The 2017 awards...

Well it's New years eve and about time the end of year awards were dug up from their shallow grave...

The Stephen Hawking complementary battery charger goes to Ruben Neves for re-defining the meaning of time...

The Trump  covefee table wtf award to Steve Cotterill for his " If we did'nt have goal line technology and had we had a shot on target and had that gone in then we would have won...nurse i'm feeling dizzy i need my medication" post match reaction to Wolves winning at St Andrews...again.

The Dallas "It was all a dream" shower curtain & rings to Paul Lambert for giving Wolves fans two cracking days out at Stoke & Liverpool.Otherwise it was all pubic hair in the plug hole...

The "Infamy infamy,they've all got it infamy!" Kenneth Williams memorial starched hankie to all our championship rivals and their fans who love getting their knickers in a twist over Wolves...

The "Ohhh missus" Frankie Howerd satin smoking jacket to all Wolves fans who now profess love for "Big Willy"

The Dali Lama ceremonial robe & hookah pipe to Nuno Espirito Santo for just being the coolest motherflipper around even when going apeshit at Bristol City...

The "Run away!" Jurassic Park dinosaur pewter mug to Warnock,Bruce et al for basically sticking to the same hoary old script both on and off the pitch...

The annual Pardew shaving brush & razor to Alan Pardew.The first sign of stubble and his days are numbered...

The School of Science second hand trackie & baseball cap ensemble to Tony Pulis for...well just being Tony Pulis.

The Nigel Farage man of the people gold plated jockstrap to Jose Mourinho for his constant whinging to anyone who gives him the time of day.Proving that not all Portuguese managers are cool as fuck...

The Jessie J gold plated "Price tag" disc to Fosun...it's not all about the money money money...but it helps.

And finally...

To all Wolves fans who at the moment feel like they're Jimmy Krankie waking up between Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell,Claudia Schieffer & Heidi Klum.

Happy Nuno Year to you all!

Winter is coming...foreign footballers beware!

This seems to be the abiding belief among certain managers and opposing fans in the championship when it comes to Wolves outstanding foreign imports,mainly because they're from warmer parts of the globe and not built like square jawed Nordic gods with names that end in Son..No our boys are from Portugal,Morocco,Brazil and,er,North East France.Clearly places where they don't have weather...

When asked about our blistering start to the season these dinosaurs trot out the "Ah but can they do it on a cold winters night in Stoke?" line( it appears that the only players that can't do it on a cold winter night in Stoke at the moment are Stoke players) This is their level of tactical awareness of what's going on at our club or maybe it's a way to appease their own fans/board...s'pose they're never going to say " This club's miles ahead of us in every department and frankly we're all just hanging onto their coattails " But this line about how our players would cope in our winter shows a lack of respect for them and also a vast overestimation of just how bad winters are in the UK...

British winters can be a little nippy i grant you.Occasionally we get a cold snap that last's,ohhhh, at least a week.That's it.Otherwise it just gets a little bleurgh.A bit dull and wet but hardly on a par with Churchill in Canada where polar bears come marauding in to town scratching through the bins looking for half eaten burgers.Can't remember the last time i saw a polar bear terrorising Bushbury Hill as the mercury hit zero...

These are pro sportsmen for god sake.In the prime of their life and fighting fit.Not starving urchins eighteen months into the siege of Stalingrad catching rats to eat...our mild winter won't phase them,besides three of them have been at Wolves for a season already and yes,they did do it on a cold winter's day in Stoke.

In a way i can understand Neil Warnock (aka Colin Wanker) coming out with this shite.It's his thing.Spitting bile at anything that moves.He's what's politely known as "Old school" Less politely known as a moaning old bastard who gets results by bullying opponents and officials alike.Nobody should take heed of the spiteful words that tumble out of his spittle laced craw...

