The Wolves Archive

[KiwiWolf61]

Only one automatic promotion place and Middlesbrough were a better team than us, you can pinpoint moments/injuries but we weren't the best team in the league.

Two reasons I don't look back on the Bolton game with *that* much bitterness:

1) I'm not convinced we'd have beaten Reading at Wembley anyway
2) Even back in 1995, I don't think Taylor was up to doing much in the Premier League if we had gone up

Middlesbrough did the double over Wolves and Bolton were relegated after just one season in the Premier League.

Even if Wolves managed to fluke their way through given the amount of goals leaked in 94/95 you couldn't see them staying up especially with a midfield that was very pedestrian - but at least Bully could have had a chance to play in the top league.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

What we notionally had in our favour was the landscape of English football - basically a rich owner (see Walker at Blackburn and Hall at Newcastle) could get you right near the top of the tree very quickly.

If you hired the right people. Which we never did.

Had we gone up then I don't imagine we'd have been very long in looking for a new manager, and then you're into him probably wanting a completely different set of players.

Not many from the 94/95 squad went on to have good PL careers. Venus had a good year with Ipswich, Froggatt about the same with Coventry, Richards was here for the very end and did well at Southampton (not so much Spurs), but not much else.

 

[Law's Bus]

Not many from the 94/95 squad went on to have good PL careers. Venus had a good year with Ipswich, Froggatt about the same with Coventry, Richards was here for the very end and did well at Southampton (not so much Spurs), but not much else.

It's all ifs and buts.

Froggatt had a couple of decent seasons with Coventry before he was broken. Daley had a number beforehand with Villa, as did Geoff Thomas. If we'd have bought Mark Walters you could say the same, and Paul Jones somehow shockingly also did. John de Wolf you can say probably would have done pre-injury. In those days, we wouldn't have actually needed that much more for safe mid-table.

Bully would have thrived, obviously.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I suspect the way we were demolished by Crystal Palace (relegated in 94/95) was more indicative of how we'd go. Forest absolutely mullered us before Collymore went off too. We'll never know now of course

And of course Taylor tried to sell Bully in the summer of 1995 anyway.

 

[KiwiWolf61]

If you hired the right people. Which we never did.

Had we gone up then I don't imagine we'd have been very long in looking for a new manager, and then you're into him probably wanting a completely different set of players.

IMO we haven't had a good track record of managers since Cullis !

Never a fan of McGarry; Barnwell spent too much on 1 player (Law's Bus super article in OW highlights this); Turner was great for the lower leagues; Mick was excellent in the Championship but struggled at the next level; and so-on and so-on until Nuno. Fingers crossed with GON (who I do like a lot).

For all Sir Jack's money he couldn't seem to get this right when it was so important.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

For all Sir Jack's money he couldn't seem to get this right when it was so important.

To underline that and to go with the earlier comparisons from that time - Blackburn went out and got Dalglish, Newcastle got Keegan. We stuck with Turner who was palpably not the man to take us to the next level.

There's possibly an alternate timeline where Taylor does well here and I don't blame Jack for appointing McGhee - it looked like the right call instinctively at the time. Didn't work though.

 

[KiwiWolf61]

To underline that and to go with the earlier comparisons from that time - Blackburn went out and got Dalglish, Newcastle got Keegan. We stuck with Turner who was palpably not the man to take us to the next level.

There's possibly an alternate timeline where Taylor does well here and I don't blame Jack for appointing McGhee - it looked like the right call instinctively at the time. Didn't work though.

Excellent points.

It was apparent after the 2nd season (90/91) that Turner was not the man to take Wolves further. A nice handshake and then get the right person in.

I don't think Taylor was ever going to get Wolves established in the PL - he could get us promoted and that was about it (heck of a decent person though).

I don't really know enough about McGhee but I'll respect and take your opinions on him as gospel then.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Mate, McGhee will get his on Oscillating one day, don't worry about that

 

[KiwiWolf61]

Mate, McGhee will get his on Oscillating one day, don't worry about that

I'll look forward to that.

Looking back at the potential/squad we had in 96/97 and 97/98 we should have got promotion (despite having Bully at the end of his career); and we had the most precocious young talent in a Wolves shirt since Peter Knowles in Robbie Keane.

