Art saves me every day. Every morning when I wake up I am angry that I am not dead. That’s Depression for you. I suffer badly from it. Then I walk straight into my print room which is a small box room at the front of my house. Its very small and there is much crammed into every space. There are ink stains and wet splodges of things, paint and ink, water, charcoal. A bucket of Oak galls. A pile of old newspapers. Paper, wet ready for pressing, orders, frames, Lino sheets, my record collection. All of my shit. Its good in there and I am good then and slowly you start putting into place all the filters you will need for that day.

With the filters of course comes a lessening of the light that we need to see in order to create some art. So your mind can become fogged by your energy bouncing between the filters. You start to fret and wonder if your art is anything at all. That’s when you start staring at it. From your peripheral vision at first as you pass it. Because you see its already framed and signed or whatever and hung in some place for you to look at. When everyone has made the normal noises about it and have forgotten it, it is still there. Just hanging from a nail. You pass and use that side eye. Then pretend there is something on the glass, so you peer closely and scratch. But you have seen too much and walk away quick. At some point you will get personal.

This is the point when the long staring starts. You just stand there in front of it and just look at it closely, then further back. Then right up against it. Then back. Then stare. Motionless. Looking.

When I sketched the initial idea of the above Intaglio you have to fuck the filters off and get in the dirt. You can’t appreciate the madness of a Heathland Ecology and the violence in them. This is Cannock Chase but it also has elements of other systems too. Not far from Castle Ring where it starts to get really weird and fucked up. But the ecology is all competition, all vying for space and light and air. Strategies and competition. Plant warfare. My unfiltered head was absolutely spinning with it. Battle, every blade of grass in competition with it’s neighbour. The Tree as Spear, the branch as a Flagstaff, banners of thick leaf. Now the wind blows and you see advance and retreat of leaf and branch, backwards and forwards like the ebb and flow of an English Civil War battle. I just slashed charcoal across the paper. Just violent plan and map instead of art. It was fucking dark and cool. You see me deep in the Bilberry laughing to myself but then a flight of Birds erupted from somewhere and flew above the Warfare and Strategies. All fucking chilled out in a line with not a care in the world and then just fucking flew off into the distance.

It was cool. A woman Artist once had a rant about why it’s only Men that ‘suffer’ for their Art when Women just get on with it. It’s because you are Creators and we are Destroyers. We destroy shit, kill things, break stuff. We are aggressive and violent. We lie and we cheat, we filter our world. To create things is an Alien concept. Not to create Weapons or new ways to Kill and survive, but to make sense of the World we are living in and trying to share what is in our minds with others so they may also see new things and maybe get new ways of seeing too. If you knew how much pain we are in, us men, to allow ourselves do this, to dig around in our cess pit minds for new ideas to share. You would be staggered.

My friend Waldo said I should talk about things other than football on the Blog so I have done what he said. Some of it will be as raw as fuck because I will be discussing Wolverhampton a lot I suppose. As well as some of the other things I get up to like the Band. Sorry about moaning at the beginning but it’s best to tell the truth from the off.

Dear Sir,

Firstly as a Wolverhampton Wanderers fan may I apologise for the behaviour of Mr Sellars and Mr Lage former employees of Wolverhampton Wanderers. How they treated your son Fabio over the past two years has been reprehensible. A thousand apologies. Many of us in this fanbase knew that both of these people were operating well below what was expected of them. They were men with no real vision. Alas, personally I was prepared to ‘believe’ in Mr Lage but Sellars I knew was a mistake. Enough about them…Have you spoken to Fabio lately? What are his thoughts? What are his dreams for the future. Are we in them? Does he hate everything about this club and the way he has been treated? Do you remember your own ‘Loan seasons’? How did you develop, how did you respond?

Fosun (once they worked out what was going wrong) acted quite quickly. They delegated responsibility to people who were not well equipped to deal with the day to day running of a club like ours. This isn’t a failure of Fosun by any means. In many ways it showed that they had trust in certain members of staff and that trust was abused in many ways. I don’t hold Jeff Shi, the Board or Fosun responsible for any of our current difficulties at all. In fact the whole disaster of the past 12 months has made me look upon Fosun and Jeff Shi with kinder eyes than I have had for a good few years. We all learn through mistakes and I think Fosun and in particular Jeff Shi have also been on that steep learning curve that comes with running a Premier League club. Yes, much kinder eyes. With my kinder disposition I see Fosun have learned much over the last 12 months too. Mistakes made, yes. But the mistakes also made Fosun learn.

Now there is a new dawn, a new beginning. We have Lopetegui now. You obviously know of him and his work in Spain. He is a wonder. The teams he builds hold the ball. They are selfish with it. It becomes their ball. This Philosophy of Football is being built here now, in this semi desolate City. It is being enforced with an Iron hand I have heard. There will be no placidity now, there is a ‘Kill list’ of players that will be gone soon and not before time. But why do I write? It is a simple letter of course, from a simple Fan that will probably just evaporate in the plasma of information that flows around Clubs like ours. But I have to say it. I watch this team every time they play. I watch and then I rewatch matches trying to see a Holistic viewpoint that encompasses everything about that match. I watch and my brain says the same thing again and again. Fabio. Fabio. Fabio. Fabio would be there, Fabio would grab that. Fabio would shoot from there. Fabio would be making that defenders life a misery. Fabio. Fabio. Fabio. You see? That subconscious mind that ferments and discards thoughts about our team keeps repeating the same name again and again.

I want your son back here with us. This is now his time. Forget the past as much as you can, it is gone. There is a new thing, a beautiful thing being built here. My shallow ignorance of the vast majority of football politics shames me. Although. How you are navigating Fabio through this maze of insanity amazes me. I bow deeply to you. I ask you this; Is there a better team for Fabio to engage with in Europe? Here is Wolves, here is (at the moment) a place for him within a project and an idea. Something new and exciting is being built and I can sense it…metaphysically so far but more and more I see and hear the things Julen is doing at Compton with the Prelude of his team. There is idea and there is a plan….a plan at the moment with a Fabio sized hole within it. A pyramid of sorts with Fabio absolutely ready to slot right at the highest point.

Fabio is a holder of the ball, a believer in holding onto the ball and physically holding opposition players off him. A box player happy to engage in physicality. A player able to hold and lay the ball off to others, a player we need. I think Fabio is ready to have another crack at the whip, another term at Compton. He will learn here from Julen. When Fabio first came I imagined for a moment we would build a team around him…that seemed the easiest choice to make. I firmly believe that if Fabio was in this team now he would be struggling, that’s for sure. But this team is in flux. Many of the players we now know will be gone, players that have really failed to push the club to greater heights. Even many of the new additions we have made over the last year/season I can see being moved away. They are stop gap players brought in to do a job, but not the foundations of the new ideas that Julen has. I see many new addition coming here at the end of this season. I see work being done at Compton to drill them, shape them into something new, something we have lacked for a long time, a team.

