games no-one really cared much about. Every boot of the ball echoes around the empty stands where me and you should be, half pissed, shouting like lunatics or just standing there like doughnuts depending on what was happening. Every match must be like some weird rehearsal where the seats are devoid of life and every shape you throw into the blackness of the auditorium just gets swallowed by the darkness. How do you perform? How do you actually scrape any kind of intent up when it seems like it’s all some weird dream where you are running up the tunnel to play footy and you’re completely naked and everybody is laughing and you want to grab a ball to cover your pale flapping willy but nobody will give you the ball…How the fuck do you work in an environment like that? Now extrapolate the fact that many of these players haven’t got a clue where they are only that it’s fucking cold, the shops are shit and you’re not allowed to see your family back home in case you get Covid and the shit storm turns into something a lot more crazy. How do you perform? How do you give your all to a club you don’t even know yet? What is the Wolves way? What is a Wolverhampton. The answers for these new recruits are hard to find. They don’t know why they are here yet only that they ARE here. But it’s easy to point fingers, much easier now the intertwat is here. I’m not going to cuss people who are losing their minds over the recent results. They have fragile minds, especially during this time of the Virus and the draconian fumbling that it brought with it. These minds are used to being social and ‘out’ but now they are not social and ‘in’. When people spend time with themselves there is a tendency to not like what we are and what we have become. We find ourselves lacking and we don’t like it. It makes us angry and that anger has to come out and Social Media is exactly the place where you can vent. So we do.
It’s all good I promise. It will all come good. Look at Nuno up there at the top of this page. Do you really doubt him? Do you really think some new appointment would galvanise this team of (at the moment) disparate spirits? Remember that Nuno is our Leader. He is reticent to speak much because what he has to say is heavy with love and emotion and many would not understand those kinds of words. He would love to speak clearly and honestly with us but ya know…not many would grasp the larger more complex interpretations he could offer. Do you remember the Bristol match and Bennos header? Our first real battle with Nuno at the wheel. So what do we do now? Abandon him in his hour of need? The teams need? Do we cast him aside and start to play the endless merry-go-round of managerial appointments? Or do we do what Wulfrunians do and shoulder the weight with everybody else and just plough on up the hill until the ground levels out a bit and we don’t have to push so hard? Be. Fucking. Loyal. As much as I hated Paul Lambert I never once cussed him out online while he was our Coach. I saved that until he went. I supported him. With Nuno it is easier not to say anything negative about him because I love him, it’s as simple as that. He has given me hope and joy that no one else ever has. He made me skip up to Molineux with a spring in my step I haven’t had since Bully played. He has inspired me, taught me, made me think, made me cry and laugh and I’ve never even met him. He is just a dot who runs onto the pitch when we won, right up to the Southbank and yet there were times when I was that happy seeing him run towards us I openly wept and tears ran down my face. Wolves. Nuno. Us. He has given us everything we love about football over the past few seasons and now when he needs us…we aren’t there. How fucking fickle we are. A bad run and we lose it completely and want to throw our Leader under a Bus. For fucks sake, what have we become? Can we not forgive a seemingly errant team selection? The performances? A few weird signings that aren’t pulling their sun tanned fingers out?
Grow some bollocks. Nuno is THE NUNO to me and he always will be. My mate Graeme is a multi millionaire and at the moment he is working for Astra Zeneca the vaccine people. I spoke with him last week and seeing as he is a very successful dude with his head screwed on I asked him about why he was so successful and he said this to me…
“It’s all about time and the willingness of a Boardroom to allocate to me five years, six if possible for me to impress on a disparate business, a plan, a route map for success. If they hold their nerve they will get at least a 20% increase in value”
Mad business talk I understand a little of. Time. Give Nuno the space and time to do what he does best, Give him support and give him your love too. Moan all you want, that’s cool too. Social Media is a fucking strange place that bears very little resemblance to reality so it gives you a good place to vent your spleens when shit goes wrong. Continue to do it, it’s cathartic, it makes you think your opinion is valued even if it just gets lost in the vitriol broth with everybody elses opinion. Don’t start to dislike or even hate people that do want a change in the managerial staff. They are people living in a strange surreal environment like all of us, it’s just that they are having a harder time of it than the rest of us at the moment. But stretch out a hand and make sure that they are good. We are Wolves at the end of the day and some of you know that when the going gets tough you gather closer together. There are some that look forwards to the fight, there are some that are a little scared and trembly and there are those that just slink off into the darkness because they haven’t got the courage to face their own fears. This season is going to be a bigger crock of shit than we think if we don’t hold our nerves and pull together. I’m not talking about the day trippers and the noobs. I’m talking about ‘us’ and you know who you are. Jeff? Don’t you dare have any thoughts about what we fans think about Nuno. Don’t listen to the madness mate. Don’t start to get all shaky legged because a few flakies are cussing The Nuno. Have some balls and see the project through. If Nuno has had enough we fail and become nothing again. But at least we had a good go at it, we tried. Then you can rebuild a little and get a new narrative flowing. But right now? Stay with him and I think he will give you the world to be honest. Stand, don’t run, support your gaffer, support your team. Out of darkness cometh fucking light mate.