I don’t mind battles and I don’t mind a good scrap either. There is energy in this fixture now. The much trod subject of VAR and that Liverpool mindset, the weirdo Coach, the even weirder fans. It’s been said by greater minds than me that ‘Wolverhampton and it’s people are what Liverpool could have been’. Now I’ve put the quote in quotation marks because I know someone said it but I forget who. But yes there are similarities between us. One should not throw out energy without expecting some back. Yes, we have our own lunatics for sure. But enough about Klopp and the Scouse Mindset. Here my friends is a ‘thing’. Have you watched the Wolves first day videos? Our new Players arriving at Molineux and Compton? I have watched them all of course. I observe things. I enjoy the way our Media team sticks a camera up these Players noses as they try to navigate the diaspora of Compton, meet their new team mates and meet the Boss. We know these times, moments of fraught with anxiety regardless of how the players own mindset is strong or weak. We want to see how they deal with the anxious moments shaking hands, slapping backs getting man handles by the Boss with his X-Ray eyes. Julen looks into your Soul when he looks at you. He comes in close, uncomfortably close to see how you deal with this invasion of body space. The new Players do well of course. They are Personalities themselves, humans and Men. They understand this energy and welcome it. Shoulders are slapped, missives are thrown around then Julen is off again into the Catacombs of Compton to rebuild this team, make them something. The work is obviously hard. Julen looks a little tired but he has strength this one and courage. I hope we don’t break him. We have to give him some of our strength now, when he needs it. This means turning up and making Molineux a horrible place for a visiting fan experience. On the way to Molineux I mix with Scouse gits, some are intelligent fans, one has some Cocaine stuck in his nostril. He is talking too fast and his mate his dabbing his shoulder going ‘shush shush’.

The rest of the walk from the Town centre to Molineux was good and full of more madness. My mind was elsewhere of course, the previous fixtures between the teams were full of darkness. You know the incidents, you probably replay them over and over in your heads. The robbery, the absolute crookedness of the system. Liverpoolness. For a team and a City that strongly vocalises their us and them Philosophies and memes they are a mollycoddles by the sports media for sure. But there is a rot in their team somewhere. We always know at some point the scabs will show. It was our first win in the Premier League against Liverpool since 2010 apparently. You see I knew we were going to win, I said it on Social Media…whispered it. I don’t want the Ghosts to hear me say it, but I don’t think Ghosts use Twitter. Instead I had a jaunty step navigating the gloom behind the New stand as I walked around. Nah, don’t let the Ghosts hear anything. Keep your gob shut Mikey. I know we are going to win because God is on our side. This is why we suffer so much in these fixtures. God is testing us, making us tough and ductile. Making us spiritually tough. This win is important for many reasons to do with our steady progress towards some sort of greatness again, to safety, to some place just above this relegation zone where the Walking Dead are already making themselves comfortable as this season surely draws to it’s final madness. Yes a win, always good but what is the idea, is there something moving, something metaphysically Wolves that Julen and his Cohorts have summoned up? Are we progressing? A goal splutters in early doors bouncing off Matip from Changys poked cross or shot. I’ll have that of course but you as well as me probably kept your arse in your seat. I was on special orders not to swear or gesticulate at the enemy as it wasn’t my seat and the North Bank does have some genteel characters and olds among them. But fucking hell I’m watching the Lino a split second after the goal. Did he touch his earpiece then? I’m scanning the Officials for a VAR call or something similar. A few weeks ago that goal would have been picked over by video, Castle Greyskull VAR centre, pundits, madness….and it would have been disallowed for some arcane reason.

