WOLVES ON PROWL
JOHN WRAGG LOOKS AT HOW A FAMOUS OLD CLUB HAVE PUT HARD TIMES BEHIND THEM ...
Molineux’s brighter future
YOU used to think about taking your wellies with you when you went to Wolves. There was water everywhere - even on a dry day - and you also needed something hefty on your feet because rats scurried everywhere.
Molineux, the whole club, was in a terrible state back in the late 1980s. Poor on the pitch, they were destitute off it.
Now when you go to Molineux people dress up for it. Brilliant statues outside the ground to club heroes Billy Wright and Sir Jack Hayward seem to smile and welcome you in.
The stadium is bright and impressive again, rebuilt on its old, rotting footprint by Sir Jack’s money when he bought the club from the knacker’s yard 29 years ago. Now it’s ready for another revamp by ambitious Chinese owners Fosun International.
But beware. It was a brand new stand and plans for further ground improvements that brought the club to their knees 40 years ago.
An attempt to modernise Molineux in 1979 launched the decline. Housing was demolished, a new dawn promised and a new all-seater stand opposite the main stand built.
There were two things wrong with the John Ireland Stand, named after the club president. It was built so far away from the pitch you almost needed to get on a bus to see the game. And Wolves couldn’t afford it.
The cost zoomed to £2m, over £10m in today’s money, and Wolves couldn’t pay the loans the club had taken out. Remorse was not enough. Receivership and relegation from the First Division followed.
It got worse when brothers Mahmud and Mohammad Bhatti bought the club. Gratitude followed when Wolves got back into the First Division at the first attempt.
Contempt and anger followed, the word ‘Bhatti’ becoming more hated than even ‘West Brom’ as they failed to invest and Wolves fell to pauper status, the threat of being wound-up a constant threat.
From those days when two or three thousand would huddle in one of the usable stands not riddled with dry rot, crumbling brickwork, unsafe roof and hungry rats to watch the dregs of fourth tier football, Wolves are now looking to cater for 55,000.
“Molinuex” comes from Benjamin Molineux, an 18th century merchant and his home, Molineux House.
A nice chap, he provided leisure facilities and after the Northampton Brewery Company bought up the grounds, they rented them out to Wolves, a 12-yearold football club looking for somewhere better to play.
That was in the summer of 1889. Wolves have been there ever since.
Fosun did think of totally moving out, rebuilding somewhere else, but they’ve binned that idea now, thankfully, and Wolves will stay at Molineux on Waterloo Road, not more than a five-minute walk up the hill to the city centre.
History and the future stays in the same place.
I’ve got friends who can’t believe what’s happened to the club in the last two seasons. Wolves are playing football better perhaps than from the era when floodlights, as marvellous then as the internet now, shone brightly on their 1950s dominance.
I can remember as a kid clinging to one of those floodlights - it was the only bit of space on the jam-packed terrace - to watch Wolves lose 5-3 at home to Manchester United in the fifth round of the FA Cup.
It was one of those classic Best-Law-Charlton games and there were over 53,000 in Molineux.
Twenty-one years later and there were 4,790 in Molineux as Non-League Chorley held Wolves in a Cup replay and then went on to beat them 3-0 in a third game at Bolton’s old Burnden Park. It was Wolves’ lowest moment. There’s an Asda now where Burnden Park was and, with excellent symmetry, there’s an Asda next to Molineux.
Without Wolverhampton Council buying the stadium and surrounding land in 1986 and a local developer paying off the club debts in return for planning permission, Wolves would have gone bust.
Sir Jack Hayward, God bless his eccentric, philanthropist boots, spent £8.5m (£18.5m today) in rebuilding the Molineux wreck before handing it on to Steve Morgan 12 years ago for £10 (worth £13.78 today) on the condition he invested £30m.
Morgan, a multi-millionaire builder who always really wanted to own his Scouse home-town club Liverpool, looked to spruce up his second choice and Molineux got another big rebuild.
But Morgan was looking to cater for Premier League top six and when that didn’t happen and bad managerial decision after bad managerial decision brought third tier football again and echoes of ’86, the re-build stopped with just one new stand done.
And that’s where we are today, Molineux as it stands.
Wolves were playing in a Rolls Royce stadium but being run on farm tractor red diesel. Kenny Jackett got them back into the Championship with a record haul of points and very nearly straight through to the Premier League.
The following season was a disappointment. Wolves finished 14th and that’s dangerous when you have new bosses. Four days after Fosun said Jackett was safe he was, well, getting his jacket.
Walter Zenga, who ho proved the theory that all great goalkeepers are a bit nuts, was a whirlwind of inconsistency as Jackett’s successor.
As all the new foreign reign players started flowing in, Zenga took his pay-off wonga and went.
So much has happened since that it’s been forgotten that Fosun’s Wolves wobbled with uncertainty.
There was doubt, even suspicion about money laundering, and they floundered through the appointment of Paul Lambert - again promised he’d stay and then fired - before Nuno Espirito Santo arrived. It took a few weeks to even get his name right. It was more of a sentence really, but thankfully he settled on ‘Nuno’.
Although, to be honest, it was extended to ‘Nuno Who?’ for quite a while.
But he hit on a good phrase - “Wolves always hunt in packs” - to bring the club, team and support together.
He showed he’s got a sense of humour as well. When goalkeeper John Ruddy set him up on a training break in Spain with a golf ball that exploded on impact, Nuno laughed his socks off.
Thinking about it though, Nuno got his own back. Ruddy has lost his place.
Nuno likes his fag straight after a game, nipping off to a corner of Molineux for a drag, but the football he has brought is vibrant, exciting.
Wolves are set to become the best placed promote promoted team for 18 years, since Ipswich f finished fifth in 200001, the seaso season Manchester United won the tit title by ten points from Arsenal.
Tra Traditionally, Wolves play in Old Gold. It’s a bit mor more yellow these days, but let’s go with the Old Gold Gold. Old - that’s in the past past. Gold - it’s a shiny futu future. But just beware if yo you get the builders in agai again. It doesn’t always go well.