“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)

So Julen. By the time I’ve finished writing this you will probably be on the way to be being announced as the new Wolves Gaffer. Welcome to Wolverhampton mate. There are a few things I would like to throw into the mix as to what you should expect albeit from a bloke well on the fringes of the whole madhouse. This means I can probably give you a Fans eye view of what’s been going on. Sit yourself down bubba, have a cup of tea or a glass of wine or something….

Some insane things have gone on at Molineux over the past 18 months or so. I say insane because there’s no other way to put it. Things have gone very wrong dude. Most of this insanity is the fact that Fosun and our Ex Coach Bruno Lage had some very different ideas about how to run a football club. I think in many ways Bruno was given a green light to impose his style of Coaching on a group of dysfunctional individual football players. This style was very Philosophical and very academic. Which is great if you have a team of University Graduates with an inkling of Football Philosophy. Intelligent players. These are rare to find. Most football Pros you have to remember instead of spending their time in a Classroom learning about Philosophy etc they were most often found playing football in the streets or local park, playing for a team. This is good, this is how football players learn their trade. Via ‘Flying time’ getting the hours in and learning the basics of how to kick or control a ball, how to pass, shoot, defend. All these skills are honed on the grass or the concrete. You don’t really need to ‘Coach’ in many respects. But you do have to impart ‘Philosophy’ tactics, strategies and cunning plans. You must know by now that these tactics have to be explained in very simple terms. Big blocks of verbiage and instruction are a massive no-no. The long hours drilling the squad through video replays and funky software must be ditched. They are tools and not dogmatic aides for ideas. This group of players want to play football not learn about your crack of dawn mental insights. They learn that by osmosis and that takes time, trust and work. Be kind with them Julen. They are a squad bereft of everything at the moment.

But. They are a great squad. We have awesome players in this group. A raw material in which to mold and form to your own ideas. I have read much about how you impart these ideas and I have enjoyed reading about them. You have a relationship with your players, and this is good also. I love the fact that you will drop in here (probably) and immediately start working out the dynamics of the group, there are many dynamics and relationships within the squad. It will be a nightmare at first to ascertain what the fuck is going on. The players have filled a void left by Nuno and not really filled in by Lage. So, players fill it, they have become emboldened to fill that void with their own shapes and ideas and to be honest they shouldn’t have been allowed to do that. But that’s a problem that can be internalised within the corporate shape of Fosun and that Management at a distance vibe Fosun have implemented. This Club Julen can be yours if you want it. You can make a mark here with this team if you approach the job with the same zeal, you have used previously at other clubs.

Bring Adama back into the vibe. He has been lost for a few years. Bruno Lage has never understood the extremely complex Adama Traore. Adama is worth the time and effort to inspire and that is the truth. Make him a key part of your plans. Play him high, get him to run at defenders, get him whipping those crosses in. Get players in the fucking box waiting for it. Be insane my friend. Let these players play football. Let them enjoy their football. Players….big faces have left the club and the players left behind here may want to fill those smaller voids. Allow them to do this, let them paint their own Masterpieces on the canvas of the Molineux pitch.

The same can be said for other players who have been left to emotionally fend for themselves. When that duty of care is cast away under another three hour kick by kick analysis of the previous game you lose them. They get bored. A sympathetic and empathic approach is what is needed now. A word here and there. A phrase or an admonition. Short bursts of verbal instruction not pages of notes. Don’t be abstract and obtuse with these players. Allegory and metaphoric analysis are not a pre requisite to be a footballer listening to his Coach. Here’s me chatting like a Prick to a European Coach about how to do his job. I apologise. Who am I? Just a bloke of course. An idle face in the crowd….but that crowd.

