General Wolves News

[Lycan]

Wouldn't make for much of a list though would it? Here's a list of Wolves' 30 greatest players. Unless you're drawing a pension you won't have seen 20+ of them. You've got to try to appeal to as many people as possible, personally I don't see that I can pass comment on players who retired 20+ years before I was born. And I'm hardly young these days, there's an entire generation of Wolves supporters younger than me.

I get that but then he's still trying to claim that Kenny Miller is Wolves' 18th best player of all time...

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Was it Sir Alex who said he wouldn't pay a penny over £2m for Robbie?

It probably got twisted somewhere along the line but yeah, essentially he said he wouldn't get anywhere near United's team at the time so they wouldn't pay that kind of money for someone only seen as a prospect. Mind you they did have Cole, Yorke, Sheringham and Solskjaer when he said that.

He was bitter towards us back then because we weren't throwing adulation/a new contract at his fat offspring who he reckoned was the best footballer we had.

 

[Kenny]

It probably got twisted somewhere along the line but yeah, essentially he said he wouldn't get anywhere near United's team at the time so they wouldn't pay that kind of money for someone only seen as a prospect. Mind you they did have Cole, Yorke, Sheringham and Solskjaer when he said that.

He was bitter towards us back then because we weren't throwing adulation/a new contract at his fat offspring who he reckoned was the best footballer we had.

Quick look....seems his words were twisted a little........but his Son tried to get his Dad to take him from us

I said: `Well, for a start I should have signed him when my son told me to, when he was only 16. Darren (Ferguson's son, then with Wolves) told me all about him.
"`Now, by the time we came to watch him he was in the first team at 17. The way we operate is that if I am going to pay £6 million for a player I want to play him in my first team. Now there is no way Robbie Keane would get in my first team over Yorke, Cole, Sheringham or Solskjaer. So £6 million to me at the moment is a waste of money.
"If I was getting him for £100,000 and leaving him in the reserves for a couple of years - the way we do with a lot of young players like Jonathan Greening - yeah, that's the way it works for us. But for us to pay £6 million for an 18-year-old lad and play him in the reserves is out of the question.'

 

[Tony Towner]

The first and last time Greening and Keane were ever compared

 

[Derby Wolf]

I think the list is only so polarising because of how mixed our fortunes have been.

Miller, Ince et al aren't fit to lace the boots of our all time greats but at the time were part of the best Wolves side in 20 years actually getting promoted. Say you did Liverpool even during their lean years you could argue for the inclusion of Gerard, Torres, and Fowler.

I'd imagine if they did an all time top Forest or Ipswich they'd have players like Marcus Stewart or David Johnson in amongst squads who won European titles and everything else.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Quick look....seems his words were twisted a little........but his Son tried to get his Dad to take him from us

Some true team man work there from the lipstick wearing tubster.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

I would say that any list of Wolves greatest players would be predominantly players from the 50's and early 70's. That is when we had our two best teams.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

A bit of a debate on old gold glory about who is Wolves greatest ever winger, Mullen or Waggy. I did not see Mullen play, but I have been told he was a great left winger. Waggy was the best winger I ever saw playing for Wolves.

 

[Tony Towner]

A bit of a debate on old gold glory about who is Wolves greatest ever winger, Mullen or Waggy. I did not see Mullen play, but I have been told he was a great left winger. Waggy was the best winger I ever saw playing for Wolves.

I think that kind of proves DW's and your own point in different ways. You didn't see Mullen or Hancocks, I didn't see Waggy and I'm racing towards my mid 40's, so I'd go for Dennison/Kightly/Jarvis/Sako. If we were picking a true Wolves Top 30, you'd probably only have Bully who played post '83, but I guess that would be a bit dull for readers.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

I think that kind of proves DW's and your own point in different ways. You didn't see Mullen or Hancock's. I didn't see Waggy and I'm racing towards my mid 40's, so I'd go for Dennison/Kightly/Jarvis/Sako. If you were picking a true Wolves Top 30, you'd probably only have Bully who played post '83, but I guess that would be a bit dull for readers.

Fair point Tony, I suppose we can only relate to players we have seen. Though on the other hand I think it is universally accepted that Billy Wright is our greatest ever player.

