The golden years

[Carsy]

Individually the players who replaced Wright, Williams, Hancocks, Wilshaw and Swinbourne were not as good, but they made a better team.

Dad always rated Finlayson as a top keeper. He always said he never played for Scotland as the Scottish selectors would never believe he was Scottish as Scottish keepers were all shite - something which has never changed.

In the late 50s Wolves scored 100+ goals in 4 consecutive seasons - I don’t think this has ever been matched.

No good Scottish keepers, Tell that to Antti Niemi!

 

[exfan]

Being 75 years old I was lucky to see a litle of the league winning teams, more of the latter team.. I think the reasos we did not keep up with Arsenal and Man Utd is mainly due to finacial issues than anything else. First there was the abolition of the maximum wage. This was followed by the split of gate money being abolished, in the distant past gate money was split betwwen the home club,the league and the away club. I cannot rember the split but even if the away club only got 10% it makes the bigger club richer i.e. home gate £60k away club gets £6k home. Smaller club home gate £10k away clib gets £1k, better for bigger club to kep all home gate.
Then the introduction of sponsorship naturaly the bigger club attracts more sponsorship.
Next the greed league and Champions league both designed to make sure the top teams stay the top teams.
I think we must get used to only occaisionly some small team having its time in the sun.

 

[Bertiewolf]

Regarding Ron Flowers: He represents so much of the times. Not just the modesty but a Wolf for life. What play today stays with the same team for their professional career?

Not to be picky, but Ron went on to play for Northampton Town when he left the Wolves. I started watching Wolves in the 59/60 season and listening to my Dad and elder brothers, there was only a fag paper between that Cup winning side, which incidentally should have done the double that year - but crucially lost at home to Spurs in the crunch match (my first game) and the title winning teams of the early and late 50's.

My own opinion as to why we never really pushed on, was the boards refusal (maybe Cullis - not sure) to sign Scottish and Irish footballers. While the likes of Law, St John, Crerand, Best (big Wolves fan as a boy), Blanchflower, Giles and many many others were being hoovered up by what are now the big clubs - Wolves policy was to buy English and with the £100 wages being scrapped (as someone has said) we just weren't prepared to compete in the market.

 

[Tony Towner]

So basically it's the fault of xenophobia and Jimmy Hill

 

[Squeak]

Not to be picky, but Ron went on to play for Northampton Town when he left the Wolves. I started watching Wolves in the 59/60 season and listening to my Dad and elder brothers, there was only a fag paper between that Cup winning side, which incidentally should have done the double that year - but crucially lost at home to Spurs in the crunch match (my first game) and the title winning teams of the early and late 50's.

My own opinion as to why we never really pushed on, was the boards refusal (maybe Cullis - not sure) to sign Scottish and Irish footballers. While the likes of Law, St John, Crerand, Best (big Wolves fan as a boy), Blanchflower, Giles and many many others were being hoovered up by what are now the big clubs - Wolves policy was to buy English and with the £100 wages being scrapped (as someone has said) we just weren't prepared to compete in the market.

I don't think it was down to that era really. Even MUFC were relegated in the early 70's and teams like Arsenal and Spurs were also propping up the division. Everything changed when the big money players came in. First at Chelsea and then Man City. Even Liverpool couldn't compete with them despite being a power house previously. The league then decided to bolt the door afterwards and even if you had wealthy owners wanting to invest, they really couldn't unless they did shady deals with their other businesses "sponsoring" the team.

Sure, we might have pushed on in the 70s to better effect but I don't believe that would have made much difference after Abramovic bought Chelsea in 2003 and ADUG purchased City in 2008.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

We could have matched what Blackburn and Newcastle did in the 90s, but wasted the opportunity through repeated bad decisions.

 

[Squeak]

We could have matched what Blackburn and Newcastle did in the 90s, but wasted the opportunity through repeated bad decisions.

Easy to say when it's not your money. Walker was intent on doing whatever was necessary before he died. Jack was more pragmatic and he was mostly content with leaving a new stadium and getting us up. I agree some of the choices he made, such as his son as Chairman, were extremely poor but most were understandable at the time. The one that wasn't understandable was leaving Jones in charge and not reinforcing the team to any great extent. That said, we did suffer some key injuries. Newcastle won sod all though but they did play some exciting footy under Keegan.