Just how good were/was/is/are (Wolves Edition)

[Paddingtonwolf]

£1,437,500 incoming for Daley

£1,490,000 outgoing for Gray

 

[Deleted Cyber]

The team of 1980 was my last year at school and pretty much the only time I had bragging rights against any of my school mates.

Andy Gray is a bit of a knob personality wise but was a pre bully god for me at 16.

 

[Donegal Wolf]

£1,437,500 incoming for Daley

£1,490,000 outgoing for Gray

British record fees at the time, whatever about paying over the odds for Gray, daylight robbery the fee we got for Daley who whilst a good player was never worth anywhere near that value.

Think Gray held our record transfer fee for along time, until we signed Dean Richards

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Yep, that's correct. So held it for almost 16 years.

I saw an old Everton game on BBC the other week when they were doing an FA Cup Rewind - he had another goal in there (disallowed this time) where he jumped straight into the keeper. Throwback stuff.

Good team that Everton outfit though they sure had some ugly, ugly players.

 

[Newbridge Wolf]

Have walsall managed to break their transfer record yet, isn't that from the 1970s?

Edit: Just googled it and they did break their 1979 record of 175k back in 2016, doesn't look to have been worth it though as he left after 1 season

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

They have, they bought some Cypriot guy in 2016 (he was rubbish and only lasted a season). But yeah, before that it was Alan Buckley I think and it would have been late 70s.

Millwall had a record lasting about 30 years too, Paul Goddard, it was only recently that they broke it.

 

[Law's Bus]

You have, the Daley money plus a bit more paid for Gray. The new stand was paid for by borrowing hence us going bust when interest rates sky rocketed

I once wrote a blog post on here (which no longer seems to exist...) all about the 1982 problems, and when I was researching it I discovered that there was no real sky rocketing of interest rates at the time of the stand opening - they were around 11-14% during the 1979-1982 period; whilst they were at similar rates during the 1975-77 period, so basically the same rates as when we planned the stand.

What there was was a sudden massive drop in rates in 1977-78 which dropped so far and so fast down to 5% at its minimum that there is no way that any responsible person would have taken it as being "the new normal", as they were changing on a weekly basis - literally. If Harry Marshall fell into that trap, then clearly he was an idiot and should not have been allowed anywhere near any company.



As for the main question in hand, Andy Gray was pretty good, yes. But we had an ageing squad that was on its last hurrah and in reality we needed to spend the Steve Daley money on a number of new younger players.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Shame about that blog. It may be buried somewhere but the feature got turned off a while back (I think it messed up the home page or something). Was a very good read though.

 

[GLASGOWOLF]

The 80's my.memory of the timeline of the 80's is declining gates suffered during the the Thatcher inspired economic decline of the late 70's early 80's that caused the first issue.

This is where my memory starts to falter over the events.
Inthought there were 2 brushes with bankruptcy, one was correct and one was forced by 2 owners who wanted Wolves who at the time were on a par with Villa size wise go e so that Villa could capitalise.
Was Ken Wheldon and an ex Villa chairman not heavily involved?
My understanding is our assets far outweighed our debts and the receivers should never have been bought in.

As I say it was 40 years ago and I was just leaving / left School. And my memory if the events has declined.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Doug Ellis put us into admin in 1982.

 

[Newbridge Wolf]

Would be good if some of those blogs were able to be brought back again as threads, maybe have a sticky for some of them that are of general interest. The 80s period as awful a time for being a fan is quite important to how the club was shaped for the next couple of decades and I have heard so many interpretations it would be nice to have a definitive account as it were.

Obviously I have no idea if this is possible!

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

If Law's fancied writing that one again (or if he has it saved somewhere, mind you it's got to be close to 10 years ago) then I don't mind offering it up as a guest post on my site.

I can't write it myself, I wasn't even born when the John Ireland Stand (as was) was built.

 

[North Shropshire Lad]

Gray polarised opinion then and still does now. I'm in the camp that doesn't believe he ever really did it for us and I'm fairly certain he regrets the move and his time with us. Certainly bookended by much better spells at Villa and Everton.

Gray was a proper old fashioned target man/centre forward who forgot how to be a footballer while he was with us. We weren't great, but his goal return was poor and if his character off the pitch was replicated in the dressing room, I wouldn't think was a great teammate either. Even before his well publicised late controvercies, when he lived at Harriet Hayes just outside Albrighton he wasn't exactly popular as a person locally.