Wolves Fans are a funny bunch, like all football fans really. We like to feel part of things, part of the club. It’s hard to love Fosun and their acolytes. Where Nuno was the oil in the gears between the fans and Fosun, under Lage we were left alone. Bruno never loved us. I don’t think he ever really wanted to know who we were knowing that his tenure was bound to be short and sweet. Another void my friend. One that you will have to fill somehow. How do you do that? Be honest. The Club is filled with those who would use their position to advance their own agendas. Ignore those people. In your first game in charge look over to your right. That’s the Southbank. It is not what it was of course. Wolves have lost many of it’s vociferous and vocal fans. I have said before that Covid, Cost of living crisis and the struggle to survive on Clown Island has meant that many of the fans that stood in that stand have found other things to do. Fosun has tried to leave us behind of course but deep in that stand we still survive just about and we will be watching. Be honest with us and you will have the support you need to impose your own ideas and we will stand with you. Get the players you have under your command to play Wolves football. Attack, you have the players. Galvanise them, inspire them. These teams that we play against are defunct when we attack. It’s the Wolves way, deep in our DNA we like to fight and struggle. It’s a Black Country thing for sure but it’s also a Wolverhampton thing. This clubs identity is purely Wolverhampton. It’s not global and it’s not the brand, it’s not record companies and kit sponsors or any of the bullshit that flies around the club now we are in the Premier League. It’s about ‘Pack mentality’ it’s about sticking up for your team and team mates, it’s about loyalty and the fight that’s all. It’s not complicated.

I am looking forwards to your work here and I welcome you. What a glorious opportunity to build something new and dynamic with these players. But like I said before….at your first game lift your head up and look around you, look at us. We are also important.

PS I have produced some prints that I am letting go hyper cheap on my Gallery shop. I know this Xmas will be tough for some people and they make great presents, something they will keep for years to come. Diego Costa too, I am sure he will set Molineux alight at some point and I love him for that. He was a perfect foil to contrast neatly with the other art available on there. Check it out in the link below

Diego Costa Xmas Edition – PETALENGRO (yamyam.blog)

Well….yeah. It’s been a funny old week at Molineux towers hasn’t it? It’s like working in a Factory or production line, rumours of a Management clear out. It is discussed over the shit sandwich you made and the cup of tea with stuff floating on top. Us, the great unwashed. What do we know us ‘Legacy’ fans, how can we extrapolate our experiences to the tangled web of Managerial appointments and the Borg like Fosun? Man, we can’t, but we can wax about it so you can imagine this post as a chat in the canteen sipping hot tea fast so you still have time for the two roll ups you have to inhale before starting work again.

Fosun don’t know what they are doing. I mean we have watched them from afar and made our minds up pretty much. We see the Executive team Jeff Shi has assembled and we hold our heads in our hands and shake it slowly from side to side. They really haven’t got much of a clue have they? I mean Bruno Lage for fucks sake. He was making YouTube videos before we dragged him here to look after a dysfunctional squad. Never trust a man who’s face is bigger than his head. What ideas did Bruno bring? I don’t actually know, I’ve watched his idea of football but I’m still in the dark as to what he actually wanted out of Fosuns team of players. He was an uninspiring zoid for me. Absolutely no connection with the fans at all. You know ‘fans’ us like. Did we have any feelings for him? At West Ham he lost the Wolves Away crowd. This was a major fuck up. Every Wolves Coach needs the away lot. They are the most knowledgeable about the Wolves game. These people are that into the idea of Wolves that sometimes it verges on mental illness but they are still a group that should be listened to. But the weird esoteric substitutions, the tactics, the fucking zeitgeist. Bruno treating us great unwashed like he’s just stepped in a turd. Nah Bruno was never the right choice. I am glad the mumbling prick has gone but unsure of whether a new appointment will do anything to halt this weirdness around the team.

Now I know I could fill this page with energy about subs, tactics, players etc. But it’s already been said on all the platforms, chat rooms and spaces, all over the socials. It has gone very wrong. Many of the ‘Newfans’ won’t really understand what’s going on but we do. Us Legacy freaks. Jeff Shi has fucked it up. He listened too much…listened to the Lizards he has put around the dysfunction of Compton and Molineux. We know who they are of course and I don’t have to name names. But ultimately, it’s Jeffs fuck up. He’s the one that assembled the backroom team. The highly wracked off medical department filled with Staff who have a very murky past. The Brand ambassadors, the ‘football experts’, the brand builders. Compton has become a trough to feed in and the Brand thrives there like a pulsing tumour sucking the life out of the club. The brand is everywhere but nowhere at the moment.

