The thing is man. I liked Conor Coady for the simple reason he was (at the time) probably the most important Wolves player of the last five or six years for me at least. He came to Wolves at a critical time and then he moved positions at a Critical time too. Initially he came to us as a Midfielder and yes, I could see that. He could spray a ball 40 yards for it to land at someones feet. Fair enough he was no Midfielder, we could see that. But he could trap a ball, fend off an opposition player. He was Physical for sure and a Leader. Vocal. Many called him Mr Shouty Man which was funny, but we needed that after Saville and Super Dave Edwards lolloping around in our Midfield. He wasn’t a Midfield upgrade for sure but he was something that had energy. A few saw in him something that could be utilised by Wolves….Nuno did. He stuck him in a defence that needed some personality, some essence in it people around them could trust and listen to. Even if Conor didn’t really understand (initially) the complexities of being a defensive player he learned fast and he buckled down to learn more. It was this capacity to learn that enamoured him to me. He wore a lot of hats in those years Conor did. He wore them all well because we watched it and saw it. Many people watched the team play and saw the sexy players, the beautiful passing, the wing play, Ruben Neves, Joao Moutinho, Cavaleiro, Little Helder. But I watched Conor constantly because he was learning in every game he played. He ordered and arranged our defence as best he could, galvanising the players around him. What a presence. What a Leader he was.

Of course, me and Horace were very happy to have Conor in the team. We were fans. On my part of course I Fan Boyed Coady to bits. But it was never his style of football I liked, or where Nuno put him in the team. It was all Metaphysical to me. Wolves at that time had a huge influx of players bankrolled by Fosun rolling into Compton. These were beautiful players from Europe. Instilled in them was this aloofness and fear as well. New club, new team, new ways to play. I am of the mind Conor was a pivotal character in those days acting as a lubricant if you will for angular and abstract characters to ease their way into a completely new environment. How else could we find a way into loving that team? Nuno aloof, the Borg Fosun, players we hardly knew but there was Conor every weekend, playing, ordering and just being Conor Coady.

The energy he got from the Fans of course was polarised. Often he was picked as a scapegoat and those voices grew as we became more dysfunctional towards the end of Nunos time and under Lage that dysfunctionality grew and grew. One voice isn’t enough of course to provoke decent footballing displays but one victim of Social media angst is all that’s needed sometimes. I see the arguments of course, I didn’t agree with some of the invective. But that’s Football fandom ay it. Like Marmite Coady was for some. I liked it some didn’t.

He did well. We had a tight defence for a long time, there were some weird results in our storming of the Premier League in those days. When things got a little confused and ragged. But he was there, he was a voice, a personality and he had some football to offer too. The transformation of the Wolves Championship winning squad into a Premier League team I think was facilitated by his Leadership. Not least by Coadys ability to act as a sort of filter between the Fans and this new team. At least he was someone we knew, someone we liked. We didn’t know who the rest of them were really and they definitely didn’t know who we were but Conor had an idea.

We won at Preston 2-1 I think it was. Me and Horace gently walking and chatting as we walked round the ground to get back to the car. People had sort of drifted away back to the Trains, Coaches etc and we were the only people walking . We ambled past the Team Coach and there was Conor walking onto the Coach. I shouted him and he came over and had a chat about Footy and other things. I came away a bit love struck. What a nice Young man. Astute and intelligent, affable. This was what I wanted in a Player. Add on the fact that he had to move positions and the need to relearn parts of the job and I was happy to have my photo taken with him. It’s framed and on my wall. Me looking like some Crackhead and him looking quite confused. He signed it, it will remain one of my most precious possessions. Especially after saying Hello etc we walked off down the road only to bump into about 30 Preston Youth spoiling for a slap. But Conor made me too happy to roll around the floor or start searching a nearby building site for pieces of scaffold pole. Conor Coady made me too happy to punch people.

