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Thought this article from the Athletic was worth a share
An arrested flare-thrower, Leicester fans squabbling with Leicester fans, and an act of furious anti-VAR vandalism – Welcome to Molineux’s epicentre
It’s 9.54 on Friday evening and Molineux is rapidly emptying. Wolves have just drawn 0-0 with Leicester City and the majority of the 30,000 fans dispersing onto the streets of Wolverhampton are grumbling about VAR.
The players have headed down the tunnel and, after a frustrating evening for the home team, calm is being restored. Except, that is, in one small room tucked away at the back of the South Bank.
From this bunker, Molineux, probably unbeknown to the thousands who have turned up just to watch a game of football, has been monitored, organised and kept safe via the help of dozens of CCTV cameras and a safety officer who, working alongside the emergency services, has taken charge of more than 400 stewards and staff in an intricate, detailed and professional operation.
And while the game may have finished, the night’s drama isn’t over. Just a few minutes earlier, a blue flare was dangerously lobbed from the away section straight into the South Bank in the direction of Wolves supporters. The culprit quickly made his way out of the ground before he could be identified and stopped — but the man and the group of people he’s with have been halted by a police officer on an unrelated matter after a few post-match verbals were being thrown around.
The police officer’s conversation with the group, it just so happens, is being captured on live CCTV.
Someone monitoring the cameras has, incredibly, among images that are showing thousands of people leaving Molineux, spotted the flare-thrower. “That’s him… that’s the guy who threw the pyro,” he says decisively.
After the image of the flare being thrown is slotted alongside the live recording of his chat with the officer outside, the match is confirmed.
Immediately a message is relayed to the officer at the scene…he escorts the suspect to one side. His raised right hand is mysteriously pigmented. Yes, he’s been caught very blue-handed. Arrest made and, via the eagle eye in the stadium control room, job done.
Welcome to Molineux’s epicentre.
After 16 years as the club’s head of operations, this is the domain of Steve Sutton, the man with the sharp eye.
In front of him is a wall of 24 screens, on which images from 180 cameras positioned in and around Molineux are shown. If this is The Truman Show, Sutton is its Ed Harris, the all-seeing eye.
From the control room, which has a glorious view of the inside of Molineux (behind dark-tinted, double-glazed glass which almost completely muffles noise from the stadium) Sutton and his well-drilled team will keep an eye out for — and react to — crowd disorder, racism, violence, medical emergencies, flare-throwing and excessive beer drinking, among dozens of other things; as The Athletic finds out after being granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access.
It’s a slick operation — and one which starts several hours before kick-off.
“Ultimately we’re here for peoples’ safety,” Sutton tells his senior stewards in a pre-match briefing.
He’s recounting the details of an incident which took place during Wolves’ last home match, against Liverpool, when a supporter suffered a cardiac arrest. A steward performed CPR as he waited for paramedics to arrive. The man survived and is now recovering. It was one of just six heart attacks suffered during Molineux matches in the past nine years. Only three of those six survived — and one steward, who works in the South Bank, helped on two occasions.
“Kevin Moss made a real difference,” Sutton proudly says. “He put his training into action and everyone played a part in helping this man. It’s worth sharing that with your staff tonight.”
It’s Valentine’s Day but a box of chocolates being shared among the senior staff is as romantic as it will get for Sutton and his team. They’ve got a job to do — Leicester are in town, it’s a high-profile Friday night match and the potential for problems occurring is never far away.
Leicester are flying in the league and it’s a derby of sorts, albeit a tenuous one. Sutton tells his staff to be aware of the potential risks posed to and from both sets of fans.
Flares have been used at five of Leicester’s away matches this season, amid a variety of other incidents. Wolves fans can be far from angels too — as everyone is well aware — so every angle must be covered.
The stewards are all given briefing sheets, detailing their usual roles and responsibilities but also specific information relating to tonight’s visitors. There are 15 away coaches on the way. The potential for organised disorder is classed as ‘low’, while spontaneous disorder is considered a ‘medium’ risk.
Stewards are reminded to conduct thorough searches (of anyone aged over 14) and remove bottle-tops, while those working in the South Bank (Molineux’s self-proclaimed rowdy stand) are reminded to keep an eye out for people standing on their seats.
“Watch those front rows for any issues with throwing, spitting, abuse,” Sutton adds. “Get your stewards proactively working those areas and challenging unacceptable behaviour. If you need support, let us know.