I say this to you. Bring Fabio back to us. Let him see with his own eyes what will happen in the future. Let him talk with Julen and both of you listen to what he says. I am hammering my colours firmly to the mast here. We need Fabio to be in this team and he will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of his loan deals. I think these next few weeks will be pivotal for both Fabio and Wolves and decisions will be made both by you and the club that will affect the futures of both for years to come and I say the best thing for Fabio in my humble opinion is to come back and learn more things, develop more and become what we all know he is capable of. Have you seen our new additions? They are a step above what we have, they are developing as I speak into Premier League footballers, day by day hour by hour Julen is adding tenacity, intelligence and emotion to the team. Fabio will fit perfectly within this project, should become part of it, relish the challenge and immerse himself in the whole insanity of this club once again.

Sit down my friend and think about these things for me. Let these thoughts ferment in your mind. This is an ideal opportunity to forge something new and dynamic. For Fabio to rise that little bit more and become the fulcrum for the Wolves attack. There will be additions soon that will be able to ping the ball into the box with regularity. There will be additions that will drive themselves forwards under Julens tutelage to be in the box ready to receive those balls. Fabio will be one of them. I see him collecting the ball, keeping possession while others fight their ways forwards to join him. These are the things I see with my idiotic mind. Let Fabio come back to us please, let him grow some more here.

“There was a lot more to that song,’ said Sam, ‘all about Mordor. I didn’t learn that part, it gave me the shivers. I never thought I should be going that was myself!’
‘Going to Mordor!” Cried Pippin. ‘I hope it won’t come to that!’
‘Do not speak that name so loudly!’ said Strider”
 J.R.R. Tolkien

Horace turns up in a Beanie that looks like Ena Sharples hair net. I’m sorry for that really old school reference that will escape the notice of most of the Yungs that read this madness. Ena fucking Sharples. That face screwed up like she’d been gargling battery acid. It was a prescient look for Young Horace as at the end of the game most of the Liverpool fans sidling out of the ground also had that look. It wasn’t great, nothing about the match was great to be fair. But hey! Fucking hell, we haven’t been to an away match for ages. We try to find out where the driveway was we had booked for parking the Motor. Horace is knocking doors in some Godforsaken new build street about 100 yards away from Anfield. A Glaswegian answers the door to one. You know how they mangle language, even though I am sitting in the Car I can tell what Horaces face looks like and I’m nearly bent over double with laughing. It’s dark around this ground isn’t it? There is a gloom that seems to stick into every piece of brickwork, every slab you tread on. The faces of these people of Liverpool are grey and sad in direct juxtaposition of me and daft lad laughing our bollocks off about anything and everything on the way to the ground. People are turning around and looking. We have thick unintelligible Wolverhampton accents. Horace is deaf as a post, so am I. We have to shout at each other to be heard. We are daft old bastards.

“Wolves wankers”. I think that’s what this bloke said but he scurried away sharpish when I smiled at him. I laughed a bit louder. Horace didn’t hear him or there would have been street ballet, pavement performance, the sad spectacle of grown men rolling around in the dim light of those ends. We see beautiful people from back in the day. Have chats while we navigate the throngs of Scouse energy. My mate Fischer says “People from Liverpool don’t like Wolves” ah, really. Even Fischer a German Jew with a penchant for antique books knows this……”people from Wolverhampton are too happy” he continues. He’s right of course. Scousers ‘famous humour’ is dwarfed by the naked comedy of men from Low Hill and Woodcross. Anfield despite it’s rich history is a place where the eyes of God seldom rest now. This Liverpool team are not a good one. It reminds me pretty much of how we play lately. Giving the ball away too cheaply…maybe there is something up in the land of the Baytuls etc. I don’t know or care. But in the ground the Announcer sounds like he’s been doing Ket all day. Talk about fucking monotonous. I was drifting off into sleep, rudely awakened by a warm up shot from Raul skimming of the protective netting behind the goal straight for my head. Raul dude, I have been nothing but supportive! I laugh. But this is Mordor for sure. If Old Trafford is a great Red Tomb then this place is surely that dark land Tolkien told us about. Scousers as Orcs congregating in groups of surly youth dressed in Nike slave wear. Horace wants to take a photo of me by the Anfield Gates. ‘You’ll never walk alone’ in a large wrought iron scroll across the top. I tell him to fuck off. This isn’t a theme park, an attraction to me. If the gates had been toppled over into the street I would have wanted a nice photo, but not like this dude. He bobbles his head. He is Ena Sharples to my Albert Tatlock. We think, therefore we Yam.

We walk into the ground past lines of Security Gonks and Cops. Some of the Cops have dogs, not Nazi attack dogs but fluffy waggy tailed things, a Labrador and a Cocker Spaniel. That’s weird I think to myself. Cocker Spaniels and dopey Labradors don’t strike me as attack……bollocks. Sniffer dogs. Shit. So I’m thinking to myself thank fuck I didn’t bring a Cosmic one skinner for the trip back. All I have on me is a bag of sweets, me Vape, me emergency tenner, a Phone and about 20 dogshit bags. One of the dogs loves me, it’s big brown eyes look at me with a bit of love, it wags it’s tail and follows me. Bollocks. The Sniffer Fed cops me. Escorts me over to a table where my goods are deposited and searched. The Security Gonk is cool and the search is cursory while we chat about weed. He says the dog keeps coming over to him and having a snuffle. We laugh, I pick my belongings up and we move into the glum interior of Scouse Mordor. We are not far from the Liverpool fans. They are an arms length away. They look like us of course but they have Scouse energy. They are irate already and nothings fucking happened on the pitch yet. What’s wrong with them? It’s a Pantomime of course. The Great Scouse Pantomime where grief is exhibited as a badge or a shirt. It’s pure clowning, the angst, the insults and the rage all as false as the Liverpool legend itself. They deserve their Manager of course, he is the same as them, false emotion, mental illness, the archetypal Victim energy layered thickly over everything.

This match was another intelligence gathering exercise by Julen for sure. He is watching and adding to his May ‘Kill List’ when we find out that half this squad will be off somewhere else. I think half the squad know they will be off too judging by the lack of energy, the piss poor pressing and the sight of Adama falling over again…and again….and again. But the fact he was one of the small groups of players of whom you could say were a bit energy, a bit exciting says everything. We lacked purpose and we lacked desire. I watch players off the ball and see how they are reacting to play other places on the pitch. They weren’t interested. Sagging shoulders 40 minutes in is not a good sign. It seemed like although we matched them in the first half we were in fact matching a very poor team. They were as dysfunctional as us. Raul flopping around in the box was a succinct and honest look at how we played. Nothing really came off, nothing sparked into flame. Our possessions were always short lived. It seemed like we trapped the ball, moved, got pressed, lost the ball and cue the relentless charge upfield again from Liverpool who although massively dysfunctional compared to years passed were at least moving as a unit. Every ball they put in the box had 3-4-5 Liverpool players waiting to convert, waiting for the ball. In direct contrast to Wolves who when they attained a chance to put the ball in the box there was rarely anyone there.