Now we are losing him again. Everton decided not to take up the option of buying him. A big mistake from them I think. He is going to the Crisp Shaggers instead. Another Championship scramble is on the cards for them. Tough shit, but buying Coady is one of the best acts they will perform this season. I know I could shoehorn Conor into a Julen team. With my poor footballing brain I could get him in there somehow, I’m sure of it. But I’m speaking from the Heart and not my head. What do I know about the intricacies of Coaching a team of 11 Men? Nothing at all really. I’m like you I just watch the team, support, shout and offer whatever platitudes I have in this blog.

He’s one of us Coady is. He was never one for the Codsalls. They hated him because he was one of us really. A normal affable bloke quite willing to engage in a bit of banter and a laugh. He bent over backwards to help out when we needed something signing for someone having a hard time. He was quick to send video messages of support to quite a few Fans who we knew and loved. 99% of this went under the Radar pretty much but his work gave Fosun/Wolves or ‘The Brand’ a Public face for a while, one in which we have missed over the last couple of seasons.

For this reason and the fact he was my favourite Player and Captain of these Fosun years, I will miss him badly. There are scores of games I could talk about. The England games he played in, the Leeds game, the match against Manchester United when we played one of our first games in the Premier League. Horace texted Coady some love of course and the promise that he would be welcome to stand by us in the South Bank whenever he wanted. I loved Coady being here. Good luck mucker and have a good’un, don’t forget us mate. As a footnote big love to Conors Mom and Dad too. I met them at a Dinner thing and we had a great chat and a laugh. God Bless. He did good here your Lad did.

Viktor Gyökeres eh? Scored some goals, good link up play, young, hungry and overpriced. Of course Wolves would be interested in him. I mean for one reason he’s scored some Goals which is more than could be said for most of the Wolves team at the minute. But what’s the info? Well, he’s expensive for sure at 25 Millys. For sure we would have paid that a couple of years ago, probably. But then again when Coventry spent just over a Million squid on him that’s a bloody big price to put on a bloke after one decent season. But he’s strong, would make a good foil for Hwang, maybe let Hwang get unlocked a little. It’s all dream world stuff of course, for us great unwashed anyway…

For ‘Interested’ probably read ‘browsing’. Of course he’s on the Wolf Radar. There’s probably a file on Hobbys desk as I speak. He’s probably looking at the folder out of the corner of his eye but there’s a big yellow post-it note on the front saying 25 MILLIONS SQUIDS! Which makes Hobbsys hand shake a little bit and he moves his hand back. Now the current value of a player like him could be seen as an easy 7-15 Millys. Creative Forward, likes to spray the ball around and give him half a chance he will put his foot through the ball. He’s Old school 6 foot 2 and strong. He’s a right body. But 25 Million?

Viktor isn’t worth that of course. The figure probably represents Coventry anger and pain that they can’t keep him. Their eyes have got big thinking they can pump Jeffs wallet for some big dollars. But it’s not going to happen unless the price drops by at least half. He’s a 10 Milly player for sure. Coventry make 9 Millys and we try to shoehorn him into the system. Will that happen? Probably not. Who knows what Julen and Hobbsy think about him while they circle the great Golden information Void of Molineux? I know I don’t want to flow Coventry big money after the Robbie Keane thing back in the day. It’s a big risk that. I’m also thinking we are looking at 5-10 Milly players from the ‘Young and Hungry’ tropes.

My dudes tell me signings are ready to happen and again no one will expect the players that are coming in. Someone says ‘Nobody knows who they are’ and I can see that. Hobbs I suspect did more networking in South America than people realise. I think Big Fran going back to Spain was an admission that Hobbs doesn’t need his hand holding when it comes to throwing transfer shapes. I also think (based on what people have said to me since he first popped into our minds) that Hobbs is moving into circles and connecting very well indeed.

Just a few thoughts and lyrics for this weird day when it’s cool and dull.

This is a post I did some years back but man, I can’t wax lyrics about it yet but will think deeper about the impact Ruben had at this Club.