We look at the team, who are they? Do we know them? They don’t want to know us that’s for certain. But I think that’s because they don’t know us. Teams in the past knew who we were and even if times and certain seasons were a pain in the arse they were still Wolves and we were too. But now, we don’t know. We haven’t battled with them because they haven’t got the fight in them and we haven’t either at the moment. Covid, VAR, cost of living crisis, a team full of Prima Donnas, a Molineux full of people sick to the back teeth of brand bullshit. This is a hefty cocktail of shite that the new Coach has to navigate when he pulls his chair up at his desk at Compton. There has to be a big clear out there. There must be some sort of ‘Night of the Long Knives’ when he does arrive. We need someone with the ideas and energy to transform the culture of Non Entity at Compton. Someone who is really going to set the dogs on most of the staff there. If this is to happen and it is badly needed then there also has to be a transformation of the executive staff too. Scott Sellars isn’t fit for purpose in these times of War. Neither is Big Vinny. We need hungry men and women to transform our fortunes and I don’t think the Executive Team have it in them to knock the top off a rice pudding.

The team. I feel sorry for the new dudes. They must be wondering what the fuck is going on. They are not inspired and even in the late warmth of Autumn when Compton explodes in colour they can’t raise a fight so what’s going to happen when the good old British Winter arrives and everything is dark and the sun they have in their souls is getting slowly dimmer. I think Diego Costa will be a more important addition than we think. I suspect Diegos madness and his stoic visage will be kicking up a stink in that dressing room. I hope he may put a bit of fight in the team as he lays the foundations of his time here. But there has to be change. There has to be some madness that is allowed to flow through the echelons of the Molineux corridors. Ideas even. We haven’t had any for ages. So what are we going to get? Another Gestifute yes man? Another faceless Portuguese Coach? Another lyrical non entity? How about Jeff goes and fetches someone that will shake the foundations of Molineux with ideas and then links with the fans like Nuno did. Nuno understood the importance of having the fans close to the team, to have them feel a part of the project and the idea, the philosophy of football. Since he departed we haven’t had anything like that. All we ask is that we can become part of the project again. Stop thinking about global brand reach and start making links with Wolverhampton again. People from Wolverhampton are good people, the best people and you can’t keep ignoring them. The Club will always be bigger than the brand. Fosun are eating the cake that hasn’t even been cooked yet.

The Club is in disarray but we aren’t at ‘that’ point yet where we have to lose our heads. These are interesting times hence I am writing about it again. I had nothing to say about Bruno Lage. The Coach that flew back to Portugal after every match when he should have been at Compton working out what went wrong (or right). Managing the dysfunctional squad we have. Man management, being right on point for every player, just being there for them. Less of the seeking for solutions more searching for answers. He fell short in every way and will become a Zenga of our times but without the humour and madness. Bruno was decaffeinated, he looked like a Coach and said all the right things (sometimes) but he was tasteless, lifeless, a Fosun Droid and a yes man. Not what Wolves needed after the essence of Nuno departed.

It will be interesting to see if Guo gets involved. He wont be happy with Jeff Shi. A lot of Fosun money has been invested in this idea, this brand. I suspect Jeff has been working very hard going over the fine print in running this club but you know I also suspect he has been that busy with his face pressed against his Apple Mac screen that he’s not been looking at the larger picture. I suspect he has trusted and delegated his Executive decisions to be made by the underlings he has assembled to push the club on. I think he has trusted people who should not be trusted and this current situation is largely his fault.

We carry on of course. Supporting the team even if we don’t really know who they are. I said at the start of the season it was going to be long, disjointed and fucking weird. But we can deal with that, me and you, the people that read this blog, the Legacy massive. We have been here before of course and know it intimately. But this time we have a great squad (on paper) a squad bereft of inspiration. A squad but not a team really. This next Coach appointment is going to be one of the most important additions to the idea of Wolves that has been made for years and years. Jeff has to get this right. Go out on a limb for fucks sake, let a bit of madness in, get us a Coach with drive, ideas, mental tenacity, and the gumption to face the squad he has and forge something new and exciting. Get us a Coach that understands the importance of having the fanbase on side. We know that we can’t win every gamne but all we ask is that you fight when you are on the pitch and try to remember there are people paying to watch you who can barely afford to go to the Molineux now, they have made big sacrifices to be there. Give us something to sing about, make us proud again.

