Sheep in Wolves' clothing

Let's rewind to the beginning of the 2011-12 season: the general feeling amongst the pundits was that Wolves had made a couple of good signings which would improve the squad and help them achieve a respectable mid-table/bottom half Premiership position.

April 2012: Wolves are relegated with three games still to play, boasting nine straight defeats in nine home matches and, despite our CEO's pointed comment of "This is no job for a novice" after sacking the previous manager, an utterly out of his depth novice in charge.

Where, as the old cliche goes, did it all go wrong?

Firstly, it's worth tentatively suggesting that the UK sports media are not entirely objective and unbiased, and  that Wolves-related coverage at that point might possibly, due to Mick McCarthy's genial nature and sometime membership of punditry's old boys' club, have been a tad rose-tinted.

That being said, predictions of us comfortably solidifying our big league status weren't entirely bonkers. We'd survived the dreaded Second Season Syndrome, the skin-of-the-teeth nature of our escape at least partly explained by the highly competitive nature of last season's Prem. For 2011-12 though, the debuting trio of Norwich, Swansea and QPR were SURELY sitting ducks, we were a proper profit-making business rather than a billionaire's tax dodge, and we'd signed two established top flight players in Jamie O'Hara and Roger Johnson.

Ah Roger. If one name were ever a microcosm of a club's season then it'd be his. The dictionary definition of a marquee signing, Mick McCarthy instantly installed him as club captain and bigged him up as the strong leader who would decisively shore up our somewhat fragile defence. And for the first three games we looked like a genuinely solid team - two wins and a draw even saw us atop the table for a brief, delirious moment. Since then though... mmm, not so good.

Of course it would be ridiculous to lay all the blame for a disastrous season solely at the feet of one player. Unfortunately though, when you intend someone to be your new talisman and he not only fails to reproduce the form he showed with his previous team but ends up amplifying the more dickish, primadonna side to his character (by getting into barneys with the manager who put so much trust in him, say) then it must have a major effect on the balance of the team and dressing room morale.

In Johnson's defence, our Premiership defence had only ever looked solid towards the end of Season 1 when McCarthy adopted an ultra-cautious 4-5-1 formation with seven defenders on the pitch. Playing any more open than that and we always looked vulnerable and error-prone at the back (rugged, no-nonsense centre half Mick follows that curious trend of managers whose strengths bear little relation to those from their playing days). Would any defender have been onto a loser coming to Molineux? Was Roger just one more guy whose confidence was drained after being sucked into a shoddy system?


If he didn't come across as quite such a Bertie Big Bollocks then it would be easier to forgive him. O'Hara conforms to most of the typical modern footballer cliches also. Previously, McCarthy had always signed players with spirit and character - even Stephen Hunt, who is arguably a bit of a twat, works his arse off when on form. The club's transfer mantras were always "young and hungry" and "grafters". Maybe a policy of signing bigger names, and the bigger egos that came with them, was always going to be fatally flawed, akin to a man trying to climb too many rungs of a ladder at once, losing his equilibrium and tumbling into the cesspit of doom below (although the Championship has improved a lot, I hear).

Whatever the exact reasons - injuries, morale, bad luck - we were enduring an awful season which reached it's then-nadir after W*st Br*m (W*ST BR*M!) put five (5!) past us at home in a match where we couldn't even muster our usual fighting spirit. Mick's subsequent sacking was not in itself a bad decision, nor was it universally hailed as such. We hadn't played well all season and should have been doing better with the squad we had, generosity of those pre-season predictions aside.

Most neutrals viewed it as inevitable, albeit partly based on Chairman Steve Morgan's post-match changing room rant after the almost-as-disappointing Liverpool home game not long before. In hindsight (and isn't that such a wonderful thing?) that dressing-room dressing-down was the first mis-step in a catastrophic series of management stumbles which lead, via the comprehensive annihilation of our reputation as a well-run, dullish but inoffensive club, to our ignominious relegation.

Morgan had until this point kept his head down and his public statements to a minimum as a good chairman should. He'd shrewdly kept the existing power structure in place when he bought the club, with CEO Jez Moxey continuing to act as the board's all-purpose shit-magnet/shield. Sadly, the McCarthy sacking and appointment process was the first truly big "football" decision this tandem had faced, and they couldn't have blown it any worse.

Put simply, if you're going to sack your manager after the transfer window shuts, you either need a clear idea of who the replacement will be (W*st Br*m appointing Roy Hodgson last season springs to mind) or you'd better bite the bullet, cast financial prudence aside and go all-out to get the best possible person in. We panicked, had no plan A and then seemed to think that our Premiership status alone would be enough to entice a big-name from the golf course or an up-and-comer from his attractive current job. Well hey, we may have saved a bit of short-term cash, but it's small beer compared to the shedload of Sky money we've just lost along with our Prem status.

To top it all, Moxey's public statements became ever more embarrassing, starting with the "no job for a novice" line and then repeatedly insisting that we'd only offered the job to one other guy, which may technically be true but cuts little ice when several other candidates had very publicly turned us down. Which brings us to Steve Bruce, and the $64,000 question - considering all that happened subsequently under poor old Terry Connor, would we have welcomed the puffy-faced ex-Sunderland moaner rather than effectively hounding him out of contention? The painful answer is yes, as he may at least have given the players a kick up the jacksy or tried to change the system in some way.

We were always doomed under Connor. Steve Wigley. Les Reed. Sammy Lee. I can't think of a former assistant who has done even a half-decent job when appointed to replace their former head honcho and this article gives very good reasons why ("TC" comes across as the classic Good Cop, a thoroughly decent man and great coach who the players all love - witness Sunday's embrace with Joleon Lescott - but utterly lacking the qualities needed in a manager).

Who knows what would have happened had we not sacked Mick. Roberto Martinez has proved yet again that an incumbent manager can turn things around towards the end of a rotten season (though God knows how), and Mick had dug us out of holes before. McCarthy can also count himself unlucky that Manu Frimpong got crocked just as he was getting settled into the team, and that the likes of O'Hara and Jody Craddock couldn't stay fit, although injuries are very much part of football.

Plus, it was always said the McCarthy was operating within an insanely tight wage budget, yet he never complained and indeed talked up the solidity of his relationship with Moxey and Morgan. While acknowledging that this is business and they don't owe him jack, it makes the sacking look even more dumb and spiteful in retrospect. Still, another manager - perhaps one with more tactical awareness for example - may well be able to do better if we get another chance at the big league.

So, the next step is absolutely vital. As a big-name Championship club with a full offseason ahead of us and no need to rip the squad apart, we're an attractive proposition for prospective managers. Pick the right guy and we've a good shot at going straight back up and who knows, maybe we'll have learnt from our mistakes and avoid making quite such spectacular ones again. Or, we could appoint a plodder and end up stagnating for another 20-odd years. The irony is, had we gone down with Mick in charge and gently let him go then, I'd still have trust in the top brass to know what they're doing. Now though... who knows. Wish us luck.