Douglas puts in a corner, it’s the second half. I’m not sure what to expect. Those corners Duggo sticks in slices the air always, Afobe stands ready to flick on for whoever has thrown themselves into the box. The air is misty with pyro madness, smoke and mirrors this side. Who knows what to expect. The ball hangs for sure. Time is just slices and moments of anticipation with this team and we stand and observe. Our hearts are nailed to these moments. Every part of these divine seconds is heavy with anticipation of course. We demand it. We require the magical and the esoteric. We need these moments to exist and the holy movements are writ again large on the field of play. It is as if these moments, heavy as they are have their own ethereal existence and the quantitative empirical permutations of the act of winning are thrown down at our feet. But Neves is aloft from this, he see’s the magical art and the possibility of novelty and creative passion restored to the turf, to the shuffling feet, the expectation is magnificent and holds on to your belly in a tight grip. No way, surely not, not today, this is not us, this is us, this is them, these are our days…surely not.

A Derby defender heads away out of the box and everything is still. You see I’m on my feet by now. Bones smash against bone. Fractured legs are nothing compared to this…something. What is about to happen? I’m not sure but I can feel it in the pit of my stomach. Something is going to happen. Intuition or something. Deja Vu? I’m not supposed to stand up but here I am. That pain is nothing. Because Neves. Our Ruben is in space. All the Molineux is a stage right now but the spotlight is on him. There is a strange silence. I am sure I can here the flags flapping on top of the Steve Bull stand. The ropes tapping against the flag poles. Is it not said that in battle often there are quiet moments? Precious moments where the world stops for a second? I think God goes to sleep during those divine slumbering seconds, Gods eyes are shut and what dreams that goes through Gods eyes are possibly made real here in this world we inhabit. These dreams that God has are writ on the green grass where the wafts of pyro smoke linger as a mist almost. Subtle but magnificent dreams they are for God at least. But they are made real here tonight.

He is in space because that is his place here. Everything is channelled into this moment. The culmination of Nunos Heresies. The epitome of delights. We have suffered have we not? Have we endured the pain of the past for this one moment? The days shuffling out of the Southbank for beauty such as this? The Lamberts, the Saunders, the players who came and refused to believe in anything apart from themselves. The Morgans and the Moxeys, Sir Jack broken by strife his heart still full of love but his mind broken by this insane love of Wolves we have in which he shared totally.

I suspect as that ball hangs in the air that even the Gods stop their governance of the universe and pause for a second to cast an eye upon him. The ball falls. Every player is motionless as they are about to witness something they will never see again. We stand motionless. Watch the video replay. Watch the crowd. Listen to the audio. There is a hush. There is a moment of intense anticipation and time is flowing on but slower and more refined in some ways. It slows down because for some reason we have already anticipated something divine and magical. Wizardry this is. Not Harry Potter bollocks but something deeper, something more divine.

Something is happening to the universe. Something is different in the wide schemes of surviving and eating, fucking, working, drinking, looking, hearing. Something is going to happen. We knew it and everybody knew it. His first touch is errant. A fumble if you will. It’s the dark side of the whole thing but an integral one. I alluded to the shadowy parts of our play. Sometimes you have to see the darkness for what it is to recognise the light. The errant touch that Neves had moved the ball slightly behind him. It was not optimal, it was not perfect but it was right in the wider scheme of things. It was a part of the whole delicious thing, the experience. He drifts his right foot back pivoting a little. It is the chaos variable, the crack we hardly see in a marble carved by Michelangelo This tangle is , an errant slip of Gods chisel perhaps. But we must have these gentle reminders that even within the most beautiful things there is a thread of angry imperfection in which Mankind struggles. An errant brush stroke hidden in the canvas. But Ruben already knows. He has already seen the final product because he is the artist.

What should he do? Pass? There is a tangle of players in the box. He has to shoot, it is ordained in the wider topics of this season that he shoots or has a pop. He has to adjust his weight, it is too far forward now so his weight is balanced by swinging his right foot back further than it should comfortably be so his left leg and foot is now off the floor to give him the freedom to move that foot back to connect. He swings his foot in a beautiful arc. This arc has it’s own mathematics and I am reminded of the ‘Golden Mean’ the beauty of nature and of the natural world. It swings easily. It connects. These seconds are hours to me and I can watch every delicious movement, every sinew and muscle stretch like a ballet dancer. Balance and poise but more importantly belief and effort. He sees it. He knows it. It’s there Ruben in every gasp of the crowd and the urge for you to unleash that belief at last. To make history and to stamp your existence deep into the Molineux turf.