I will be writing again about Wolves. It is time for a new chapter and I think the next few years are going to be very interesting so it’s worth me sitting down for a few hours every week and writing something about my thoughts. Out of fucking darkness cometh light and we are standing on top of the subway looking at the dark skies waiting for that slither of sunlight.

Hotspurts again and Mumo. Haven’t we suffered enough? These results sting for sure but I feel unattached to the politics around them now. It’s Wolves time again and strangely I am at the Corner of the North Bank and John Ireland stand. Because I’m hunting for something again, some attachment before I go in. Some dude from the USA wants to get the South Bank experience and is up for a ticket swap. He has North Bank tickets. He is a nice chap, he buys some prints off me on the Wolves car park but I am hardly listening to him. I’m just looking at how huge the North Bank is now. It’s massive. So I saw tickets and off he goes but I have an hour to spare. So I sit down and just look at the outside of the ground and watch the people milling around. There is a lot of people in the shop. Many smart people going into the corporate posh bit of the North bank. They don’t look happy though. It’s like they are being forced to attend. I am on me tod again. I kind of like just milling around outside and watching people do the Wolves thing. Inside the ground, inside the bowels of the North Bank you can’t smell piss and cigarettes any more which is a good thing, I think. It’s all pretty sterile and clean. Not too clean mind but a bit bright and clean if you know what I mean. I but a Pie and a pint of Carling I think. I don’t drink as a rule but one wont hurt too much. I sip and nibble while watching. Nobody says anything. A Steward asks if I’m OK. I must look lost and confused. I am I suppose. This is not my stand, not my people really. It’s quite civilised and nice.

It’s not cold but I am shivering a bit. The sound system inside is farting some unlistenable music with some shouty stuff too. But I am right there again, 1978. Same scenario really but the ground is looking crumbled. Plants grow out of the cracks in Molineux street. Algae grows on the yellow gloss that has been splattered across the rotting wood that pretends to be gates and entrances to turnstiles. The cement is falling out of the bricks. Graffitti everywhere here. Not sprayed from a can but painted in the yellowing remains of a tin of white gloss paint left over from another domestic revamp. The graffitti is simple and uncomplicated. ‘Fuck Spurs’ painted over ‘Wolves Spurs’. ‘Kick to Kill’ and ‘We will fuck you up’ or ‘Leeds will die’. All lovely and welcoming. But there is a match on back in 1978 and who knows who it was we were playing. We didn’t care. I was probably 12 years old and already a little bastard in the making. Cast your eye upwards to that little piece of half rusted angle iron sticking out of the wall. As I sit now, we sat back in 1978 because that was our ticket. That little bit of metal. Wolves would hang on a piece of wood with hooks and on that wood was little slide in numbers. You looked at the number and ripped the appropriate ticket out of your season ticket book. But we didn’t have season tickets. We didn’t have tickets either. We didn’t have money to get in.