 

[nimrod]

I think that kind of proves DW's and your own point in different ways. You didn't see Mullen or Hancock's. I didn't see Waggy and I'm racing towards my mid 40's, so I'd go for Dennison/Kightly/Jarvis/Sako. If you were picking a true Wolves Top 30, you'd probably only have Bully who played post '83, but I guess that would be a bit dull for readers.

if you want to make an "all time" list you have to have as a major focus the times when the club were achieving their best successes. if you just want it to be a list of best players people alive today may have seen, then date it from the date they could have seen them. it isn't very difficult.

the thing about Robbie Keane for me is that he was a player of a generation - ie, they don't come around very often. I'd have hoped someone at the club could have seen that. we may have got what was considered to be a good price for him which we got to spend on a few players but for me it will always be a shit decision.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

the thing about Robbie Keane for me is that he was a player of a generation - ie, they don't come around very often. I'd have hoped someone at the club could have seen that. we may have got what was considered to be a good price for him which we got to spend on a few players but for me it will always be a shit decision.

What can you do though? £6m was a hell of a lot of money at the time, that same summer Middlesbrough signed Christian Ziege for £4m - a German international in the prime of his career from AC Milan. No-one was ever going to pay much of a premium beyond that without him proving himself in the top flight, we weren't going to be in a position to get ourselves there without selling him and building the squad, and he wasn't going to hang around forever for us to cobble together a promotion challenge in the meantime. It boils down to asking Sir Jack to have another gamble of throwing his own money at it, I can't blame him for not going down that road.

 

[nimrod]

What can you do though? £6m was a hell of a lot of money at the time, that same summer Middlesbrough signed Christian Ziege for £4m - a German international in the prime of his career from AC Milan. No-one was ever going to pay much of a premium beyond that without him proving himself in the top flight, we weren't going to be in a position to get ourselves there without selling him and building the squad, and he wasn't going to hang around forever for us to cobble together a promotion challenge in the meantime. It boils down to asking Sir Jack to have another gamble of throwing his own money at it, I can't blame him for not going down that road.

I think he'd have been better off doing it with Robbie Keane in the squad than when he chose to go for it under DJ. Regardless of what anyone else was doing, essentially we swapped Robbie Keane for Akinbiyi and had £2.5m left to do something with the squad. I liked Akinbiyi but he was no Robbie Keane. I'm never gonna be convinced there was anything good about that piece of business. Had we achieved something more with the cash, there'd be a small piece of an argument.

 

[Tony Towner]

From memory with that cash we also signed Branch, Oakes, Ndah and Pollet, who were all to a greater or lesser degree reasonable signings and made another £3m(?) on Akinbiyi less than a year later You are also neglecting the fact he desperately wanted to go.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

That's a question of timing, were Keane two years younger or two years older he'd have been coming through at a time when we were spending and providing the manager at the time was prepared to play him, keeping him would have been an option. As it was then it just wasn't, Sir Jack was always a taps on-taps off owner, rightly or wrongly.

For reference we started the season with this as our squad:

Stowell
Muscat
Bazeley
Robinson
Curle
Emblen
Simpson
Osborn
Flo
Keane
Sinton
Naylor
Murray
Corica
Sedgley
Niestroj
Jones
Green
Williams
Mautone
Andrews
Larkin
Simms
Tudor

Murray and Andrews might look like decent names on that list but neither of them were even out of their teens by the end of that season and neither of them played for the first team.

If your choice is to retain Robbie Keane and hope that squad can somehow finish in the top six or cash in on him (which as I say, was big money on offer) and build an actual squad, upgrading all departments, then I can't really see how we could have done the former. It just wouldn't have happened, we wouldn't have got anywhere near promotion, another year of his contract ticks by, he gets disgruntled at being stuck in a mid table (at best) second tier team. Maybe if you'd asked Sir Jack before he passed away if he might have done it differently in hindsight, spent the £5-6m AND kept Keane for another year, he might have agreed but it's very much a hypothetical situation and you're still asking for him to chuck extra money at Colin Lee to spend which is hardly any guarantee of success.

 

[nimrod]

you're right, imagining what would have happened had he stayed is completely hypothetical and would guarantee nothing, good or bad. but when you have a player as good as Keane I think you have to show some vision. all you're confirming is that, as a club, we didn't have any. i think a hugely wasted opportunity.

 

[tricky wolf]

funny i know waggys son

 

[Paul]

From memory with that cash we also signed Branch, Oakes, Ndah and Pollet,

Yes and I would take a modern day version of every single one of those today !

 

[lemonjelly]

Except maybe Branch. Banged up now isn't he? Great on loan, broken by the forest game/Beasant.

 

[Lycan]

9 minute video on Niall Ennis. They're really bigging this kid up.