There isn’t anything to worry about I don’t think but you could cut the angst in the away end with a knife. Some of us old lot have been here before of course and we feel that shiver up our back, that familiar feeling, and we are trying to force it back into the darkness of our minds before it pops up again like a stubborn stain. Our team are too good surely? I idly think during periods of dull play that perhaps it would be nice to play the Lulus again, teams in the Championship, mad away days again to towns that look like parts of the Ukraine. I think about Julen getting his red pen out back at Compton and adding a few names to the list. I know who I would ice out of this Wolves team. I’ve watched them longer than Julen. I may not have the tactical expertise to analyse movement, assist statistics, goal statistics, performance etc but I am a good observer and I watch them very closely indeed. I’m not going to name the names I want shifted but they have exasperated me week after week, pulling me fucking hair out, swearing. I don’t name names because it’s not polite to slag someones inability to run when I can hardly run myself I suppose. Plus at the end of the day they are human beings with partners, wives and kids and I don’t want them to read my words castigating them. But we know who they are of course. They never really fitted in. Or they suffered so badly under Sellars and Lage that they have some sort of Post Traumatic stress disorder under Julen. The football tremors. Shellshock.

But we can see what he is trying to do of course. There are subtle shades of some decent football being played by the Wolves even if the end result is recycling the ball back to the Red Orcs who then steam up the pitch again and it’s all hands on deck as the ball bobbles around in our box. There is some pantomime from our side too. Rolling the ball around dribbling, some weird side foot passing with a bit of spin on the ball, some passing that was sublime and beautiful. Pornhub football. Beautiful people doing beautiful things under hot bright lights for our nascent pleasure which is ultimately devoid of passion and sadly always ending in a solitary feeling of disgust and a sticky sadness. We didn’t press, we rarely fought to get the ball back. Most of the time we ended up on our arses flapping at the grass as another Wolves player stumbles, slips or just poleaxed themselves into the green nothingness of the Anfield turf. Did the subs kill the game? I’m not sure. It went off the boil for sure, the shape gone and any idea of how we were going to get back into the game.

Every game we play now is a Cup Final. We cannot depend on other results to make our position more tenable. But we are not dead yet of course. The team, our team is full of great football players. We have a great Coach and backroom team. The smell of Sellars at Compton is slowly being Yankee candled out of existence but I think the stink of him and his mates is still lingering in these early days of Julens tenure. Julen of course is tired out. He is not burned out by any means but he is working very hard. He has new lines on his face which is a little bit greyer than it was before which means he is working on his Grand plan of sorts, an idea of a team. It’s transitional again my friends. A work in progress and we have to wait again and the wait is watching shit dysfunctional teams like Liverpool dominate us for large periods of games when we should have been putting them under the cosh. Yes, there will be players moving on. I reckon 6 at least. Big names, and if Julen sees what I see then some will be a bit shocked at the exits.

Coming out of the ground at full time me and Horace are yamming again. We are trapped in a throng of Scousers. Some are happy, a few. Most still have that worn out sad look about them even if their team just won a game. They are not stupid these Scousers, as daft as they are they know their football and even if it was a win for them they know that something is dreadfully amiss in this team of theirs. Their faces keep turning around and watching us laugh at each other. How dare we laugh and joke after our team just got destroyed but going to the football isn’t always about victory and the feelings we have after that victory. It’s about the joy of just being there sometimes. We are doing OK. At least Julen and Jeff have some sort of a plan in operation, there is something happening….we just haven’t seen it yet. Be strong, we only have one job as Supporters and that’s to support our team. The next few months are going to be as strange as fuck my friends, peaks and troughs as we battle to the end. Try and leave negative thoughts behind as best you can and get behind the squad….believe but get ready to fight.

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.

“Let us have little, but let us always have enough.” Basque Proverb

So Julen my friend…what do you think? Are we ‘a thing’, have we the strength to forge ahead? What are the dynamics in the squad? Who are the killers, the honest?, the Workers? The Artists? who are we? I think that you will agree that we are listless, rudderless, we were once a thing but when you first arrived we were nothing. We know that when you first arrived we lacked everything but had everything. On paper of course, we were a strong squad. We had a light squad of course but not a dynamic one. I know it’s easy to lay the blame on Fosun or Bruno Lage, It’s very easy to blame Scott Sellars and I am a person that will stand behind that particular flag and I will stand proud too. But the dearth of idea here can be laid at everyone’s door even mine possibly.

Bruno was a good Stoic of course, it was a Philosophy I myself have wallowed in over the past few years. When Nuno was here I also labelled him as a great Stoic Coach. I was mistaken of course. These Stoics can happily watch an idea burn and blow away with the wind and whistle happily as ‘It’s really nothing to do with them’ or ‘I have no power to change anything’ and let the process carry on. Of course we were all wrong. Even Fosun in all their glittery International Business shapes fell for the old Stoical ‘just let things carry on and at some point if we throw some money at it all will be good’.

Of course the main problem at Wolves was a lack of identity, a complete absence of why we are here playing, for who, and even where sometimes, when the new crowds of Fosunites, the people they want at the club sat despondent and silent as they watched us play at the start of the season, well….it just wasn’t Molineux was it? The madness of the past few years dissipated like fag smoke into the sky under the old floodlights. Yes, who the fuck were we? That’s the major problem we face at the moment. Players of course move out and move in, they are the blood of Molineux, and are there to be moulded and shaped, forged even into something that resembles a complete team. A team that can perform and attain, to entertain and to draw on the energy of their fans. We lost a major part of our team in Saiss and Coady. For all the propaganda about either of them they were major parts (for better or worse) of that initial identity. They were never really replaced. Constant rumours about Ruben going. Fosun debt troubles. The atmosphere at Home games. Fucking hell Julen. You have a right job here my mate.