“When there are controversial incidents on the pitch, get them up off their seats and monitoring the crowd.”
These senior stewards will now go and brief their sub-teams of a couple of dozen stewards in sections around Molineux’s four stands, before a last-minute search is conducted, combing each row of seats. There will be one steward for every 250 supporters in the stadium, which also has 20 first-aiders and three paramedic crews on duty.
In the control room — the hub where every decision relating to support safety or crowd disorder is made — things are starting to get busy. Soon the room will be packed with two CCTV monitoring specialists, a manager for each stand, representatives from West Midlands Police and ambulance services and operatives for the phone and communication lines, who will play a crucial role in the evening’s events, siphoning calls and relating information to Sutton and others.
The match has been categorised as ‘B’, with A being the lowest risk of trouble and C the highest.
Dozens of factors have gone into making that assessment such as; kick-off-time, whether the fixture is high profile or a local derby, whether there is any animosity between the teams (or any figure who may rile the home supporters, such as an ex-player or manager, either of Wolves or even main rivals West Bromwich Albion), if the game is all-ticket, or if the away club have only brought season-ticket holders (if it went to general sale, there could be more problematic fans with tickets.)
Sutton has a huge database at his disposal that lists the fixtures between Wolves and Leicester since 2003 and states absolutely anything of note that happened in or around the stadium.
For instance, at the last Molineux encounter between the teams (a 4-3 win for Wolves on a Saturday lunchtime in January last year), a group of Leicester supporters were found in Wolverhampton city centre without tickets — and sent back to Leicester by police.
During the game, one fan was refused entry for being drunk, two were ejected for foul and abusive language and another for throwing a bottle, while there was one arrest for breach of the peace.
Molineux’s gates open at 6.30pm and the next hour and a half will focus on getting over 30,000 people swiftly and safely inside the stadium. A CCTV sweep is performed to check there is nothing awry and staff will keep an eye out for ticket touts as well as beggars.
The state-of-the-art, high-resolution cameras cover the seats, concourses, car parks, surrounding streets and even the corridor leading to the dressing rooms. The system at Wolves’ disposal has improved immeasurably (they couldn’t pause or rewind footage two years ago), enabling them to identify trouble-makers far easier than before. Every seat in the ground is covered.
The only problem they have at the moment is a stray car in the Steve Bull Stand’s car park, which is shared with the University of Wolverhampton during the week (staff are asked to clear the cars by 5pm for a midweek match). After a couple of attempts to contact the owner via the university, a tow truck is called.
The Wolves players have just arrived on their team coach — 100 metres down Waterloo Road, Leicester’s bus is being held back. The away team must always arrive after Wolves as their bus remains parked by the same entrance for the rest of the night. After Leicester pull in, the signal is made to fully close off Waterloo Road to traffic (a rule that was brought in a couple of years ago for match days).
Fans start heading inside in dribs and drabs, while in the control room there are a few relatively minor incidents to deal with — an ambulance has been badly parked and is blocking a walkway, while in the stadium’s Fan Zone a steward has fallen over. Bonita, who staffs the phones and radio, is asking for a wheelchair to be dispatched.
At 7.05pm, it isn’t looking good for the university car. The recovery truck of doom has arrived and begins dragging the car up its ramp. But wait! In a development as dramatic as almost anything that will be seen on the pitch tonight, its owner has showed up in the nick of time. After some gentle pleading, she is allowed to drive her car home. Panic over, scene cleared, and a message goes out on a walkie talkie to allow a gate to be opened for her to exit through.
Come 7.25pm, the away section — the lower tier of the Steve Bull Stand — is starting to fill up. The tight concourses are packed and there are 1,300 Leicester fans already inside the ground.
We know this figure because Sutton has access to a precise and live count of exactly how many fans have creaked through Molineux’s turnstiles. Soon, there will be 630 supporters arriving every single minute. The same screen also shows a watch-list of banned fans. If they try to enter with their card, it will trigger an alert.
More issues keep cropping up. A Wolves fan has draped a Mexico flag, in honour of striker Raul Jimenez, over the top of an LED advertising board, so the nearest steward is radioed to ask them to remove it.
Police are advising that they are escorting a group of around 60 Leicester fans in from the train station, with up to 30 of them said to be “rowdy”. It could be one of those nights.