Already, in Molineux alley we had tried to scale the wall that backed onto the toilets in the South Bank. You hang around and find some likely lad, a grown up, a youth, anybody that could give you a bunk up to where the wall was starting to bow out. To find a small crack that was just big enough for a childs hand, a small hand to just cram in so you could get the worn out sole of your pumps to grip the crumbling brick. Then your right hand would grab the piece of rotten wood screwed to the wall. Grip it hard because the fall was a good fifteen feet by now but a shuffle, another chink in the brickwork and you were nearly there. three or four feet above was a tangle of barbed wire. But there was also the wall of the urinals. Get up there and you were in. The teams were out now. The crowd inside was vocal and it sounded alive and you wanted in. Shuffle grab, climb, scrabble up. Get a hand on top of the wall. There was always some half pissed bloke willing to pull you over, to get you in. Sometimes you would fall in the puddles of piss, sometimes there would be some twat who wouldn’t help you up. Sometimes there was a Copper. Whack. A truncheon across the fingers. Yes, he was there. The pain was horrible. You wanted to drop but it was thirty feet down. So you swallowed the pain, tried to get that mangled hand to grab hold of things, you slip and you slide and drop. Smack onto the concrete of Molineux alley cussing the Copper, all the names under the sun. People walk by and laugh. Your mates are sad and don’t help. They want in and are not worried about injuries from Cops. It’s the normal state of things when bored Cops would roust you in the darkness and give you a Fat Lip for ‘Ron’ or a knee in the balls. There breath would stink of beer. They had been in Dunstall road Police Station club. Had a few before the match. My fingers stinging. So we would walk around the ground. Stragglers running up to the turnstiles. Operated by Old Blokes with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths collecting coins, notes, tickets. Not looking up. But foot operated turnstiles that clicked and clanked as another Punter paid their money.

I’m chuckling to myself outside in the present. I painted Molineux alley not so long back. A Dad and his Son walking up to the match. Not for me though. No adult took me, none of us had parents that took them to the football. Times were tight, strikes, no money, no attention really. We were the Wolves Orphans. Round to the North Bank and that piece of metal. You see if you were limber enough you could cram a foot in the wall after a run up and jump, grab the iron and pull yourself up. Get a foot in there. Balance like fuck, grab the top of the wall. Clamber to the top. Just pop your head up and have a look see if there were any Old Bill about, hand still stinging. The crowd erupts, something happening for sure. The cigarette smoke curling around the edges of the roof and dissipating into the weird light from the floodlights, into the sky and gone. So I look. No Coppers, thread a leg through the barbed wire. A bit catches your jumper and pulls a thread out but that’s ok as it’s got holes in anyway. Thread yourself through. On the other side some Asbestos roofing. The floodlights above are like giants. Slide down gently, nonchalantly, like you do this every week. I am in. Run into the bowels of the Northbank past bemused Wolves fans. Up the stairs. The pitch, everything in colour. How green and brown is that pitch? The players shirts Golden, glowing. Football. ‘Ooooh’ the crowd goes. Dougan shot. Everyone claps. You look back see who else has got in. Flared trousers, Solatio shoes, the odd skinhead, the odd Boot Boy. No one yet. Football.

‘Fucking hell Coady’ someone murmurs behind my seat after Spuds score a goal. I watch the football but I am dispassionate about it for a change. Observer rather than an active participant. I feel crumbly like the old Molineux walls. The graffti scrawled on me by half pissed tattooists long ago faded and illegible. The wounds I got here still ache a bit sometimes. I can only breathe through one nostril because I have a piece of nose bone blocking the other one. I’m an anachronism like the old ground but I am planted here certainly. Underneath the branding and the shine the murk still settles and the old Ghosts still wander underneath.

2021. I don’t have to try and climb in anymore. I have tickets. I painted it of course. Art when you look at it hanging on a wall is mostly just seen, observed but rarely looked at. I know every part of that old Molineux because it was my playground and football became something that broke up the monotony of those days, something exciting. I knew every pothole and every brick nearly because my childhood involved finding ways to get in, to watch. In those days Molineux was sinking into the ground, becoming part of the geology of that place. Pieces of roof were green with vegetation. Pieces of cladding were falling off. If it was metal it was rusting. If it was wood is was rotten, if it was concrete then it was crumbling. Gone were the fifties when everything was clean, maintained and cared for. It was a jewel Molineux, world famous. But this? Today it still looks a bit mouldy. Algae is growing on the steel of the New Stand. The concrete is crumbling in places. There is graffiti too but now it’s symbols, scrawled names we don’t know or understand. Tags in spray paint or marker pen. People still mill around but it is sterile milling. No one seems to talk any more. Heads down and get in, watch the match, get out, cross it off the list.