There are changes of course, to our team. Liverpool have people injured apparently. I suspect that a few people around me aren’t Wolves fans. My neck skin is crawling a bit and I keep looking around at the faces around me. I look over to the stands either side of me trying to find Horace so I can flick the V’s at him. Definitely some Scousers in here. Cunha leathers a shot towards the Liverpool goal and for a minute I didn’t quite understand what I was watching. Hang on. Wolves are moving and grooving all over the pitch here. Passing the ball, pressing, fighting for the ball back. They are recycling the ball quickly. There seems to be an urgency among our team. They are making Liverpool look like Mannequins. What are we here? 442/443 what? My stupid head wont process how we have set up here and I have to ask the old fella next to me. He is more skilled than me….and has his glasses on, which helps. The Scousers at the foot of the New Stand are shuffling their feet and moaning already and as I watch them I see Dawson smash a ball into the net. He fucking leathered it mate. Toe bunt straight into Klopps piss stained heart. I laugh like a lunatic. Albion dickhead, fair play. Score a few more like that and I might start to like you mate. No tattoos though, no Linocuts for you Dawson. But there is the energy for sure. We have people in the fucking box. You don’t know how weird that is for me after watching game after game where the ball dinks across an abandoned 25 yard box and our players gasp and throw their hands around. But here Dawson is bang in the right place, ready to stick his foot through it. Sarabia flying around, Kilman, another dude we bought but I can’t see his face so I don’t know who he is. But it seems like Julen has brought a whole new team. Here is the rub, he has galvanised all of them, even the dickheads. We press and we move them back further and further up the pitch. What is that noise too? I hear the odd snatch of a song from the North Bank. I hear noise from all corners of the ground. It’s a low pitched hum at first and the noise builds until dare I say it? It seems like Molineux again because of one simple thing. It looks like a Wolves team again. We are playing Wolves football, a trait, a historical tradition. Playing like a pack, hunting and searching, always a throats, always attacking like a single massive Wolf. Get in the backs of their throats Wolves. Even your humbles on his best behaviour Scribe is excited and I notice I’m effing and blinding again, booting balls, jumping up for headers. I see Molineux has awoken again from it’s slumber. The last awakening was a Nuno alarm call when Helder, Cavaleiro, Jota, Ruben showed us what we had missed. Now we have new bodies who have stepped into those shoes quite ably. We want to see fight and madness, we want to see this football, that’s all. Liverpool and Klopp as bystanders. Klopp, the silly old sod is sitting down noiw with his head in his hands or dry washing his face over and over again as we press and inflict our madness on Liverpool’ He knows this is not his day. He understands Karma. That Karma is gently washing over him now as he watches us play. He knows mate. I swear down if he could have pulled his players off at half time and forfeited the game he would have.

It’s not a report of course. But Ruben. So our old man, our midfield General Moutinho….how he has suffered the slings and arrows this season even if it does seem like a Coda to his career he finds the old magic. Digs out the ball. He delicately inserts the pass into the path of Adama who releases it to a rampaging Ruben Neves. Here is craft and art. Have you watched the replays? I have watched them quite a bit, even zooming in at various points and I still can’t understand how a player can gently coax a ball away from a defender and softly position the ball in the back of the Liverpool net. He was a Butterfly, gently flitting from side to side, ethereal in many respects. This was Football as Ballet, again football as an Art form. So soft, so beautiful, every touch he makes is an absolute delight and I think to myself….perhaps looking around at the players Julen has brought in, would it be an errant though to think he will stay here? Is the challenge here? Are the ideas? Liverpool are pressing of course, what do you expect of a Klopp team? Of course they press but….we release. That was the difference. A win. I enjoy Lemina, I enjoy Cunha, I enjoy Nunes. But I loved Moutinho, I loved Ruben and for the first time in a fucking long while I enjoyed Adama. Is Julen the key to unlocking the madness of Traore? Will these players coming to the end of their contracts stay with us? Will they see what is happening and want to take part? Who knows. But that long walk back to the Bus station I keep my head down and keep myself to myself because 1. I kept joining groups of Scouse gits, it was interesting listening to their pain and 2. I was in a bit of disbelief at what I had just watched. The zeitgeist was good. Typical Wolves on the way out, the odd Wolves fan moaning but most were quiet and reserved. They were assimilating what they had just watched into their minds. We will mull it over I guess, over this week but may we breathe again a little? We are in a battle for sure. For points, that’s it. May 2023 is far away but so close. The number of games is growing smaller and smaller, the number of points we can grab less and less. All I ask is that we survive and I don’t really care how we do it but I can see the players who will do it. I ask God kindly for a Lopetegui Pre-Season with his recruits and his team. I ask that we stay in the Premier League because quite simply I want to see how this team does once Julen has really stamped his mark on them. If you build it Julen, they will come.