Then Sutton, perusing the cameras, thinks he’s spotted a peculiar sight on the away concourse… a Wolves shirt. After zooming in, yes, his suspicions are correct. An elderly gentleman is stood proudly among Leicester supporters wearing a bright gold Wolves top. It has to be seen twice to be believed.
The man, who has unzipped a large black and red coat to unveil the shirt, appears to be at the game with family. Via his earpiece and microphone, Sutton speaks directly to the nearest steward, who has a friendly word with the seemingly harmless individual. It’s judged, looking at him and the group he’s with, that he poses no threat so the steward, via Sutton’s instructions, tells him to zip his coat up and “for his own safety…sit on his hands” during the game. It’s a common sense approach (more so than the man’s decision to wear a Wolves top while sitting in the away end).
With 18 minutes to kick-off, there are 2,000 Leicester fans in the ground, but above them the notoriously long queues to get into the Steve Bull’s upper tier are snaking back across Molineux Street and up Deanery Row. There are 18,000 people inside Molineux now, but up to 13,000 are still to get in.
Then the rowdy Leicester fans from the train station turn up… and one of them won’t even get to see the kick-off.
A blue flare has been lit on the concourse amid increasingly boisterous scenes, with dozens of fans jumping up and down and some throwing beer (an expensive hobby at football stadium prices).
CCTV footage of the area is immediately rewound to identify who lit the flare. “I want to see him strike it,” Sutton says, as police on the ground who think they have spotted the culprit take their suspect outside. There is confusion over whether they have the right man but, after careful analysis of the footage, which shows him pulling the flare out the second he gets through the turnstile and immediately lighting it, they do have their guy and he is duly arrested.
Behaviour in the concourse is judged to be “good-natured and manageable by stewards at this point”, resisting the urge to send police in, in what may be an inflammatory move.
The vast majority of disturbances are spotted by CCTV or alerts from staff, but a new incident is brought to everyone’s attention via their own nostrils. Someone has let off a flare in the stand below us, specifically in a toilet, and the smell is seeping up through the vents. It’s quite vile, and Sutton heads off to investigate.
There are other pressing matters. Someone has thrown up on the stairs in the Stan Cullis Stand and two young lads in the South Bank are drinking cans of Red Bull (cans are prohibited, not energy drinks). A cleaner and a steward are dispatched respectively.
Then, kick-off and, well… relative calm. Indeed, with eyes and minds focused on the pitch, absolutely nothing happens for 37 minutes. It’s an unusual occurrence for Sutton.
He later says: “You can feel your pulse going up. Sometimes there’s nowhere for that adrenaline to go if nothing is going on.
“I get a real buzz out of it, although it’s quite stressful if you’ve got a lot of incidents going on at the same time, such as disorder or a medical emergency. You zone out. All you’re seeing is what you need to deal with. It’s like playing a board game — you’ve got a big picture to deal with, not just one incident.”
The peace is broken by a lone away fan spotted arriving at the ground at 8.37pm. The doors are locked, so stewards are deployed to get him in.
Attention briefly turns to the actual football, a rare notion in this room, as Wolves appear to take the lead through Willy Boly’s header only for the goal to be chalked off after a VAR offside call that’s as clear as mud. It’s not the first narrow VAR decision Wolves have been on the wrong end of this season and, for one fan watching in the concourse, the frustration is too much. At the precise moment the VAR official rules ‘no goal’, the man lurches forward and smashes the TV hanging above him, cracking the screen and leaving a hand-print which seems to offer a visual representation of Wolves’ fans’ feelings on the subject.
Indeed, to reinforce the man’s frustrations, it should be noted that Sutton and his team had analysed a live action replay of the TV smash far quicker than Stockley Park had judged a blister on Pedro Neto’s heel to be offside.
Unfortunately for the TV thumper, he’s committed a criminal act… but fortunately for him he can’t be found. Amid the half-time melee of thousands of fans descending onto the concourse the man, who was wearing a beanie hat and covering his face, is on this occasion impossible to trace.
“So hang on, what’s the score then?” a voice asks in the background. Well, quite.