For a start it was a good move showing Scott Sellers the door. What was he about? An Academy Coach basically telling Steve Davis how to play a team. How did Fosun cock that up? Listening too much to people who shouldn’t be allowed to speak? I’m not sure. Now of course you have pretty much annihilated the major flaw in the whole Wolverhampton Wanderers FC set up. Good move. I applauded loudly. It was a Masterstroke. I wish I could have been a Fly on the wall. I would have personally escorted him out of Compton with a good kick up the arse for good measure. Wolves should not be a vehicle for egos. I see an Idealism in you that supersedes the Stoicism of the last few Coaches. So this is a new journey for us and a new chance to really cement us into the top half of the Premier League where we really do need to be in the next few years. You are obviously going to need that Idealism to fuel our movement out of the relegation zone…I mean I don’t think we are going to be relegated because when I look at the other teams around us, I don’t see that they have any kind of impetus as we do. That impetus is your Philosophy about Football, your ideas. I see with my own poor blasted mind that you are imposing these ideas already. The players you and Mr Hobbs are bringing to the club are quality additions. Not only from a Footballing perspective but also a mental one. I have read much about these players and they all share the same characteristics. They fight, they have heart but they know they can adapt the world around them with their own mental strengths. They impose their football on the game. To paraphrase Nuno they ‘make their ideas greater than their opponents’. A phrase Nuno used but rarely enacted. Things are moving in the right direction. Cunha at Forest the other day. There was an energy in him. It was reciprocated by the away fanbase. This is what we need. Energy, mental energy, that ‘us and them’ mentality which gets Molineux shouting and loud.

Some of our current squad cannot do this. You will know the players by now, you have been close to them and have watched their football. You know they go blank emotionally when under pressure. We may say any fight they had has been dissipated and crushed under the passivity of Bruno Lage. I say passivity and I don’t hold Bruno totally to blame for our current misfortunes but he himself could have fought harder, put some noses out of joint higher up and fought for his own ideas even if they were like the smoke under the lights, scattered by the gentlest of breezes. In May of course many of these players will be shown the door and moved out of the warmth of Compton. I initially named four of them to my closest confidants as I hate naming players. I think I may have mentioned them on Social Media which is a big faux pas on my behalf but fucking hell if Wolves are making mistakes I can make one too. Yes, they will be gone. These are players that lack identity. They haven’t impressed themselves on our football at all. Instead they are passengers on the crazy train when they should be on the roof of the thing, screaming naked at the stars. No, we lack heart and we lack courage in certain areas of the side.

It’s a journey now for sure and one we should all take part in and supporting. I know there will be words said over the Summer as we see favourite players shuffled off to other clubs. I really don’t think there will be much interest in a couple of them which kind of tells you how far we have fallen from grace. Who will be left? Fighters, Idealists, players with foresight, creativity, strength (mental as well as physical). I see the names we are connected with and I tick all of these boxes. I see that you will not be taking any shit from either Fosun or the players so really you have the power to now finally make a team that you, with all your experience can turn into a force to be reckoned with. Rail at the FA about the standards of Refereeing, let everyone know what energy you have. Fight against VAR decisions. Encroach onto the field of play when you have something to say. Throw things, smash them, kick holes in doors to get us what we need. We will support you 100% if you do this. We fight, it is what we do in this unfair world. We fight to make our mark on it. That’s what Idealists do, that’s what our teams used to do.

That Basque proverb at the top of the page is very apt. “Let us have little, but let us always have enough”. Wolves fans never ask for too much. We are happy seeing our teams fight. If we win then great, if we lose but still have fought hard we are still happy. All we want is for the team to battle on the pitch and attain something. I knew this season was going to be a little insane and I was right. But we are doing OK so far. The margins are small, our losses mostly to do with abysmal Refereeing or strange quasi corrupt VAR decisions. In your short time here you have already made great strides at the club and I am sure you will make longer ones very soon. Give us something to sing about Julen. Give us our club back.

I think the diagnosis on the Fosun regime are pretty much done now aren’t they? We have picked apart the strands of disease, peered under the Microscope at the bacteria, the Viruses, the plague has raged hasn’t it? The sickness Fosun has incubated through their medieval and useless Tao is beginning to choke and rattle through its last days while we are gathered around the bed eating grapes and chatting to the Nurses that are popping in and out with cloths or whatever. Check out @_KKWWFC thread on Twitter for a fantastic run down on all the crazy, insane, mental, almost criminal negligence that has flowed around the brand for a good few years. It’s a shame really, I really did think all those years ago that they would be forward looking, intelligent, their business acumen unrivalled. I threw my all in with them, supported them, actually liked Jeff a bit even if it was glaringly obvious the first time I looked at him, that he was a Lizard. He always looked daft. Like a Chinese Harry Potter but without the magic skills. We shove all those suspicions to the back of our minds in our greed of course. It’s like ordering something from Wish, it looks great on the screen before the delivery of your shiny new acquisition, then the arms fall off quicker than one of Fingles Kappa Trackie tops.

I get the anger about it. The need to vent and be angry. Some will have a scatter gun approach to critique and many innocents are going to be targeted. This is the way of anger, in a scrap hit everybody regardless of their innocence. Wolves Trust have had some neck, no need. There are some good people there, let them do their meetings thing, support them. There are also people at Wolves who work there, work hard too. This is not their fault. These people are Club people not Brand people. Instead we should look forwards to a new madness. Fosun will sell Wolves, for a good price too. Then shuffle off to a work camp in the desert where they will live out the rest of their days chanting Holy Mantras to their Leader and sewing training shoes together or mining heavy metals for 15 hours a day. Swapping the Gucci suits for a Navy Blue Mao suit and that crumpled look all Chinese naughty boys have.

The Qataris are interesting. They will probably be our new owners next year (or this year). I’m pinning my hopes on QSi. Qatari Sports investments. They have been busy little Bees for the past few years dunking some good oil money around various Football teams in Europe. They have a sovereign wealth fund you see. QSi is the sports arm of the Qatari government and will be even more political than Chairman Shi and the Fosunz. But fucking hell dudes, the money these people have is insane, and they know how to use it too. PSG in France has become an almost abstract Club now with one aim really, domination. Domination of the French League. They have their own Marketing skill base too in NextStep Marketing, a company specialized in client representations, direct merchandising, and event management. These people have big technical people on board who I wont bore you with. They have Burrda, remember them? Sportswear company. It’s their own company. No more Castore shit flying into your inbox after every defeat. What other energies are the Qataris bringing in? They have the Qatar Tourism Authority “Visit Qatar,” Qatari mobile network provider Ooredoo, the Qatar National Bank, state airline Qatar Airways, Qatar-based sports medicine hospital Aspetar and Qatari sports broadcaster beIN Sports. Lovely avenues to funnel that Oil money into Wolves via ‘creative’ sponsorship details. I predict that in the next few years all the sports shirt buying knobheads will be advertising Burrda sportswear, Qatar airways on the tits, BEin sports on the sleeve.