Steve Bruce however has won league titles playing with a host of foreign players at Man Utd.Were the winter's even milder then? or were the foreign players tougher then?  You know, a bit more manly?  Cos' that's what's really being said here.They're basically saying they're weak.A bunch of fanny merchants.Beach footballers who look good when it's sunny but can't hack it in the real world of real men and real footballers.British footballers who can't pass the ball five yards to a team mate but wear short sleeves in the winter...I have watched our foreign players get kicked from pillar to post all season.They get back up and carry on.Hard as nails the lot of them, whilst also being some of the most skillful players i have ever seen in a Wolves shirt...

There also seems to be a collective amnesia with these comments.The only title winning team in English football over the last twenty odd years which had a majority of UK based players was Leicester City a couple of years ago and even then their two best players were foreign.Every other title winning team had a plentiful foreign contingent in their ranks and they obviously handled our winter ok.Maybe i missed something and they were all Inuits...

So trust me our lads can handle it.No doubt we will lose games and the naysayers will creep out of the woodwork with their "told you" smugness...no problem though cos' Nuno don't lose two on the bounce...bloody foreigners eh?

Nice and easy does it...Wolves stroll past Bolton.

We normally get into Wolverhampton from London just before noon.A good indication of how well the local team's doing is the boozer,if it's empty till about 2pm then Wolves are having their normal crappy season.On Saturday we just about managed to grab some seats at 11-55...When you're a one club town the benefits of that club being successful to the local businesses is vital.The whole place gets a boost,not just economically but also in raising the profile of the town too.There's also the added bonus of the locals being a bit bouncier...granted us Wulfrunians are'nt known for our sunny disposition but it's there...somewhere,deeply hidden in the depths of our souls but there nonetheless...

Wolves V Bolton.Two founder members of the football league.History...blah blah blah.A hatred has built up between the clubs over the years.Many think it stems from the play off game in the mid 90's but us older types know it began in May 77'...Last game of the season at Bolton.We were champions with nothing to play for apart from fucking up somebody else..Bolton needed to win to go up in third place.Needless to say we beat them 1-0 with a Kenny Hibbit goal.Notts Forest went up instead(no play offs in them days)...I can remember riots outside after the game...

Bolton rather childishly insist they're the only Wanderers.I don't know why,maybe that's all they've got to hang onto these days.They don't even have alliteration on their side...Anyway they slounced into town unbeaten in seven games yet still in the relegation spots.Ex Wolves captain Karl Henry was their linchpin in the middle of the park.If it was'nt for the sparkly coloured boots and occasional booing i would'nt have noticed him...in fact i barely noticed Bolton at all.Wolves hardly needed to break sweat to win 5-1...even their consolation goal was as a result of our players arsing about at the back.probably out of boredom...that made it 3-1 and i was expecting them to put up a fight from then on but they seemed to be happy with that...

A routine 5-1 win then...both managers got sent off for something or other.We continue to look like scoring every time we attack.Our opponents continue to look beaten before every game.Pre match quotes such as "We're not just going there to make up the numbers" etc point to desperation...

Of course after every win we get the usual crap written about money spent,FFP,long cold winters and now that January's approaching,can we keep hold of our players/manager...meanwhile we continue to play the type of football not seen by a Wolves team for many a day.I don't even care what other teams behind us in the league do.It's of no concern cos' i firmly believe nobody in this division will catch us.No need for wing mirrors on this well oiled motor...

Wolves V Man City...Plucky losers? Not on your nelly.

It's 1am and i can't sleep.I'm too wound up.Not in the bad aggressive way.I'm too wound up by watching Wolves out think the best team in the country only to lose on penalties after 120 minutes of blood pumping football...knowing i will get a headache later through lack of sleep(this is not an uncommon scenario for me) i have taken two pre-emptive Paracetamol with my coffee and made sure the vape machine is fully charged...