Amid the now-rebellious atmosphere, a number of incidents are ongoing. Some Leicester supporters have become embroiled in an internal dispute and one is being held by stewards, someone is vaping in the Steve Bull Upper and refusing to stop (the steward is advised to tell him he could be banned from future matches, which soon puts an end to it), while in the Billy Wright Stand one of the Wolves players’ fathers has been verbally abused. The aggressor is warned, via Sutton’s advice to the operators, who relay it to the nearest steward, that he’ll be ejected if he doesn’t calm down.
The second half begins but the ongoing issues don’t end. There’s a drunk Wolves fan in the South Bank who’s swaying like a cheap caravan in the fast lane. One to keep an eye on.
And in the away end a fan who’s been antagonising the Wolves supporters is now being refused alcohol — and isn’t taking the news all that well. A decision is taken by Sutton to eject him from the stadium.
There’s another drunk in the South Bank. Stewards head into the toilets to find him, where they discover another inebriated fan who “can barely stand up”.
Violence and disorder, though, is thankfully non-existent, so Sutton’s attention is focused on something else entirely. He has been warned before the game that a betting scammer may be attending the game with the intention of transmitting live data directly to Asian betting markets. The man, who is sat in the corner Graham Hughes Stand, has been ejected at other Premier League clubs but has proved to be “argumentative” when approached, so police are asked to head to the area to assist should they be needed.
With time on the pitch running out — meaning there’ll be too much else to deal with at full-time in terms of crowd control — there is only a short window to tell the man to stop what he’s doing and get out. After the alarm is raised, he voluntarily chooses to leave.
“Can we open the gates?” Bonita asks, with just a couple of minutes remaining. The answer is yes… and after the full-time whistle blows it appears that everything is going smoothly, until the sight of that blue missile into the South Bank raises everyone’s pulses once more.
A couple of minutes later another flare is lit, this time a Wolves-coloured one, in the South Bank, but sadly the fan responsible is not caught.
By 10.10pm, 17 minutes after the final whistle, Molineux is empty and serene. The arrest of the Leicester flare-thrower doubles the number of arrests for the night (both Leicester supporters). Three Wolves fans were ejected from the ground, another was thrown out of the Leicester end and there were three first-aid medical incidents.
“That was fairly routine,” Sutton says, reflecting on a job well done. “On average, we’d eject the best part of 70 or 80 people a season, so four is about normal for one game.
“It was unusual to see that many pyros. We were expecting it from Leicester but prior to our last game we hadn’t seen any in the home areas all season.”
Sutton has seen it all over the years: riots, fights, pitch invasions, protests, suspect devices, evacuation alerts, fireworks in the crowd, the lot.
“Port Vale in League One was a huge challenge. We dealt with a lot of incidents, a few arrests and some disorder,” he says, reflecting on his most hectic days in the job.
“Liverpool are a challenge. In the FA Cup last season especially there were a lot of people trying to get in either without tickets or with forged tickets.
“Cardiff a few years ago with the rioting [away fans clashed with police and the match was delayed] was particularly challenging, as was Birmingham a few years ago [when missiles rained on both sets of fans, leading to several arrests]. The Manchester City game this season was very hostile after the penalties. I haven’t seen the ground like that for quite some time, it felt like a play-off semi-final with the intensity in the stands.”
A new factor for him this season has been Europe. He’s enlisted the help and guidance of other English clubs who have hosted the likes of Besiktas before, as there were important cultural differences to be aware of.
“With Besiktas, Bratislava and Torino in particular, you’re dealing with different types of people and behaviours,” Steve says.
“With Besiktas we were dealing with racism on a different level — involvement with Kurdish separatists, based on wars. Our country has racism but not based on anything like that. Also the organised-crime gangs and the backgrounds of the groups, we needed to be aware of the nuances of it and also what certain words meant if they were displayed on banners.”
Bratislava’s boisterous fans damaged a nearby hotel, while Torino presented yet another challenge — their ultras had to be separated into two separate tiers of the away end, with the general advice offered to Sutton being “if you put them together, they’ll kill each other.”
In his operational role at the club, Sutton has also reconnoitred Wolves’ European away days, often weeks in advance. Braga away was a nightmare (around 8,000 Wolves fans were funnelled through three turnstiles at the Portuguese ground and many missed the first half standing in long queues outside) and Espanyol, in Barcelona later this month, will present its own challenges.
Despite the stress, it’s a job he loves.
“I’m blessed with my team,” he adds. “Their dedication is outstanding. It’s a big operation with a lot going on. You can’t do that without dedicated folk who are passionate about doing the right thing. They’re all stars.”