Ya know, it seems like the Qataris are Fosun, but with more than half a brain. I said to Horace this week, don’t be surprised to see the same energy we had when Fosun first bought our club. An all singing and dancing Gucci clad Football Coach, a name, a good record, a personality, imagine a Nuno but good. Perhaps even a Coach who’s face actually fits his head. Then imagine an influx of insane players from Europe who will turn up in his wake. Bankrolled by our new Qatari brothers. Yes, I know about the Political aspects of the Qataris, the Human rights etc. I don’t really care about that, I mean no one ever listened to me when I discussed Uighars or the Silverlight projects in China. No, I couldn’t give a shit about Human rights any more, I’m more concerned about Wolves, my club. New money in, new ideas and new grooves. Europe ya know. Our new Chairman or Owner Nasser Al-Khelaifi is a ‘player’ he has entered the Lizards lair and has become one of them. He is close and inside every European and World Footballing Power Block in existence. He is there mate, right there. The New Super League that will be formed in the next few years will be constructed under his very hand. We need to be there, we need to be in this place. Jeff Shi said when he came here that we would ’emulate the Manchester City model’ and he was half right I suppose. Insomuch as it ain’t ‘we’ Jeff, it’s us and the Qataris mate.

What a great and crazy time to be alive. I’m looking forwards to a bit of Qatari head chopping when they arrive. Dragging certain personalities into the proverbial centre circle to be publicly executed for their crimes against the new brand. I hate some of them that much I would gladly grab a detached head from the basket and kick it around the North Bank car park like old times, I could take some photos, sell prints maybe. Maybe Wolves will sell tickets? I dunno…I might steal a few heads to put in the fridge so I can look at them every day like Jeff Dahmer did.

Anyway….with Ruben going and our results and vibe things don’t look too good but open your eyes a little. Things may be crazy on the pitch so far but things are going to get even more fucking mental as the next few years grind on. But I see the Qataris for what they are. They will want to compete against Manchester City and take many of their trophies off them. They have beef you see, the Qataris and the House of Saud. It’s kind of like a Wolves-West Brom thing. They hate each other. It may come to pass that we will see footballing warfare between these two clubs for dominance in the World Footballing sphere. Who know’s it’s all speculation on my part but watch closely my little cherubs, things are going to be fucking changing. Have a good look at Nasser Al-Khelaifi in the photo above, concentrate on him, and learn about him. All Qatari Wolfs ay we?

Fuck you Jeff Shi, fuck you Sellers, fuck you Vinnie and fuck all you hangers on, suit freaks, grifters, Xg sticky hand mofos, fuck foam hands, fuck expensive food in the ground, fuck the beer prices, fuck the season ticket prices, fuck Castore pedo leisure sports clothing, yeah fuck all that. Oh and fuck Gary Lineker too…

Ok that feels better but what’s the fucking point? We can wax lyrics until we are choking on the angst of the current climate at Wolves. We expect better, we expect some element of Wolf like fighting and scrapping for wins, we expect better because our love for our club makes us do that you know, makes us wear lucking clothing and have little conversations with God about our chances that match. God is not listening to us…I’m talking about the Football Gods of course. They have to be placated in some way with sacrifice of a kind, some pain given freely.

Darkness and angst. That didn’t take long did it? How long did we have in the heady atmosphere of Premier League football, where we looked beautiful and other teams would tremble a little bit at our tenacity and drive, our skills on the ball, our madness, Traore, Jota, Moutinho, Ruben Neves, Coady, Boly all insane and drunk with their football. Hangover time. This darkness was born a long time ago. I wrote a post about it and it was the most heavily read post I’ve done simply titled ‘Fuck You Jeff Shi’. It was about our lack of preparation, our lack of solidifying transfer business, the lack of ideas. Man. did they click on it. It was heavily linked of course, which brought in more darkness, more pain. These people were and still are in denial. This shit was going wrong about three years ago when the energy in the air around Molineux was turning darker as the season went on. Even recently when we saw Conor Coady walking into Molineux with the media team following him and we saw Scott Sellers in a full Wolves training kit with ‘SS’ on the tit. I thought that was well dodgy mate. Who was he? Was he part of the team? What was his role? Well after yesterday we fucking know mate. It’s all his fault. He is not liked by our team, not many people like him outside either. To be honest if Bruno Lage had a face bigger than his head Sellers has has a face smaller than his head and I never trusted either of them. They look weird.

Yesterday he was photographed at the match sending instructions to the bench, sitting there in the Billy Quiet with a flasher mac and brown fucking shoes, tactical board in full sight of every doughnut that sits in that stand. Was the grief palpable? Fuck yeah. I couldn’t add my own madness as I am suspended on Facetwat and Twitterbook. Scott fucking Sellers eh? Have I spelt his name right? I don’t care. Here is a man who is meddling in shark infested waters mate, when Lil Scotty is just a shitty little Mackerel. He got chewed up yesterday didn’t he? I got back from Wiltshire last night and read the reports and the madness. Good grief, I have nothing positive to say about any of this shit any more. Thousands of words I’ve puked out over the last five or six years and all of them discussed how we move forwards and how we progress, evolve. There hasn’t been any of that. We have dissolved into a political quagmire of motionless intent. Not looking forwards but looking at our feet, embarassed and ashamed of the Molineux Hierarchy.

They will not be here long I don’t think. This Fosun experiment has failed. Jeff Shi is a brand builder, he knows all the keywords and the buzz phrases his acolytes have crayoned on the whiteboard for him. That was when he used to talk to the fans of course, now he can’t even be arsed to do that. I reckon the team he has assembled to drive the brand forward are gaslighting him. I think ‘Jeff’ doesn’t really know what’s happening around him. Maybe he gets agitated when his Fascist Overlords in China send him a cryptic email or three then Scott or Vinnie rush in with hot towels and soothing drinks, tuck him back in and tell him to relax, everything is good….but it’s not is it?

It’s relegation form for sure, and there is a relegation zeitgeist as well. The virus of insincerity and bullshit is thriving in the corridors of Compton and Molineux. It’s because the players don’t care any more, it’s because our Molineux OverLords have taken their eye off the ball and have it firmly on the dollars they can make out of it. It’s about individuals at the club. Individuals who think only of their own journey. How will they rake money out of this idea and how they may advance their own worth in a sport awash with money both dirty and clean. How much do you want to read about how much I dislike what our club has become?

The Toxicity at Molineux is welcome, it’s energy and it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s dark and angry, it’s energy regardless. It will pull fans together with some sort of shared angst as we watch what happens over the next few weeks or months….and the Molineux hierarchy deserves it, every single bit of it.

I’m watching of course. I put the match on while I was being a Punk rocker in the depths of Trowbridge. The songs we have are angst filled angry pieces of art. One eye on rehearsal, one eye on the footy and I watched every single second of the whole debacle. At the end I was wasted, even a rare message off Horace failed to cheer me up. The darkness is coming my friends. I said at the start of this season things would be weird…but I only half expected this.