 

[Law's Bus]

IMO we haven't had a good track record of managers since Cullis !

Never a fan of McGarry; Barnwell spent too much on 1 player (Law's Bus super article in OW highlights this); Turner was great for the lower leagues; Mick was excellent in the Championship but struggled at the next level; and so-on and so-on until Nuno. Fingers crossed with GON (who I do like a lot).

For me the real question mark is around what Ian Greaves could have achieved. Timing was everything there.

Mark McGhee did seem at a distance like the "next big thing". It's just a shame that the big thing in question was his ego...

 

[KiwiWolf61]

Today's update:

Season 1995/96 (56 matches)

After the drama and excitement of the 1994/95 season came a huge let-down in this season where Wolves were heavily tipped to be one of the promotion favourites but instead spent the entire season mostly trying to avoid relegation.

Graham Taylor resigned after 16 games and Mark McGhee took over which did see an eventual upturn in results but the season petered out where Wolves again flirted with relegation only confirming staying up with a draw in their last home game in a run that saw them fail to register a win in their last 8 games and finishing 20th.

A good run in the League Cup (eventually lost to Aston Villa in the quarter finals) started with a demolition of Fulham at Craven Cottage:

A very creditable away draw in the FA Cup 4th Round at Spurs (although Spurs won the replay):

Channel is up to 645 videos and 638 matches - I'm pretty sure this is the biggest collection of Wolves games on YouTube now, and I even haven't finished the 1990s yet. Still got 3 more seasons for the 1990s (157 games) to go.

The 2000s has 502 matches, the 2010s has 390 matches and the 2020s has 232.

All up there's 1,929 videos in total either uploaded or to be uploaded . . . I'm approx. a third of the way - so far.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Every time you release an update it just gets better and better as a wonderful archive. I tip my hat to your dedication.

 

[KiwiWolf61]

Every time you release an update it just gets better and better as a wonderful archive. I tip my hat to your dedication.

That's very kind of you.

And there's still 28 seasons to go before I get up to this season . . . I must be bonkers.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

We all have something to which we pour in a lot of love and dedication. Yours is Wolves archive. Mine is building model boats. I would wager a fair bit yours is a bit more popular on here!

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

You may laugh, but wolves archive isn't pulling up trees on modelshipbuilder.com

 

[KiwiWolf61]

Today's update:

1996/97 Season (51 matches)

Pretty much like 2001/02 (although not quite as disappointing) - how the fuck did Wolves fuck that up in not getting automatic promotion but instead bowing out in the play off semis.

Their away form was the best of the division and although Notlob (pains me to say it) were the best team that year, with the squad Wolves had at their disposal it beggars belief who they screwed it up. We even had Bully on fire scoring 23 goals.

Home form was 2nd rate where out of 23 league games they failed to score in 7 (nearly a third) and lost 8 (just over a third).

However, there was the famous 4-2 win at WBA with Iwan Roberts scoring a hat-trick:

But the last game of the season where Wolves beat Palace 2-1 in the Play-Off Semi-Final 2nd Leg but lost 3-2 on aggregate was telling - the number of camera shots of anxious fans and management stands out markedly:

Wolves failure to finish ahead of unfancied Barnsley in the automatic promotion places, and then subsequent play-off exit, caused owner Sir Jack to make an outburst days after the campaign in which he accused manager Mark McGhee and the chairman, his son Jonathan, of "blackmailing" him into funding their high transfer spending. He promised that there would be an end to Wolves being a "sloppily-run club".

I was fortunately spared this as in NZ there was no coverage except for the results in the paper, but I was still gutted - I would have been apoplectic if I had seen it unravel, as I'm sure a few here would have been.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

We were shite tbh. Deserved nowt.

 

[Law's Bus]

We were shite tbh. Deserved nowt.

And that's just the home kit.

More seriously, the joys of Mark McGhee not discovering that 3-5-2 didn't actually work in home games when people sat back off us and did us on the counter.

 

[KiwiWolf61]

I'm looking for some help and/or confirmation on the following match:

I believe it is the friendly match between Wolves and Swansea City played on August 6th, 1990 - won by Wolves 4-0 and Bully scores a hat-trick (he's wearing the no. 15 shirt).

Season 1997/98 being released tomorrow.

 

[Sniffer]