The thing is my friends we knew straight away that it was a goal before he had even connected. Why? Because it was such a beautiful goal carrying such pathos and gravitas that time flowed forwards to a split second after the ball had hit the back of the net and recoiled back through time to the moment he hit it with his foot. My arms were aloft. Ruben isn’t even looking at the goal. There is nothing except him and the ball. He could be in the middle of a deserted landscape. The smoke dissipates a little and he is shining gold and black. There is only him in focus on the pitch, only Ruben exists. Only the ball too. I see the ball, his foot, his whole existence personified by this moment. The blood roars through my ears as I haven’t taken a breath for a few seconds. My hand is halfway to my face to push my glasses further up my nose. It will never get there of course. I am too slow, too material. This is a Holy communion between Ruben and the dreams of God and I am not invited yet. The arc of his movement has begun and it’s not a prelude, not a beginning yet but as his foot and leg begins that beautiful arc it’s like an orchestra slowly building to a crescendo of sorts when the conductor holds his baton still and then slowly it rises as he controls and defines the explosion of sound.

The bones creaked, here was the moment of course. He hits and the ball flies in slow motion. There isn’t much spin on the ball but it revolves slowly. Time is relative now and flexible. It seemed like twenty seconds to me as I wasn’t allowing myself a breath but I was filling my lungs ready. Intake the air, the sour smell of the pyro, the stink of somebody vaping nearby, the stink of the brackish water that collects at the bottom of the North bank concourse. This air filled me. The ball arced and fell as all bodies must do under the dominion of gravity but only enough, only the amount it needed to creep under the crossbar and beyond the outstretched fingers of the Derby goalie. My arms rose too, did everybody else’s? I’m not sure, my eyes are on the ball. Faced with such magnificent beauty for a second I didn’t believe it. I didn’t recognise it at all and there was a second where all the negative energy rolled around my soul. Of course no, not here, this is Wolves mate. You might have seen some good football this season but are you taking the piss? This isn’t for you imbeciles. Goals like this are what you watch on telly where beautiful players score, where beautiful stadiums erupt. Where other people reach those ecstatic heights. This isn’t for you mate, this isn’t yours and never will  be.

A frozen tableau. Players static and unconnected with this event. We were too and then an eruption, a moment when all those dark days of the past were obliterated by such an intense burst of light that it seemed like the demons were blasted out of every dark corner of Molineux in that moment leaving the ghosts and us, the team and Nuno. This was the act of baptism, a cleansing of the soul, total immersion in the waters of football so gracious and holy that no evil could withstand it. It was our moment, we could also take part in the communion between Ruben and the nap of God, the dreams, the sense of belonging to both and they too belonging to us. Ruben beckoned to us to join in with the joy of it.

Neves wheels away pointing to his head. He does that because he knows that beauty lies in creative though, in the dynamic and the novel. Three pounds of meat. That is what the brain is. It nestles inside bone and defines our lives with moments such as this. What is promotion? What is going up as Champions? What concepts could be greater than this goal? I turn to Horace and just say ‘Fucking hell’ because that is all in my infinite ignorance I could say. The stadium erupts, the flags wave..We’ve got Neves…Ruben Neves, I just don’t think you understand….

Who can understand this? Who can make any sense out of it? I can’t. I’ve never seen a goal like it. I’ve never been dumbstruck by anything, I’ve always had an opinion or some fucking senseless waffle to give out to anybody that would listen. But this I can’t. It has happened a lot this season. You know the stories, you can read them here. But this? No fucking way. Every moment in the future when I am watching football I will think of this madness. This interplay between Ruben and the ball. Every movement is scored into my brain and I think everybody’s. The benchmark of a beautiful goal of course. We will wax lyrical in the years to come to younger people and we will be old and slightly insane with life. They will have the blood and the fire in their veins as they watch a goal scored in the future and they will grab onto us and say have you ever seen anything like it?