Please enjoy this art, it took a long time to paint. Four weeks I think between other projects. Every slash of colour and sweep of a pen a memory for sure. Perhaps a longing too for simpler times. I will whack this up at a high price for the simple reason I love it. It brings out memories I had lost for a while and makes them fresh. If I sell it I will buy that printing press I need because I haven’t finished with the Molineux yet. You may look at the price and gasp a bit but I don’t care. I see a Steve Bull print has just been flogged for 500 quid. I have been told another of my paintings of Molineux I never shared has been obtained for £1500. I want this printer, I want the memory of Molineux here to make more beautiful things. Ah the madness of it.

Click on my shop link for details Petalengros Gallery and Shop – SOUTHBANK RESISTANCE (yamyam.blog)

Yes. That familiar feeling. Deep down in your belly, it rumbles and makes you feel a bit sick. Trepidation that everything is about to go tits up at the Wolves again. Something we ‘Wolves fans’ us ‘Legacy partners’ know very well. Of course the new customers at Wolves world won’t have experienced this pain. You will see them wondering around outside the Molineux, milling about around the FanZone where they wonder what the fuck they are supposed to do now. They paid their money, bought the crap shirts, spent their money in the club shop, followed Miami Dave and Dazzling Dave on the socials and on YouTube. But they don’t really know what to do.

We do of course. Me and you, the blokes and women that have been here for what seems an eternity. Going through that crap, well, you can wax lyrics about it to each other. Us real Wolves fans have a support network you see, where we can vent our angst at each other, discuss stuff, the team, the policy, the way forwards. These discussions wont take place in Fanzones and Youtube accounts. They will be made over watery lager in Mcghees, the Duke of York, the Old Still or on the socials later where we know who to listen to and who to mute.

I’m standing and watching the Toney and Marcal show. Marcal is acting like a tight fitting tshirt to Toney. In the first instance Marcal is pulling Toney around and it’s funny, it’s just what we want. A bit of animal. It’s good. The Ref blows his whistle and comes over to have a word. I see Toney talking to the Referee. I can lip read a bit as I’m a bit deaf.

“Ref watch him….he’s all over me….just watch him….Ref, watch him’ and of course as the ball comes back into the box all the Ref is doing is watching Marcal, the Refs hand is holding a whistle ready to blow. It was a penalty before the ball came back in. The Ref just waited and Marcal again started to pull, twist, tread on feet, to wrestle Toney away from getting a head on it. The Ref see’s enough and he blows. Penalty.

The Officiating was awful again of course. The quality of Officials has deteriorated massively over the past few years. Again we see this on our pitch, in our ground and we again are on the revieving end of it. I hope Brentford go down. It will be a brilliant thing for me. The Premier League has enough problems without this kind of crap. Endless falling on the ground in the middle of a Wolves attack. I mean endless. Brentford players were flopping around like Spiceheads in the town. Gargling and writhing in pain, then seconds later leaping around like Salmon. It was horrible to watch. It was horrible to see a few of their players wink and laugh at the crowd in the South Bank. They knew what they were doing and they did it brilliantly. But it’s not football my friends.

Seeing as we are customers and the team we supported are now a brand, I guess that makes us consumers now. I suppose as well we can now critique the product free from any kind of allegiance that we had before. There is a big split now in how we perceive the brand. On the one hand we can operate under the fallacy that we are something to do with the club on a metaphysical level. That somehow FosunWolves and us have similar goals and hopes. On the other is the dawning realisation that really we have nothing at all to do with the product at all and Wolves are really becoming some sort of abstract entity. It looks shiny for sure. We have absolutely brilliant football players who if I was managing a football team I would snap up without a seconds thought. When we play ball we play with a flair that I haven’t seen for years down there. But we don’t really play as a team much now. Instead we have eleven individuals who are basically playing their own game and sometimes elements of their game will overlap with a few of their team mates and everything seems good and wholesome. But this happens rarely now and the darkness in our hearts, which is always there is coming out, getting stronger, biting away at the few tendrils of hope that we had when Bruno came.