I could'nt get to the game in Manchester and had trouble finding a stream of it to watch on my PC,but BBC Radio 5 had the commentary on 5 Live Extra.It's their sister channel which usually only has some Rugby game on that only twenty people care about.They could'nt find any of that nonsense so put our game on instead...First thing i heard was Trevor Sinclair(a Man City fan) say Aguero needed one goal to break the clubs scoring record and was guaranteed to get it versus Wolves.City would also break their record of wins on the trot against a Wolves team their for the taking according to our sage...

To be fair City had put out a fairly strong team and we had made nine changes so it was an assessment not exactly born out of ignorance.Even so my gander was up...I doubled my efforts to find a stream,got lucky with one from the UAE(i think) Wherever it was from the commentator sounded like a bad 70's sitcom joke of what we thought an Arabic commentator would sound like...i tried watching the game along with BBC commentary but they were about a minute ahead so that was a no no.Luckily the 6,000 Wolves fans who made the trip were singing up a storm so drowned out most of the fella...

City had scored something like a squillion goals this season and started with their top two strikers.As i said we made nine changes but tellingly our centre back partnership of Danny Batth & Connor Coady were retained to organise the defence...For the first half hour we could'nt get a touch and City were camped in and around our area without creating much due to our covering each other at every turn.Then we got a break and youngster Bright Enobakhare out muscled Yaya Toure to get in on goal.I think the thought of scoring against City got to him and he messed it up...Yaya Toure is not as fast as he used to be but he's still as strong as an ox on steroids so for a lad of eighteen to physically over power him(more than once) might see the beginning of the end of his career...

All Wolves fans were relieved to be 0-0 at half time but in truth we never looked in much trouble.The second half began the same as the first but we also started to see more of the ball and looked more dangerous going forward than their high flying opponents.Truth be told we could have been two goals up before Enobakhare raced clear of the City defence in what looked like the remake of "The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner" Everyone sort of knew he would try to come inside instead of just blasting the damn thing.This he duly did...he has skill but is still lacking a football brain.Still at least it saved us another intstagram pic of Costa Helder's dick...

Extra time was pretty much the same.City camped in our half but being corralled down blind ally's by our superb defence whilst we broke with speed and purpose....then penalties.I don't mind penalties to determine a winner.It's probably the fairest way to do it.I don't like the new rules though.What's wrong with "We take one,you take one etc" When Toure stepped up to take City's second i initially wondered why we'd changed our shirts to light blue...anyway it's bollocks and that's all there is to it...

So we lost,but we did'nt really...we gave the best team in the country the hardest game they've had this season despite them basically finishing the game with a full strength eleven.Not only did we wear them down and on another day may have won two, or three, nil we also did it having rested arguably nine of our best players...

Nuno showed he is up to the challenge of Premiership opponents week in week out.I fully expect it to be the case next season.I only hope it's with Wolves...

Depois que os prefeitos do senhor mostrem*

*After the Lord Mayor's Show...

We have a saying in the UK."After the Lord Mayor's show" 'It goes on to say "Comes the shit cart..."

Wolves 3 Preston 2 was'nt quite like that but frankly i can't see many times i'll be able to use that old proverb this season so...after the rapturous win over Villa the previous week it was always going to be difficult to repeat such a high octane performance,after all we're not Man City yet and Preston are what the tv pundits would call "dogged" or what fans would call "dirty Northern bastards" They'd also only lost once this season before yesterday,so yes,a tough game was in store...

There seems to be a common misconception about foreign footballers playing in the UK,especially those from sunnier climbs.They're ok in Aug/Sept and April/May with the sun on their backs but as soon as it gets a bit nippy they disappear.It's bullshit of the highest order of course but still this lazy stereotype exists,The last two Wolves players i saw wearing gloves were from England & Ireland (Leon Clarke & Matt Doherty) Besides our winters are hardly on a par with The Arctic.We get the odd dusting of snow & temps occasionally dip below freezing for a few hours in February...

Another myth is that they can't handle themselves when things get a bit tough and opposing players think leg breaking tackles are a natural part of the game, just a bit of a laugh,just banter innit...this attitude is about as relevant as Dad's Army's corporal Jones shouting "They don't like it up em'!" when faced with the Waffen SS.