What are the solutions? Fosun have lost their way. The investments they have made in the players they have brought here are bad investments. When the team was crying out for meat and two veg quality additions we have flare players, beautiful young men, expensive players, great Portuguese players…but not very good English Premier League players. There has been debacle after debacle and I’m not going to list them all as I can’t be arsed. Fosun will of course sell up at some point. They don’t know what they are doing I’m afraid and this has been proved time and time again. Little fishes in a big pond. I think instead of bringing in these cut price executive doughnuts there should have been some academic searching, a Philosophy put into place. A framework of intent. Then perhaps an experienced Director of Football and a backroom staff that were hungry for success who had an idea of what Wolves were about. Wolves as a club, not a vehicle for bringing beautiful players into England to recycle them to other teams. Are we just a brand vehicle now? Are we just a transport system for laundering Gestifute money?

The Qataris will maybe buy Wolves quite soon and I don’t think they will see our executives as fit for purpose. Scotty will be jobless soon as will the rest of his mates. The Qataris will bring in hirsute and technical staff probably. Dudes who have ideas and hunger. A Coach that will be of a very high standard with impressive credentials and ideas. We will see this team fragmented and moved to other clubs for them to ply their trade. The playing staff has failed, the backroom teams have failed, the experiments with shape have failed. Our Ideas are comical and juvenile and have withered away in the heat of the Premier League. Wolves have given us nothing while again we have given them everything as we always do and will continue to do. My advice for the next few months is to support the Club. Not the brand and not the players. Support the Club we love. Things are going to get harder soon, and more angst filled. Luxuriate in this madness because the energy of it will force change at some point. China will, be watching Jeff Shi very closely and they also watch us very closely too. They don’t like to think things are going wrong with their dollars and locked away in their Ivory Towers in Shanghai they will not like to see us irate and angry. Angry fans don’t spend money. Angry fans make things toxic and horrible, people will not like visiting Molineux especially all these new ‘Sports watching as leisure activity’ pricks. We can force change with our own anger and passion and you know it’s the Wolves way. Once we start getting angry shit will happen. Do it creatively. Take the piss out of Sellers and Jeff at every opportunity, make memes and gifs, get on social media and vent your fucking spleen. Out of Darkness cometh light, we must be Fosuns darkness and we must squeeze it until that light comes flying out. Hold on my friends…and don’t use ya Moms best sheets, she won’t be happy.

So Michael Beale has turned us down? What does this mean? Am I ready to wax some lyrics cussing the man? Am I to nail Jeff Shit to a metaphorical pallet? Sellars? Big Vinnie. Who do I point the fucking finger at then?

It can’t all be bad of course. Beale isn’t going to leave QPR for a club that has lost it’s way. Wolves are kind of in a position of sorts. I think I can safely say that for a bloke on the lower rungs of a very rickety management ladder, he’s hanging on tight and inching his way up slowly, taking care to place his feet in the right places, get a firm grip etc. Would he have had that here? I’m not sure. At QPR they have an idea of where they want to be and are building an impetus of sorts, early signs look good….but here? The Old Gold has become a little bit tarnished again I think. Number of reasons for that of course which I’ve examined a little through previous posts. But no one wants to come. So is there a Football grapevine or something? Do these people have their own little Whatsapp group chat where they talk? Was there talk about Wolves. Have we been given the ‘Black Spot’ of damnation? I don’t think so.

I think people aren’t comfortable with what’s going on here surely. Coachwise anyway. We haven’t been happy for ages man. Lets throw out some lyrics…

1. We have a massively dysfunctional squad

2. We have a very underperforming squad

3. We have a reasonably new squad who lack Premier League experience

4. We lack a system where our Footballing Philosophy can grow and nurture players

5. There is a growing gap between the Fans and Fosun which may blow up at any time

6. We have a real chance of relegation due to all of the above

What does that tell me? Mr Beale looked at the options above. He’s an academic coach, he gathers information, he knows these things are real things. Extrapolate those factors to the decision he had to make and his current position at the top of the Championship and there you have it. His fans love him at the moment. His Gaffers and Board love him. He probably has the England Job in his sights at some point. His career is obviously everything to him. So of course he has to turn us down. We are not a massive club. Big Global footprint like but not massive. I wonder who is in charge of sorting these appointments at Wolves…who is responsible? Is it Jeff? I bet he has the final say but who is responsible for sorting candidates?

What would have attracted a quality Coach? Maybe the ‘chat’ or the interview, the Zoom calls or phone chats didn’t put over the message Wolves wanted to. Maybe there wasn’t a message, the same way we don’t have any kind of direction any more. Maybe the chatter actually turned these prospective Coaches off. How much money is available to them? How will they impose their idea of football in a massive void of idea we have at the moment. What players are going, what will the squad look like by January. Would there have been money available? Would that money have been spent on quality cheap squad players who would have given the team some foundation or would the money have been recycled through the Gestifute maze?

The Nuno rumours amused me no end. I had a field day on the socials throwing shapes around. Big Nuno shapes. Of course he isn’t the answer, he wasn’t last week and he isn’t now. But I tell you what my little Wolfs, I have a feeling old Nuno is going to be rocking up soon. It’s the only way Fosun can get some energy out of this whole sorry mess. There might be Nuno bounce of course. A couple of wins here and there before it all turns a bit Nuno again and the ideas run out as well as the energy. Perhaps it will give Fosun and Jeff et al some breathing time to actually do some research and work on getting a quality young Coach into the Club.

All questions of course and all trying to ascertain the narrative. These are going to be some bloody interesting few weeks coming up you know. Do I see the bedsheets coming out? No not really, I don’t even think we will see a toxic Molineux either. We will just blather on this season. A win here and there probably. Maybe another two or three goals. More drama, more grief.

Am I thinking Fosun and the Brand Wolves are fucking stuff up? Yeah, it’s getting that way.

Just standing down the Cut as you do. Dog slowly curling a hot one out. Saw a Heron and some other early risers this morning. I’m just waiting to see one of me muckers you know. One of those dudes who are Wolves. Sometimes they are having an exercise, a gentle or not so gentle walk. Some of them are down there because the canal is a good way to move between areas carrying drugs or illicit goods. But you always get a good ten minute chat about the Wolves and what’s been going on. It’s all good energy.