This Senior management team are shit. Jeff has dropped a massive bollock taking them on. Now when we look at aspects of the day to day running of the club we see that things are going tits up at an accelerating pace. Ticket cock ups, Merch cock ups, Communication cock ups, trainer shoes, Jeff Shi’s high pitched mumbling and sticking metaphorical plasters over open wounds. Shut up. Buy stuff. Look at our Cruise ship partners when many of our fanbase can’t afford a week in Barmouth. Look at our range of merch which looks like it’s been designed by a 13 year old with an Apple Mac and a brief written on a take away menu. Tickets not arriving, phone calls not being answered, merch turning up weeks late, tickets not working at the turnstiles. The team slowly soaking up the darkness that permeates the corridors of Molineux.

The transfer window was a mess like pretty much the previous seven or so I read on the socials. Nothing was changed, everything stayed the same. The shape of the team was static and unmoved by the few players we collected. Things seemed like the ghost of Nuno still wailed down the corridors at Trumpton….sorry Compton. What Wolves needed desperately was a world class Coach who could work with extremely limited resources, who could galvanise the squad by pure management skill. I don’t think Bruno Lage is that man to be honest, not yet any way. Perhaps if given resources and cash he might just keep us up this season but things are going to be very tight. I don’t have the loyalty to the brand or the staff at Molineux any more to be honest. The team, always. 100% support through thick and thin but I’m also a realist now. Gone is the ascendant and positive metaphysics of my slathering love and words on backing the abstract ministrations of the Board and senior management. They talk beautiful words on how the team is preparing and even have some about how the future will look but I don’t believe any of that any more. I want to see concrete things in front of my eyes. Victories in football games for a start. I can even deal with defeats as well, it’s a sport and we will lose games, but what I can’t deal with is capitulations and stupidity like we saw yesterday. It was fucking awful. One match where we looked kind of like a team, we scrounge a win at Watford, we don’t look great but it’s a win. Then the next match we capitulate to a team full of shithouses, a team that has a defence that’s Championship quality. A Gonk team.

It’s magic tile time now where we move players in and out of the system. Put him there and he can go over there, play so and so in that position, get rid of him, replace with that one then move him over there. But it’s just jerking off over Pornhub again. It’s really nothing to do with us any more. Fosun consolidate the idea of what the product will look like and we are just supposed to suck it up. Bruno is the fall guy who has to work with this dispirited bunch, we are the people that watch and shake our heads plodding disconsolately back up to Town dodging the subway Crackheads and bad Bob Dylans. Funny that the guitarist in the subway was wailing ‘The Times They Are a-changing’ when me and Little Andy walked through on the way to the game.

How will things change? In the next few months Fosun are going to start having to pay big fees for these players they have brought in. This is big investment money and to be honest I think they have spent in the wrong places. I think they have been bamboozled by the team that Jeff has created and I think (suspect) that Jeff has lost the plot. Fosun Godfathers will be looking closely at what is happening at Wolves and they wont be pleased. But it’s ok producing a product and a brand to sell but who wants a shoddy product like this? ‘Legacy fans’ like us, who Jeff and Co hate with a passion will turn up regardless. We are Wolverhampton Wanderers fans. It’s what we do, turn up, watch the team, wax some lyrics and wait until the next match. We are a captive audience but also a very clever one. We have seen it all over the years. We know this darkness intimately. Others not so much. At the end of the match boos. Some of it was at Brentford and was deserved but I say this, some of it was directed at Jeff and the Board and the toxic Molineux has started to grow and poke it’s head through the cracks.

Our job of course is to close ranks again. We have done this much over the years. Nothing we say or do will affect any day to day running of the club. Nothing we wax about will be held in any regard by the team, the staff or the management team. Jeff doesn’t care what we think as long as our money keeps trickling into the club. The only thing that matters to us is how the team play their football and how we show our support. At this moment I still think Bruno can just about turn it around and keep us competitive. We have quality players who have forgotten that football is really about the team and how they bounce of each other and communicate. I am sure they will come good, I am sure that Bruno will have an epiphany of sorts as he tries to galvanise this dispirited bunch of players. Who will hold their nerve longer? Fosun or us? When will the consumers at Molineux decide the product isn’t fit for purpose any more and voice that disquiet? Will Bruno still be here at Christmas? Will Jeff? Will Miami Dave?