In truth though this old school Sunday league thinking is helping Wolves this season.Granted Warnock's Cardiff got away with bully boy tactics at the start of the campaign when they mugged us at Molineux a few games in but our boys learn quickly and anyone else who tries this will get a swift kick in the knackers...what better way to build team spirit?

Preston tried it,we got no protection from a preening peacock of a referee so took matters in our own hands which resulted in a couple of mass brawls on the pitch.Don't believe any sanctimonious tut tutting from commentators & journalists alike when there's a mass punch up between players.Us fans love it...the second brawl showed some cunning from our players too.Preston were getting on top looking to make it 3-3 with a few minutes left,a fight involving twenty two players was just the ticket to stop them in their tracks....the dark arts are alive and well down Molineux way.Nobody wins league titles by espousing the Corinthian spirit...

We did'nt play well but we did'nt have to.If we hit our straps for fifteen/twenty minutes during a game we can usually take a team apart and win the match in that period.Which is what we did yesterday...

Things i noticed yesterday through a beer fueled haze...

Leo Bonatini takes a very good penalty.Has to be first choice taker...

Connor Coady is starting to remind me of Emlyn Hughes.He even runs and passes like him...

Everyone insists on calling Matt Doherty "Doc" I assume we all think he spells his name wrong...

Ivan Cavaleiro has really bulked up.Now looks like a prize fighter...oh and he occasionally gives the ball away...

We need safe standing on the South Bank...

Till next time.Ta ta a bit...

Worshiping at the temple of Nuno Herlander Simoes Espirit Santo...

I'm not a religious man.In fact i am an atheist,or maybe agnostic,or quite possibly a deathbed Christian.Only time will tell...The one thing i am is a Wolves fan.That's a close as i ever get to a religious experience and by Christ it's been a test of faith sometimes...

Football fans are meant to be a miserable lot.Happiness does'nt sit well with us.Speak to any fan and it's not long till the moans & groans surface about their club.Usually it's justified but even fans of the top teams find a cloud hiding out among all the silver.Turn on any radio football phone in and mostly you'll hear barely articulate supporters saying something like " well for my sins i'm a Real Madrid fan and i have to say Ronaldo's gotta go.he's only scored twenty goals in twelve games,living on past glories.Lazy sod..."Ok i exaggerate but i have heard Man Utd fans moaning about Mourinho in the last week so it's not far off...

We've had our trials and tribulations at Wolves these last ten years or so.Lots of promotions and relegations and to be truthful it's been fun,even the bad times have given me a perverse pleasure.What's not been fun is the last two seasons.We have meandered along in the middle lane doing nothing,getting nowhere.Becoming a footnote to the story of the season...like going to church every sunday,hearing a bland uninspiring sermon from an uninterested,complacent clergyman and trooping off to the DIY store afterwards..Doing your duty to no purpose other than turning up...Then we got Nuno Herlander Simoes Espirit Santo up in the pulpit...

This is no fire & brimstone preacher but don't be fooled by the calm exterior.There's steel behind the eyes.No soft touch this high priest...His first  job was to get the deadwood who would'nt,or could'nt, co-opt into what he wanted from the team,out of the club.Which he did with ruthless efficincy.Next was to get the defence organised.We'd been guilty of shipping stupid goals,especially at Molineux.He bought in a couple of players but also reinvigorated established lads like Doherty & Batth whilst making Coady a centre back of note.he knew that wins come from solidity at the back but not in a "park the bus" way,not in a "hold out for nil nil and nick a win " way.But in a positive way.Positive defence.Who'd have thought it ? Not us,Not on your nelly...He's got the defenders to actually stay calm under pressure,look for the pass out to midfielders comfortable on the ball.Comfortable with opponents surrounding them,snapping at their heels,knowing they always have the innate ability to sidestep their clumsy lunges or comfortable that a teamate was free to pass to...