We of course will just smile as our knees threaten to buckle and that pain in the hip cracks through us as lightning. We will smile and nod but I think we will keep the memory of that goal to ourselves and our minds will replay these moments as precious memories, glorious times in our past. Because the young will never understand what it looked like even if they watch it replayed on TVs and phones. They will never understand because the goal was an epiphany of enlightenment that only us that have suffered will understand. But we will look in those times for people that were there and they will be old like us and we will perhaps find some fellowship and share maybe a knowing wink at each other and say ‘good goal, but not a patch on Rubens against Derby’.

I have to check my scalp for a moment. To see if I have hair there. I am having bald thoughts about Players. Bald in that I am feeling some love about Fabio Silva not being here next season. I think Julen Lopetegui is having the same baldness as me to tell you the truth. I think Julen and me are having a crisis of bald. But what does that mean? Many people think it’s the lack of hair that makes a bald Wolves fan. It’s not my thought. Baldness to me is a baldness of the Hemispheric globes of the brain surface. Here’s a simpler thought. Fabio Silva had a chance to come back here to fight for a place in the Project. In the Wolves dream (or nightmare) a project to live and die for on the pitch, a chance to cement himself into the Premier League. He could have been a Hero here. But what did he do? Fucked off to PSV mate. Oh. OK Then. Unloved ay we? He doesn’t want to play here for us I hear. I hear he doesn’t like the Town. The people. Anything about the Club at all.

Thing is I would love to wax some sweet left hand lyrics to his head. But there are many targets in our Wolves team that need a swift boot up the arse to leave the club. That’s why I think the message given out by Wolves that everyone has a price except five players is the right message. Julen is starting to get the long knives out like I said a few months ago. This Wolves team needs gutting out and I’m not even waving my Coady Mug around here. I am a Fanboy of Coady but mate, I would chop his head off in the middle of the Molineux pitch in front of everybody if it meant that we would have a team of people willing to work.

‘Willing to work’ eh? You know the type of bloke that doesn’t do his bit. Fucking about on his Phone while you’re grafting. He’s the first one in the Canteen and the last to leave. He’s the one standing by the Clocking out Machine five minutes before clocking out time, the one that cooks fish in the Microwave or a baked Potato that takes 20 minutes to fucking cook while you’re waiting to reheat a Greggs sausage roll you found in the fridge at home. Bastards mate. This team has some of those people in it. I’m not going to bandy names about but you will pretty much know them when they get shifted on in this transfer window. Part timers these prongs are. We’ve watched them for a few seasons and some for one season. These are the people that leave you exasperated, depressed, wondering why they haven’t got the fight we have. Technically, some of our players aren’t as good as we think they are. I would say 90% of them in fact. If you think Lopetegui and his staff haven’t noticed that then you need to wobble your head. Daisy players. Some Daisy does well, some Daisy doesn’t.

Lopetegui is perhaps the best Manager/Coach we have had perhaps since the 1960s. He has done it, been there. A wealth of experience and a dollop of madness too. Just what we want in a Coach. A bloke that will absolutely impress his Philosophy on this team and fucking woe betide people aren’t onboard with it. He’s looked at everybody since he came here, in depth too. He has seen them day to day at Compton. Watched them train, seen how they develop themselves personally and professionally. He knows. He probably has great folders of data, Xg bollocks and statistics but he will know them better by looking at them straight in the eye. Being a Fighter he knows who has it in them and who doesn’t.

We see Nathan Collins has been hustled about a bit. What energy do we have about that? I like him, would love him to stay, great player for the future etc etc. Until you look at him with Julens eyes. Have we got time to develop him? When we need to forge ahead now? Have we got the luxury to keep a player that has at least one major mistake in him per game? Does he move that ball well out of his own box? I think Julen knows the answer to that question and I can see him moving on and maybe he just hasn’t given Julen enough to say well we should keep him, see how he does. Don’t forget that Collins was a Nuno scouted player before he went to Burnley. There is some psychological baggage there if you ask me.