Are you relieved a bit? I am. A win and three points. I was glad when the Ref blew the whistle. I’d thought he’d lost the bloody thing. Eight minutes? Give ya weird head a wobble. What’s Refereeing a game come to really? Who are these Clowns? Where do they get them from? You see these types of dude getting out of PureGym every day. Bald heads, hyper toned muscle system. Always have a little gym bag. I watch them ya know. They always check in the windows how buff they look even if they have a shiny head. They almost always get into a Ford or a Volvo….some get in a Vauxhall. There’s a plethora of academic papers waiting to be written about these dudes. I bet they fuck like they build Meccano. Steve Cooper is like this at least to me. He always looks like he’s had a bad photo taken of him at an inopportune time. A face like a recycle bin to be honest. Pre game fun was had by looking at the Broccolis media team energy which was high level jocularity, good paintshop skills showed a Social Media post with a Brocolli player having fun with some Wolf Cubs. All funny of course, how I laughed. Because IT WAS TOO FUCKING EARLY! Who was responsible? Some fruitcake who doesn’t know about the Football Gods. Mate they have to be worshipped and offerings made pre game. The lucky item of clothing, some touch Sir Jacks foot, some have weird esoteric things they do before a match. But man, we don’t start waxing the fucking win lyrics before a balls been kicked. Nah. Maybe the odd prediction for your mates or your followers on the SOCMED but fucking hell Media team. Of course Ruben was quick to share it on the player chat they have on Whatsapp. Did it fire them up? I suppose it did in a way. I mean joking aside Pro Football players are a pretty competitive bunch but you know I think it did annoy them a bit.

Steve Davis God bless his name whacked on a 4-3-3 thing for us. Attacking for sure in that Wolves way that means it was like being attacked by a Foam Hand. But shapes were there for sure. The passing was a bit more exciting. A ping here and there, Adama having the time of his life down the right with shit loads of room to move around in. Gibbs White got some decent neck off the Molineux but man, It wasn’t high grade shit for sure it was a bemused piss taking I suppose. I like Morgz but never really understood him but it was his movement that lead to the first Broccoli chance. Decent chance too but wasted. So it’s all movement for sure and all a bit lacklustre I suppose, no real aggro in any of it. It’s to be expected of course, we are slowly climbing out of a pit of despondency and the lack of meaning. Clambering maybe, I dunno. It’s certainly not Wolves yet but it’s certainly wolves. I enjoy Jonny back on the right, I enjoy Ayit Nouri busting big shapes. I enjoy Ruben back (thank fuck). In fact I enjoy everything about where Stevie Davis and his mate Collins has decided to shift people. I like Hodgy being on the bench. I like him…..I might learn to love him too. There’s nothing like a bit of that Irish fight in a Wolves shirt. Tell ya what, I’m going to shut up about him now but in the next few months I am going to have things to say about this young man.

So yes, it’s definitely football on show and it seems like a few of the old loud faithful have got their hands on a spare ticket because there seems to be life in the old Molineux for a change. People are shouting and singing. I hope it didn’t upset people this show of emotion. I mean it ay Tennis is it? Were there some sweary words too here and there? Bloody hell ar dunno. We are moving into space though and tackles are being made, elbows jangling. Brocollis energy is mainly confined to the odd free kick or corner. They are a bit shit but they kind of remind me of us. Confusion sometimes, a lack of a quick pass, midfield was constrained by it purely because there was a lack of rhythm from both sides, a lack of cadence. When you watch better teams they have a uncanny sense of position and shape, they glide the ball to each other effortlessly and with artistic flourishes. No, none of that but it was workmanlike and kind of like great football. So we get a penno after some blazing Adama madness and Ruben steps up and wangs it in the net. 1-0 mate but there is a weird vibe to the whole celebration because I think the crowd has forgotten what it’s like to be in front in a game so confusion yes, happiness double yes. Will we build on it and forge ahead to send these East Midlanders back home with sad little East Midland faces? Nah. It’s Wolves so we forget we can slice these teams up and we make it hard for ourselves by just taking our feet off the gas at the worng moments. I mean I’m watching it on a stream, so I can’t get the full feeling. But that’s what it felt like. So the Brocollis end up getting a second touch and moving the ball. But they don’t look like Killers this lot. I think they have less of an idea of who they are than us lot.

Costa was making me laugh. I mean I love the bloke, he’s a nutcase. Half the battle in playing teams at Molineux is throwing some Psychological shapes at minds a bit thick to understand the whole Pantomime from Diego. He’s a few yeards short of fitness this Costa bloke, you can tell. He’s getting back though for sure. He might be firing on all cylinders by the time the new Coach has unpacked his bag at the Mount Hotel anyway. Certainly more to come from him but dude, people who watched him at the ground told me they loved his shithousing and man, I’m all behind that kind of Jazz.

Of course the brilliant Refereeing awards the Brocollis a penalty and a dimness falls on everything. You see inside us, we were hoping for a good win, or just a win really. I would have been looking at the sky at this point wondering why the Gods hate us….but man, we didn’t post any energy on the socials like they did. Why should we suffer? Why do we have to wangle our way through this game, a goal in front, only to see us denied? But I think the Gods had seen that photo the Brocollis media team had uploaded (then took down). Yes the Gods of Football had seen it. Although at the moment they do not cast a Godly eye upon our team they certainly gave Joe Sa some energy. Yes him with the floppy hand from a broken wrist. A fracture they say. The Gods giggle of course as they quaff their Ambrosia and cavort with the Nymphs or whatever the Football Gods get up to. They give Joe Sa the eye of love and subconsciously tell Sa where to go when he hits the ball. He saves. He’s only got one hand. Beautiful. I shout that loud the Tropical Fish start diving around. Splish Splosh.

It’s a win. Morgan Gibbs White isn’t smiling as he trudges off. The forecasted Morgz hat trick energy dissipated into the sky above Wolverhampton. A fucking win. It wasn’t pretty or beautiful. Still a very long way to go with this team but fucking hell, three precious points and a bit of impetus into the next match instead of glum post mortems and more energy that is dark and dank. To be honest it’s movement and positive movement that has to be transformed into some sort of belief for the team. These days are very uncertain for this team. A new Coach will arrive soon with their own ideas that need to be shoehorned into the teams abilities. Fine detail stuff that Coaches do best. The five dudes I spoke to down the canal that early had a mixture of post mortems about the game. From near ecstasy at the win to a depressed and sad mumbling about how shit we were. Typical Wolves stuff really, half full or half empty. But the way I look at it is this way. It’s a win. Three points. Positive movement. Something is happening. This team had a bit of belief in themselves yesterday and I think they are slowly but surely casting off the shroud of despondancy they have wrapped around themselves for the last few months. Ruben is learning how to be a Captain. Moutinho shouts on the touchline, commands and exhortations. Players are learning how to play with each other, are learning about each others football and personalities. Things are beginning to mesh together.

Young Hodge is throwing shapes, chasing the ball. A Forest player flies into the air after one of his challenges and Hodgey walks away non plussed. This young man I like. I wonder if, and hope he gets more first team chances. He is a beautiful thing to me. He reminds me of Roy Keane but finer detail. This, to me is the future of this team. Hunger and ability, passion and strength. For Gods sake I hope the new Coach doesn’t leave him back with the Yoots or send him out on loan. I want him right here playing every match, developing and learning everything he needs to. Yes, glints of light through the cloud me little sugar plums.