Nuno introduced a novel new approach to a moribund team.Pass,move,pass and keep moving...create space all the time.Keep it fluid.Keep that damn ball moving.The opponents may well keep up with you for an hour or so but for the last quarter of the game they'll be blowing out of their arses.There for the taking...the result of young,fit,skillful players and six weeks of double training sessions in pre season is there for all to see.

Much has been made of Wolves getting the services of players like Neves,Jota,Miranda etc.Nuno knew that he needed to get players in who were at least the equal of Helder Costa & Ivan Cavaleiro.No point having a Formula 1 racing car if your going to have it serviced by Gary's Garage of Tividale and driven by Noddy...But it's one thing wanting these players,quite another getting them...Never mind talk of agents etc,if a player don't wanna move he don't move.They all believe in the church of Nuno Herlander Simoes Espirit Santo.You only have to watch them play to see this...and now us fans believe too.

We are all converts.We have all signed up and if you don't believe me check out how many Black Country new borns are named Nuno,Ruben & Diogo in the next year...

I may not go down to the river to pray but i'll gladly go to the Molineux to worship...

Whataboutery...there's a lot of it about.

We've all done it at some stage.Something stunningly stupid...or said something we instantly know is the equivalent of putting your hand in a blender then turning it on.What we used to deflect blame before puberty took hold was "Whataboutery" The classic kiddy get out clause when  caught bang to rights..."But what about Jimmy ?  he did the same thing and did'nt have to cut the lawn with nail clippers.S'not fair..."  No you're right,S'not fair...but here's the difference.Jimmy did'nt get caught till you grassed him up you little shit...

As i said it's the sort of stuff we grow out of when we become functional members of the human race.We may think such things but don't generally articulate them.Especially to our boss who,if we did,may well deploy the exasperated parents cliche of "If Jimmy told you to..." I don't know,probably something to do with  skin & staplers...but you get my point?...and then came social media.

I love social media,i really do.I use it constantly.It's a very handy tool,but it's a tool that attracts a lot of tools.I sort of expect spotty faced Herberts to argue the toss with the Wildean wit of "He said she said" over trivial matters but what i don't expect (even though listening to the constant braying on Prime Ministers Questions i should) is back & forth "Whataboutery" from both sides of the political divide in an attempt to hide their own inadequate failings and hypocrisy...trying to deflect their own bullshit by pointing out smellier bullshit from the other side...If the internet were around in the 30's & 40's Mussolini would no doubt be pointing out that Hitler massacred many more people than he did...

Don't get me wrong it's good to point these things out,but not in the manner of the playground.Not in the manner of five year olds blaming each other for painting the cat green...and then we get the out and out lies as deflection.Lies in the normal conversations can normally be sussed, and squashed,out pretty quickly.Not on social media,it takes on a life of it's own,grows out of all proportion until it becomes accepted truth...the so called Alt Right know this and they have the perfect patsy mouthpiece in Trump.The king of "Whataboutery" who also has enough sycophantic acolytes  to keep spreading the news,fake or not...got to admit the Alt(old) right have stolen a march on everyone with their use of social media.Especially with their use of "Whataboutery"

This is serious stuff.Social Media informs & forms (or at least validates) views in many.Trenchant beliefs become even more so on any social media debate(I'm being very generous using "debate") and no doubt i'm as guilty as anyone else on this front.More and more people now get their world view from the internet,It's the go to platform on world affairs.Seeing the truth through the bullshit is becoming harder and harder and the peddlers of this bullshit with agendas know this.They also know that if they're losing an argument the go to strategy is to play the "Whataboutery" card...It usually works.

Next time you're either engaged in,or furiously shovelling handfuls of popcorn into your mouth whilst watching, a heated Twitter/Facebook discourse,watch how long "Whataboutery" takes to make an appearance.After that all bets are off...

Whataboutery. The new Godwin's law...