I don’t think Lopetegui is bothered about players that wander off the pitch lackadaisically flopping a few claps out at the fans. That goes for all of them of course. You see, signing up to play for Wolves is like signing up to play for Lopetegui really. Do you want to piss him off? Are you that sure that your hefty transfer fee protects you from criticism and the bench? I think a few players were last season if I’m honest. But the way Julen sets up and plays football requires more than a few fancy moves and a turn up. He wants blood this Lad. He wants Players to get out there and run through brick walls for him, he wants fighters, he needs Warriors who at the end of a game will have to be helped off the pitch. He wants them to be that tired they can’t clap and instead have that tunnel vision you get when you’ve exerted yourself to collapse. It’s Julens way but it’s also the Wolves way. We want Heroes not fucking Zeros. We want blood and bollocks, we want fight, intent, madness. Do that for a couple of seasons they you can piss off to AC Milan or Real Madrid for all I care as long as we have the next wonderkid to step up and have a pop at the first team.

So I’m not unduly worried about players leaving. Who am I to make decisions on who should stay or go? Even if we have stands full of day trippers, out of Towners and Wolves Larpers there’s still a hardcore of Working Class fans at Molineux and we know the players that don’t put a shift in and pull their weight. We also want players that want to be here and who love playing the Wolves way. I think Julen will be putting those players into positions in the next month. They may be under the radar kinds of players, but hungry ones, given a second chance maybe, fighting for their fledgling careers. But there’s a Project underfoot again I think. I have a funny feeling something good is going to happen next season. So Fabio can piss off for me. I want players who want to be here, who would die for the Old Gold and Black not fannying around Europe playing for anyone as long as it’s not Wolves. So yeah, I’m not suffering any pain about players who turn up late for training, I’m not interested in players who constantly moan about their job and I’m not interested in people hanging around the clocking out machine so they can be the first off the Car Park.

Watch our outgoings carefully over the next few weeks (apart from Ruben) they are the players that have given us a crap couple of seasons and a near relegation. Trust in Julen, he’s a Wizard that one. He knows.

How is everyone? A bit shell shocked over the past season I guess. It wasn’t part of the script was it? The struggle and the dysfunctionality of the team especially before Julen turned up. Then a quick scrape past the post and we are safe again. We all breathe a sigh of relief. Think about Summer, Bees, Flowers, Barbecues mass stabbings…..But mate. Don’t fucking relax too much me old Mucker. Things are not good at the moment. Things are negative and sad again.

I always tell my mucker down in Compton that I don’t want to hear about all of the stuff that goes on down there. I don’t want stories of debauchery and Louis Vitton wash bags. I don’t want to know who is shagging who. I don’t want to see Jeff Shi and his dirty underwear either. I don’t care about any of that. If you have read my blogs regularly you know I rarely talk about the little bits of information, I want to know about the big picture and the greater more Holistic movements down in sunny Compton.

What do I hear off my people? Not good things for sure. But that’s par for the course with Fosun. Their silence and the closed Executive circles they like to build for themselves have allowed a void of information to be filled with rumours, half rumours and bullshit of the greatest kind. We wallow in that bullshit on social media. We love it. It gives us time to formulate our own shite and liberally splash it around the socials. The Void of information eh?

Sitting on Waterloo road painting yesterday was fun, had lots of little chats with various Wolves people who stopped to say hello. What were the stories like? Mostly depressing to be honest. Nothing happening on the transfer front that they knew about (which could mean anything). Nothing about Ruben going only that everything is ready to be signed but Barcelona don’t have the money for him. Julen is being wined and dined in Saudi with tales of unlimited funds, fantastic players he could utilise, and his eyes are growing with the wonders that could be at his fingertips next season….but not with us. The general consensus from everyone I spoke to is that it’s a 2 to 1 bet that he will be here at the start of pre season. Fosun told him some tales before he came here for sure. I wonder what they were? Unlimited funds? Some funds? No funds? Everyone at Wolves is for sale apparently. Fosun will look at every single bid that comes in and if the offer is a good one then that player will be off on his travels for sure.