An arrested flare-thrower, Leicester fans squabbling with Leicester fans, and an act of furious anti-VAR vandalism – Welcome to Molineux’s epicentre
It’s 9.54 on Friday evening and Molineux is rapidly emptying. Wolves have just drawn 0-0 with Leicester City and the majority of the 30,000 fans dispersing onto the streets of Wolverhampton are grumbling about VAR.
The players have headed down the tunnel and, after a frustrating evening for the home team, calm is being restored. Except, that is, in one small room tucked away at the back of the South Bank.
From this bunker, Molineux, probably unbeknown to the thousands who have turned up just to watch a game of football, has been monitored, organised and kept safe via the help of dozens of CCTV cameras and a safety officer who, working alongside the emergency services, has taken charge of more than 400 stewards and staff in an intricate, detailed and professional operation.
And while the game may have finished, the night’s drama isn’t over. Just a few minutes earlier, a blue flare was dangerously lobbed from the away section straight into the South Bank in the direction of Wolves supporters. The culprit quickly made his way out of the ground before he could be identified and stopped — but the man and the group of people he’s with have been halted by a police officer on an unrelated matter after a few post-match verbals were being thrown around.
The police officer’s conversation with the group, it just so happens, is being captured on live CCTV.
Someone monitoring the cameras has, incredibly, among images that are showing thousands of people leaving Molineux, spotted the flare-thrower. “That’s him… that’s the guy who threw the pyro,” he says decisively.
After the image of the flare being thrown is slotted alongside the live recording of his chat with the officer outside, the match is confirmed.
Immediately a message is relayed to the officer at the scene…he escorts the suspect to one side. His raised right hand is mysteriously pigmented. Yes, he’s been caught very blue-handed. Arrest made and, via the eagle eye in the stadium control room, job done.
Welcome to Molineux’s epicentre.
After 16 years as the club’s head of operations, this is the domain of Steve Sutton, the man with the sharp eye.
In front of him is a wall of 24 screens, on which images from 180 cameras positioned in and around Molineux are shown. If this is The Truman Show, Sutton is its Ed Harris, the all-seeing eye.
From the control room, which has a glorious view of the inside of Molineux (behind dark-tinted, double-glazed glass which almost completely muffles noise from the stadium) Sutton and his well-drilled team will keep an eye out for — and react to — crowd disorder, racism, violence, medical emergencies, flare-throwing and excessive beer drinking, among dozens of other things; as The Athletic finds out after being granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access.
It’s a slick operation — and one which starts several hours before kick-off.
“Ultimately we’re here for peoples’ safety,” Sutton tells his senior stewards in a pre-match briefing.
He’s recounting the details of an incident which took place during Wolves’ last home match, against Liverpool, when a supporter suffered a cardiac arrest. A steward performed CPR as he waited for paramedics to arrive. The man survived and is now recovering. It was one of just six heart attacks suffered during Molineux matches in the past nine years. Only three of those six survived — and one steward, who works in the South Bank, helped on two occasions.
“Kevin Moss made a real difference,” Sutton proudly says. “He put his training into action and everyone played a part in helping this man. It’s worth sharing that with your staff tonight.”
It’s Valentine’s Day but a box of chocolates being shared among the senior staff is as romantic as it will get for Sutton and his team. They’ve got a job to do — Leicester are in town, it’s a high-profile Friday night match and the potential for problems occurring is never far away.
Leicester are flying in the league and it’s a derby of sorts, albeit a tenuous one. Sutton tells his staff to be aware of the potential risks posed to and from both sets of fans.
Flares have been used at five of Leicester’s away matches this season, amid a variety of other incidents. Wolves fans can be far from angels too — as everyone is well aware — so every angle must be covered.
The stewards are all given briefing sheets, detailing their usual roles and responsibilities but also specific information relating to tonight’s visitors. There are 15 away coaches on the way. The potential for organised disorder is classed as ‘low’, while spontaneous disorder is considered a ‘medium’ risk.
Stewards are reminded to conduct thorough searches (of anyone aged over 14) and remove bottle-tops, while those working in the South Bank (Molineux’s self-proclaimed rowdy stand) are reminded to keep an eye out for people standing on their seats.
“Watch those front rows for any issues with throwing, spitting, abuse,” Sutton adds. “Get your stewards proactively working those areas and challenging unacceptable behaviour. If you need support, let us know.