At the top of the John Ireland stand, the roof. It’s a strange look up there. I helped my mate weld some of the supports for the floodlights a couple of years ago. It was well dodgy and scary. Take away the fact I had been lumping pieces of steel up there for three hours. Heart beating like a Rat in a Greggs bin. Now a chance to have a good look. It was beautiful of course. The Emerald green pitch, the stands below me. Beautiful. I could see me Moms house, I could see where I was born, Low Hill, the Shropshire hills. South Staffordshire, Cannock chase. I sat there for a bit trying to fight the urge to throw myself off. Don’t worry, I always have that feeling when I am high up. Sorry to the people who would have liked me to jump hahahahahaha.

I always think about that day when something ‘Fosunny’ happens to the club and it kind of gives me a nice feeling even if I feel like storming into Molineux towers and smashing a few desks up. So Julen won’t be arriving. Fair play to him, look after your Dad. I can’t say a bad thing about his choice to stay in Spain and be a Son rather than arrive over here and deal with the absolute shit show Fosun have plopped onto our already aching heads. What the fuck are they playing at?

Thing is, most of the doughnuts I know have already entrenched themselves in the infomadness and the Interwebs and been throwing around names for a new Coach. Good names, solid performers who would have grabbed this team around the scruff of the neck and shook it up to the next page of our progression. These would have been dynamic choices, brave choices too. But Executives at Premier League clubs are used to making brave choices aren’t they? Not this one apparently. Pedro Martins for fucks sake. Sean Dyche, even poor old Mumo has been mentioned. It’s ok Mumo go back to bed it’s ok. Drink this it will help you sleep, stop fucking howling like a Wolf, it’s gone, dusted, finished. We remember the Albion game when you just looked at your hands and did nothing. What the fuck are Fosun doing? Mumo again? Fuck off, him going nearly gave me a depressive episode darker than a Miners armpit.

Fosunning of course. Chinese investment is dynamic only when you account for the ready cash they can throw at a club. It’s their mantra of course. Power through financial jiggery pokery. You want to throw weight around a Western orientated sports business? Let’s build a team to do it. Lets get people in who seem like they have a clue what they are doing. Lets get this team into some of those Board rooms in Europe and see how they fare. They have been eaten alive haven’t they? The Adama debacle, the beautiful players we have thrown back to mainland Europe, the Compton medical team, Neto being thrown back onto the pitch. I could type it all out but these are just some of the cock ups I have in my feeble mind at the moment. They have alienated most of their fanbase….the important ones anyway. Its just fuck up after fuck up. I mean this is the point where when I started writing about Wolves kind of expected us to be in that top six spot playing big European teams. Because the project start was a good one. Europa League, playing and beating the top six teams with aplomb and beauty. Great football, good comms with the players, movement, evolution.

But what we have now, isn’t that. Now we stand on the cusp of possible relegation. We have seen this happen before of course. I’m talking about us not ‘them’. They haven’t got a fucking clue of course. They are the people that believe what the club or the media tells them. We have a better idea of course. We were there in the early eighties, nineties, noughties you name it. Bin there got the fucking tayshirt. Wolves don’t do a little slide down the snake, they do the fucking hurtling into the abyss kind of disasters. We don’t do angst by halves mate. We are sniffing the air here, trying to match the same scents we had when Morgan and Moxey were fiddling with their crotches in the Billy Wright executive lounge while Mad Mick was Mad Micking with the team. Poor Terry Connor shoehorned into the vacant slot. This is Glen Hoddle time or Solbakken, this is where we get fucking Zenga’d into a mad few seasons hurtling around Carlisle or Huddersfield again.

We need a big change of tack. Fosun need to be brave here and take a long hard look at how they are doing business. It’s always tough to be introspective especially business wise. But Fosun need to look very hard at the team they have assembled here. I think they are fucking way out of their depth to be honest. I’m not going to report some of the stories I have heard off people that are firmly in the know. I operate on the fringes of the whole show you know. I listen to what people at the club tell me. I listen to Business men and Women that rattle around the Millionaires club at Molineux. I sell these people art of course, and for some reason they like to talk to me about things they have seen and heard. I will keep their remonstrances in secret. But the general atmosphere at the club and those dark corridors under the Billy Wright are not good. There are whispers that the team Fosun have given a practically free hand to don’t know what the fuck they are doing.

My opinion? For what it’s worth? The clubs executive structure needs a massive overhaul. Fosun need to weed out the people who are not performing and get them out of the club as soon as possible. Fosun know who these people are and they need to be on point with showing them the door. Jeff Shi of course is not one of them. He is just a Gonk put in place to be the eyes and ears of Fosun-China. A Money man, a Business man, but not a football man. Jeff Shi is probably just an administrator really, at heart. A Manager of business. He can throw himself around a spreadsheet, can employ people, move personnel around maybe. But Chinese ideas aren’t worth shit in this madhouse we call Molineux. What we need are Sharks not Dolphins. People who can walk into the Boardroom at Barcelona and make those Spaniards start shaking in their Gucci loafers. People who know what they want out of life and are willing to hitch their colours to the Wolves and start to break a few kneecaps in their day to day work. We haven’t got those people. Watch the video again where the Executive staff chat about their ideas. Look past the glitzy business footage, the info graphics and the sweeping shots of ‘people at work at desks’. Watch the videos closely and the people in them. They are dribblers and bullshitters. All the right keywords are bandied about but there’s no meat and veg there. It’s all fakery, it’s all shite and vacuous bollocks. The people in the Presidents Lounge at Molineux know this. They are hardened Black Country business people, they know fluff and bullshit when they see it.

I don’t even have to provide evidence for this, we see it in every bit of news about Wolves at the moment. There we are sniffing the air again like Wolves in a Forest. We have fucking been there mate. The smells coming out of Molineux and Compton at the moment are triggering off memories that all the shiny media bullshit can’t exactly cover up. This season might be a duff season. I can’t see us moving in any positive direction at the moment. I can’t see what the Philosophy of Dyche or Martins will bring to the club when it’s absolutely crying out for a bottom to the top regeneration of ideas and momentum. I can’t see what these Coaches will bring here except more trauma and upset. Time for Fosun to be brave. Get their eye back on the ball. Start slitting some throats in those corridors.

On top of the John Ireland stand a few years ago I did take a deep breath of that fine Wolverhampton air. The car fumes, the stink of industry, a waft of the greenery of West Park. If I was standing on top of that stand today I would want to smell blood.

Grifting section now. Only a few of these left so if you want to get hold of one for Crimbo get in there.

Waterloo Road Stand (Enclosure) Molineux A3 Print – PETALENGRO (yamyam.blog)