But you never know with Fosun do you? They’re like the fucking Freemasons. They probably all stand on one leg with their pants on their heads in Jeff Shi’s office singing praises to Satan or whatever while small children are being cooked and eaten. I dunno. Nobody knows! But I do know there is a dichotomy to this particular Fosun drama. Two ways it will play out. One, is that Fosun have everything in hand. Julen is happy and it’s all a ruse to get hold of players whose prices will not be off the scale. Jorge Mendes has been sidelined at last and he isn’t allowed to get his hands into the Chinese cash box again. When the players return there will bne some new unknown but talented players ready to slip into the new Lopetegui framework and we can begin to build and consolidate again. Or Two, Julen will be gone, off to Saudi to manage one of their new teams, unlimited funds, exciting new league, warm, beaches, nice things to look at. While at Compton we see a trickle of our best players depart off to new clubs and we have to start pre season with a new Coach.

That’s the dichotomy in a nutshell. It will play out over the next few weeks of course while we sit refreshing the Socials to see if anything is happening. We’re like Mushrooms us fans, and this allegorical description explains every Football club fan I suppose, keep them in the dark, feed them shit and they will keep turning up regardless. I’m pretty much used to this now. I lost my rag a thousand times during Moxey and Morgans tenure. I can’t be arsed to be emotional about it. I remember a tale about some Russian Princess with a passion for having sex with animals. She remarked that she had sex once with an Elephant. Someone asked how she actually ‘had’ sex with something so huge. She replied ‘You don’t have sex with an Elephant, you have sex AT it’. A story which pretty much explains our angst and Fosuns attitude towards the great unwashed of Molineux. Our angst is thrown at Fosun but nothing sticks mate. They couldn’t give a shit. One Pack eh?

This was the first time for about five years I thought we might have a chance to make some shapes in the Premier League. Thought that with a few useful additions in the squad and a decent footballing Philosophy we might move a little. We all know the importance of Pre seasons. We haven’t had a decent transfer window for a while. I mean a decent one. 7-8 good players ready to work hard with a Coach who has more than a few ideas, hit the ground running at the Seasons start blah blah blah. We live in a fucking fantasy world sometimes. I do especially. I always tend to look on the positive side of everything. Now of course, there’s no point in thinking anything. All roads (at the moment) lead out of Wolverhampton not into it. Everything has gone dark. So we can be assured that everything is quite normal at Fosun-Wolves in that it is extremely abnormal. Things are getting cocked up big time, people are in positions they have no real ability in, players don’t want to play for us any more, players don’t want to come here and the Season tickets have gone up again.

My advice is to get a comfy chair out in the garden and enjoy the weather a bit. Enjoy the meltdowns on social media when you have five minutes and enjoy just being alive in this crazy fucked up world. We really have no input in what happens at Wolves. The Fosuns don’t care a toss about your aggravations so why should you give a fuck about theirs? We will still be Wolves fans whatever happens. Enjoy those small delights of the odd goal, those precious seconds when our team puts more than three passes together or look semi threatening. Enjoy the players that will be replacing our Stars. I will give my opinions a few weeks to absorb more News out of Compton and Molineux before I start writing regularly again. I think next season will be an absolute nightmare or an absolute delight. No bloody middle ground, it’s the Wolves way. But I will say this, I wish Julen would make a decision so the Fosun/Borg can mangle another Coach in fast. We cannot afford to leave this shit late again or the Premier League is going to bite us fully on the arse next season instead of the few choice nibbles it gave us for the last one. I will even say if Fosun haven’t got the bollocks to fight for our place in the Premier League piss off and get us sold to someone who can. I’m bored of the Chinese now. Bored of Jeff. Bored of the drongos he has surrounding him. Prove me wrong Jeff. Make me look a tit again please.

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.