 

[GLASGOWOLF]

Doug Ellis put us into admin in 1982.

Knew it was Villa link. I remember now, and we should never have been placed into receivership

 

[Deano]

I was looking on the site for law's bus' blog a couple of weeks ago but couldn't find the blog section so assumed it was gone.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Best hope would be on the Web Archive somewhere. I found a Google search of something I wrote back in the dim and distant past (don't bother looking, it's not worth it, I wasn't as good a writer then) but the "blog" section now just redirects to the forum home page. There was definitely some kind of technical issue, may have been to do with when the site got hacked.

 

[Paul]

The 80's my.memory of the timeline of the 80's is declining gates suffered during the the Thatcher inspired economic decline of the late 70's early 80's that caused the first issue.

.

Although this is partly correct we were still averaging 20/22000 at home games, that was more than the Albion were getting (and Leeds), there was a lot of unpaid debts and bills for the new stands which caused a lot of the financial grief. If only we knew what was coming next !

ps. I think the Blog spots were kind of semi voted off after one of the server crashes, there were some good things on there, but there was only Wolf Hunting who was regularly posting on it, nobody else ever bothered.

 

[Dennisons Wrong Foot]

The League Cup final goal is the goal he is most remembered for, but it obviously wasn't his best ever goal and tbh I don't remember anywhere near as much as I should. Andy Gray was a star - one of the biggest names in British football - and arguably the last big star we had before Joao Moutinho (Bully was a Wolves star rather than a British or European star). He should have been the player to propel us into regular European football and more trophies, but unfortunately we declined as a team so it is understandable that we were not Gray's favourite club. We didn't really get value from him, nor he from us. One of those 'if only' stories.

 

[darlowolf64]

6. John Richards

John Peter Richards (born 9 November 1950) is an English retired professional international footballer, who played as a striker
He spent almost all his career at Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, where he broke the club's goalscoring record, ending with 194 goals
During a fourteen-year association with Wolves he won two League Cups and also played in the first UEFA Cup Final in 1972. He was capped once by the England national team in 1973.

Richards signed for the Molineux club as a professional in July 1969 and made his debut on 28 February 1970 in a 3–3 draw at West Bromwich Albion. He scored his first league goal for Wolves the following season against Huddersfield Town on 19 September 1970.
In 1971–72, "King John" came of age, scoring 13 league goals and helping Wolves become runners-up in the UEFA Cup. The following season, he was even stronger, scoring 36 goals in total (his highest seasonal tally) and, in 1974, he scored the winning goal as the team beat Manchester City to win the League Cup. Richards was leading scorer for Wolves in six of the next seven seasons, culminating in winning a second League Cup medal in 1980 against Nottingham Forest.
During his time with the club, Richards became Wolves' all-time leading scorer with 194 goals in total, a record that was subsequently bettered by Steve Bull in 1992. However, he still holds the club record for the most FA Cup goals, with 24.
Richards eventually left the club and moved to Portugal in 1983, following a loan spell with Derby County. He played two seasons for C.S. Marítimo, playing 44 League Games and scoring 23 goals, helping the side to promotion.
Richards' goal-scoring prowess was rewarded with a single England cap, against Northern Ireland on 12 May 1973 at Goodison Park. The competition for international places was fierce and the acknowledged talent England possessed in the form of Kevin Keegan, Martin Chivers and Allan Clarke ensured Richards became a "one-cap wonder".
After retiring as a player, Richards went into local government in Wolverhampton and Cannock; later returning to Wolves as a director in 1994, then as managing director in 1997, a post he held until 2000. He currently works as operations director of Pitchcare, a Telford-based online service for groundsmen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gGb507LqbE Wolves vs Derby 1971

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM_GbMrBCIE Wolves vs Man Utd 1972

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlHDJ8VToiw Wolves vs Liverpool 1973

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx66BcWlFMM 1974 League Cup Final winning goal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-extKpMDoI 1976 FA Cup Qtr Final and Qtr Final replay vs Man Utd

 

[Paul]

To put it into perspective John Richards was Bully before there was Steve Bull (If that makes sense ?)

My wife worked for him when he was at local authority catering at Cannock, said he was a nice chap, sent her with a copy of my Wolves who's who book for him to sign, the problem was she started the conversation by stating she hadn't got a clue who he was, which made him laugh (thank God) and to add to the confusion he then signed my book 'To John , best regards John Richards' (???), still loved the bloke though