“When there are controversial incidents on the pitch, get them up off their seats and monitoring the crowd.”
These senior stewards will now go and brief their sub-teams of a couple of dozen stewards in sections around Molineux’s four stands, before a last-minute search is conducted, combing each row of seats. There will be one steward for every 250 supporters in the stadium, which also has 20 first-aiders and three paramedic crews on duty.
In the control room — the hub where every decision relating to support safety or crowd disorder is made — things are starting to get busy. Soon the room will be packed with two CCTV monitoring specialists, a manager for each stand, representatives from West Midlands Police and ambulance services and operatives for the phone and communication lines, who will play a crucial role in the evening’s events, siphoning calls and relating information to Sutton and others.
The match has been categorised as ‘B’, with A being the lowest risk of trouble and C the highest.
Dozens of factors have gone into making that assessment such as; kick-off-time, whether the fixture is high profile or a local derby, whether there is any animosity between the teams (or any figure who may rile the home supporters, such as an ex-player or manager, either of Wolves or even main rivals West Bromwich Albion), if the game is all-ticket, or if the away club have only brought season-ticket holders (if it went to general sale, there could be more problematic fans with tickets.)
Sutton has a huge database at his disposal that lists the fixtures between Wolves and Leicester since 2003 and states absolutely anything of note that happened in or around the stadium.
For instance, at the last Molineux encounter between the teams (a 4-3 win for Wolves on a Saturday lunchtime in January last year), a group of Leicester supporters were found in Wolverhampton city centre without tickets — and sent back to Leicester by police.
During the game, one fan was refused entry for being drunk, two were ejected for foul and abusive language and another for throwing a bottle, while there was one arrest for breach of the peace.
Molineux’s gates open at 6.30pm and the next hour and a half will focus on getting over 30,000 people swiftly and safely inside the stadium. A CCTV sweep is performed to check there is nothing awry and staff will keep an eye out for ticket touts as well as beggars.
The state-of-the-art, high-resolution cameras cover the seats, concourses, car parks, surrounding streets and even the corridor leading to the dressing rooms. The system at Wolves’ disposal has improved immeasurably (they couldn’t pause or rewind footage two years ago), enabling them to identify trouble-makers far easier than before. Every seat in the ground is covered.
The only problem they have at the moment is a stray car in the Steve Bull Stand’s car park, which is shared with the University of Wolverhampton during the week (staff are asked to clear the cars by 5pm for a midweek match). After a couple of attempts to contact the owner via the university, a tow truck is called.
The Wolves players have just arrived on their team coach — 100 metres down Waterloo Road, Leicester’s bus is being held back. The away team must always arrive after Wolves as their bus remains parked by the same entrance for the rest of the night. After Leicester pull in, the signal is made to fully close off Waterloo Road to traffic (a rule that was brought in a couple of years ago for match days).
Fans start heading inside in dribs and drabs, while in the control room there are a few relatively minor incidents to deal with — an ambulance has been badly parked and is blocking a walkway, while in the stadium’s Fan Zone a steward has fallen over. Bonita, who staffs the phones and radio, is asking for a wheelchair to be dispatched.
At 7.05pm, it isn’t looking good for the university car. The recovery truck of doom has arrived and begins dragging the car up its ramp. But wait! In a development as dramatic as almost anything that will be seen on the pitch tonight, its owner has showed up in the nick of time. After some gentle pleading, she is allowed to drive her car home. Panic over, scene cleared, and a message goes out on a walkie talkie to allow a gate to be opened for her to exit through.
Come 7.25pm, the away section — the lower tier of the Steve Bull Stand — is starting to fill up. The tight concourses are packed and there are 1,300 Leicester fans already inside the ground.
We know this figure because Sutton has access to a precise and live count of exactly how many fans have creaked through Molineux’s turnstiles. Soon, there will be 630 supporters arriving every single minute. The same screen also shows a watch-list of banned fans. If they try to enter with their card, it will trigger an alert.
More issues keep cropping up. A Wolves fan has draped a Mexico flag, in honour of striker Raul Jimenez, over the top of an LED advertising board, so the nearest steward is radioed to ask them to remove it.
Police are advising that they are escorting a group of around 60 Leicester fans in from the train station, with up to 30 of them said to be “rowdy”. It could be one of those nights.
Then Sutton, perusing the cameras, thinks he’s spotted a peculiar sight on the away concourse… a Wolves shirt. After zooming in, yes, his suspicions are correct. An elderly gentleman is stood proudly among Leicester supporters wearing a bright gold Wolves top. It has to be seen twice to be believed.
The man, who has unzipped a large black and red coat to unveil the shirt, appears to be at the game with family. Via his earpiece and microphone, Sutton speaks directly to the nearest steward, who has a friendly word with the seemingly harmless individual. It’s judged, looking at him and the group he’s with, that he poses no threat so the steward, via Sutton’s instructions, tells him to zip his coat up and “for his own safety…sit on his hands” during the game. It’s a common sense approach (more so than the man’s decision to wear a Wolves top while sitting in the away end).
With 18 minutes to kick-off, there are 2,000 Leicester fans in the ground, but above them the notoriously long queues to get into the Steve Bull’s upper tier are snaking back across Molineux Street and up Deanery Row. There are 18,000 people inside Molineux now, but up to 13,000 are still to get in.
Then the rowdy Leicester fans from the train station turn up… and one of them won’t even get to see the kick-off.
A blue flare has been lit on the concourse amid increasingly boisterous scenes, with dozens of fans jumping up and down and some throwing beer (an expensive hobby at football stadium prices).
CCTV footage of the area is immediately rewound to identify who lit the flare. “I want to see him strike it,” Sutton says, as police on the ground who think they have spotted the culprit take their suspect outside. There is confusion over whether they have the right man but, after careful analysis of the footage, which shows him pulling the flare out the second he gets through the turnstile and immediately lighting it, they do have their guy and he is duly arrested.
Behaviour in the concourse is judged to be “good-natured and manageable by stewards at this point”, resisting the urge to send police in, in what may be an inflammatory move.
The vast majority of disturbances are spotted by CCTV or alerts from staff, but a new incident is brought to everyone’s attention via their own nostrils. Someone has let off a flare in the stand below us, specifically in a toilet, and the smell is seeping up through the vents. It’s quite vile, and Sutton heads off to investigate.
There are other pressing matters. Someone has thrown up on the stairs in the Stan Cullis Stand and two young lads in the South Bank are drinking cans of Red Bull (cans are prohibited, not energy drinks). A cleaner and a steward are dispatched respectively.
Then, kick-off and, well… relative calm. Indeed, with eyes and minds focused on the pitch, absolutely nothing happens for 37 minutes. It’s an unusual occurrence for Sutton.
He later says: “You can feel your pulse going up. Sometimes there’s nowhere for that adrenaline to go if nothing is going on.
“I get a real buzz out of it, although it’s quite stressful if you’ve got a lot of incidents going on at the same time, such as disorder or a medical emergency. You zone out. All you’re seeing is what you need to deal with. It’s like playing a board game — you’ve got a big picture to deal with, not just one incident.”
The peace is broken by a lone away fan spotted arriving at the ground at 8.37pm. The doors are locked, so stewards are deployed to get him in.
Attention briefly turns to the actual football, a rare notion in this room, as Wolves appear to take the lead through Willy Boly’s header only for the goal to be chalked off after a VAR offside call that’s as clear as mud. It’s not the first narrow VAR decision Wolves have been on the wrong end of this season and, for one fan watching in the concourse, the frustration is too much. At the precise moment the VAR official rules ‘no goal’, the man lurches forward and smashes the TV hanging above him, cracking the screen and leaving a hand-print which seems to offer a visual representation of Wolves’ fans’ feelings on the subject.
Indeed, to reinforce the man’s frustrations, it should be noted that Sutton and his team had analysed a live action replay of the TV smash far quicker than Stockley Park had judged a blister on Pedro Neto’s heel to be offside.
Unfortunately for the TV thumper, he’s committed a criminal act… but fortunately for him he can’t be found. Amid the half-time melee of thousands of fans descending onto the concourse the man, who was wearing a beanie hat and covering his face, is on this occasion impossible to trace.
“So hang on, what’s the score then?” a voice asks in the background. Well, quite.
Amid the now-rebellious atmosphere, a number of incidents are ongoing. Some Leicester supporters have become embroiled in an internal dispute and one is being held by stewards, someone is vaping in the Steve Bull Upper and refusing to stop (the steward is advised to tell him he could be banned from future matches, which soon puts an end to it), while in the Billy Wright Stand one of the Wolves players’ fathers has been verbally abused. The aggressor is warned, via Sutton’s advice to the operators, who relay it to the nearest steward, that he’ll be ejected if he doesn’t calm down.
The second half begins but the ongoing issues don’t end. There’s a drunk Wolves fan in the South Bank who’s swaying like a cheap caravan in the fast lane. One to keep an eye on.
And in the away end a fan who’s been antagonising the Wolves supporters is now being refused alcohol — and isn’t taking the news all that well. A decision is taken by Sutton to eject him from the stadium.
There’s another drunk in the South Bank. Stewards head into the toilets to find him, where they discover another inebriated fan who “can barely stand up”.
Violence and disorder, though, is thankfully non-existent, so Sutton’s attention is focused on something else entirely. He has been warned before the game that a betting scammer may be attending the game with the intention of transmitting live data directly to Asian betting markets. The man, who is sat in the corner Graham Hughes Stand, has been ejected at other Premier League clubs but has proved to be “argumentative” when approached, so police are asked to head to the area to assist should they be needed.
With time on the pitch running out — meaning there’ll be too much else to deal with at full-time in terms of crowd control — there is only a short window to tell the man to stop what he’s doing and get out. After the alarm is raised, he voluntarily chooses to leave.
“Can we open the gates?” Bonita asks, with just a couple of minutes remaining. The answer is yes… and after the full-time whistle blows it appears that everything is going smoothly, until the sight of that blue missile into the South Bank raises everyone’s pulses once more.
A couple of minutes later another flare is lit, this time a Wolves-coloured one, in the South Bank, but sadly the fan responsible is not caught.
By 10.10pm, 17 minutes after the final whistle, Molineux is empty and serene. The arrest of the Leicester flare-thrower doubles the number of arrests for the night (both Leicester supporters). Three Wolves fans were ejected from the ground, another was thrown out of the Leicester end and there were three first-aid medical incidents.
“That was fairly routine,” Sutton says, reflecting on a job well done. “On average, we’d eject the best part of 70 or 80 people a season, so four is about normal for one game.
“It was unusual to see that many pyros. We were expecting it from Leicester but prior to our last game we hadn’t seen any in the home areas all season.”
Sutton has seen it all over the years: riots, fights, pitch invasions, protests, suspect devices, evacuation alerts, fireworks in the crowd, the lot.
“Port Vale in League One was a huge challenge. We dealt with a lot of incidents, a few arrests and some disorder,” he says, reflecting on his most hectic days in the job.
“Liverpool are a challenge. In the FA Cup last season especially there were a lot of people trying to get in either without tickets or with forged tickets.
“Cardiff a few years ago with the rioting [away fans clashed with police and the match was delayed] was particularly challenging, as was Birmingham a few years ago [when missiles rained on both sets of fans, leading to several arrests]. The Manchester City game this season was very hostile after the penalties. I haven’t seen the ground like that for quite some time, it felt like a play-off semi-final with the intensity in the stands.”
A new factor for him this season has been Europe. He’s enlisted the help and guidance of other English clubs who have hosted the likes of Besiktas before, as there were important cultural differences to be aware of.
“With Besiktas, Bratislava and Torino in particular, you’re dealing with different types of people and behaviours,” Steve says.
“With Besiktas we were dealing with racism on a different level — involvement with Kurdish separatists, based on wars. Our country has racism but not based on anything like that. Also the organised-crime gangs and the backgrounds of the groups, we needed to be aware of the nuances of it and also what certain words meant if they were displayed on banners.”
Bratislava’s boisterous fans damaged a nearby hotel, while Torino presented yet another challenge — their ultras had to be separated into two separate tiers of the away end, with the general advice offered to Sutton being “if you put them together, they’ll kill each other.”
In his operational role at the club, Sutton has also reconnoitred Wolves’ European away days, often weeks in advance. Braga away was a nightmare (around 8,000 Wolves fans were funnelled through three turnstiles at the Portuguese ground and many missed the first half standing in long queues outside) and Espanyol, in Barcelona later this month, will present its own challenges.
Despite the stress, it’s a job he loves.
“I’m blessed with my team,” he adds. “Their dedication is outstanding. It’s a big operation with a lot going on. You can’t do that without dedicated folk who are passionate about doing the right thing. They’re all stars.”
