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Wolves Review
Well, last season was a bit of a kicker. The season before we were in and around the drop zone throughout but managed to stave off relegation with great performances in the last three games. This time around we looked great for the first half of the season then on the home stretch it all went pear shaped and we just couldn’t stop losing. A slight resurgence in the last couple of games was far too little, far too late and consequently we drop back down to the Championship after a two season stint in the top flight. We had a few high points getting results against some of the Prem’s top sides along the way, but the reality was that too often we let slip some awful performances up against the teams around us which ultimately sealed our fate. As it was it still turned out to be a close run thing as Sheffield Wednesday only did enough to pip us to 17th spot and safety by a solitary point albeit with a vastly superior goal difference.
The season before we had a good run in the Dave Bradwell Cup just falling short at the second to last hurdle, but last season proved to be the complete opposite with barely a win to be found and dismally exiting in the most lacklustre fashion at the group stage.
Overall, it’s been quite a journey for this current Wolves outfit from their humble beginnings as Bradford City in old Season 20. The original squad was quite young but very inexperienced and was built from as close to the bottom as you could get back then in the old third tier Conference division. The side has steadily evolved over the seasons with limited finances and with a second name change to Preston North End along the way. Then came the enforced leap from the Conference to the Championship at the end of Season 23 due to reducing team numbers resulting in fewer divisions. This certainly didn’t help the cause by suddenly pitting the slowly evolving squad against far stronger teams before we were quite ready. We were starting to see the green shoots of progress and then along came the big restructuring of the league that coincided with a move to Molineux and another name change to become Wolves which in turn led to a creditable first season in the newly minted Championship where the club gained yet another undeserved promotion despite finishing 5th. Although at least this time the Molineux side did look reasonable for most of the campaign until we dropped away from the sharp end of the table after a horrendous run of form to finish the season (bit of a theme starting to appear isn’t there dear reader).
After that little sojourn down memory lane (as we oldies are predisposed to doing), back to the present and from a new player point of view we made few but I feel significant changes along the way last season, the most notable was the multi player deal that saw Dutch striker Cody Gakpo, Belgian midfielder Youri Tielemans and French striker Marc Terrier depart Molineux for a very brief stay at Celtic Park and Senegalese striker Nicolas Jackson, English attacking midfielder Nathan Tella and Czech defender Jaroslav Zeleny join from Celtic. Although Zeleny was later sold as he was struggling to make enough minutes for the club to retain him going forward.
To add a little depth to the midfield and cover for injuries and suspensions we also brought in Ruben Loftus Cheek from Sevilla on a season long loan on condition he got his guaranteed required minutes, which he did and in truth he did well for us both from off the bench and his occasional starts. Whether we explore the loan market again is questionable as we have always felt it better to give playing time and potential improvement to our own contracted players rather than players who go back to their parent club a better product.
One unforeseen positive for the season was the form shown by striker Chris Martin who showed enough in the minutes he managed to get under his belt to rate up and trigger a contract extension to stave off retirement and keep him at Molineux for one more season.
One example of the difficult season we have just experienced was exemplified by the difficulties experienced by our top keeper Aaron Ramsdale who was made captain at the half way stage of the season and thereafter hovered around the cusp of 24 to 25 rated thereafter. As it is he probably gained a net positive of only a couple of dozen ability point gains for a full half season where normally he would be near to the full 500 for a half season.
So much for last season and now onto the future. The plan for this close season is firstly, and most importantly, to increase the ground capacity of Molineux from 55,000 to 65,000. With the current financial climate it seems prudent to try to recoup, even if only in the long term, as much as possible from gate receipts as we can going forward. However, with only £30.2m to spend this will only leave us with 8m for other options. We have been floating the idea of transfer listing the exceptionally consistent midfield general Alex Mowatt to bring in a little extra cash into the club. But the thinking at the moment is to see what the Opt-in scout is likely to bring us and assess whether our new 19 year old attacking midfielder is up to the task of holding down a spot in the starting line up or whether he will be a bench warmer for the season. It may even be that despite our reservations we look again at the loan market to see if we can bring in a back up to our pair of first team strikers. The only downside of adding depth to our squad is ensuring these extra players play enough minutes to trigger future contract extensions as the last thing any club needs is to lose personnel unnecessarily. It is sometimes a fine balance between the need for cover for injuries and suspensions and being forced into playing a weakened team and risking not achieving much needed points.
With regard to our youth academy, much like the senior squad, the academy side had an uninspiring season with most of our youth players lagging well behind in development compared to most other clubs. It didn’t help in having a negative impact against our better defender at the season’s half way point. However, we are undeterred by these setbacks, are still fully supportive of the academy project and are looking to make improvements where we can, albeit maybe at a slower pace than we would have liked due to our current financial constraints. We were hoping to engage the services of a youth scout for the next five seasons, but at this stage it’s not looking likely that we will have the necessary £25m available to invest in this option and certainly bringing in a full time youth coach at £20m is going to be way beyond what we can achieve at this point in time. The most we are likely to be looking at is the sourcing and purchasing of one extra academy player to bring our numbers up to eight.
Looking towards the upcoming season on our return to the Championship, we have to be pretty confident that we can bounce straight back up to the top tier at the first time of asking. However, that comes with the caveat of the great unknown on what other teams around us will do in the transfer market to strengthen themselves. But I think overall we have a good chance of putting our diabolical last season behind us and we can enjoy are far better one this time round. We are looking towards this new season with far more optimism than we have felt for a few seasons now. We know that there are likely to be a few more bumps along the road, but I feel we should be there or thereabouts come the final whistle in the final game.
We will once again be relying on our young strike partnership of Gabriel Veron and Nicolas Jackson to be as clinical as they can be and finish the chances set up for them. But most importantly we will once again have one of the best keepers in the game, Aaron Ramsdale, between the sticks for us to keep our goals against tally as low as possible. The rumours coming out of Molineux are that it is expected that the English goalkeeper will be named captain for the first half of the up coming season.
The only issues we have to bear in mind as we roll through next season is the fact that we have three players who will retire once this coming season is over. Ghanaian defender Daniel Pappoe, Brazilian striker Ryder Matos and fellow striker Scot Chris Martin have all decided to make this their last season and will hang up their boots once the final whistle of the new season is heard. There is every likelihood that these future gaps in the first team squad will be filled by promoting a couple of the academy players at the end of this coming season to coincide with their retirements.
1,580 words
Well, last season was a bit of a kicker. The season before we were in and around the drop zone throughout but managed to stave off relegation with great performances in the last three games. This time around we looked great for the first half of the season then on the home stretch it all went pear shaped and we just couldn’t stop losing. A slight resurgence in the last couple of games was far too little, far too late and consequently we drop back down to the Championship after a two season stint in the top flight. We had a few high points getting results against some of the Prem’s top sides along the way, but the reality was that too often we let slip some awful performances up against the teams around us which ultimately sealed our fate. As it was it still turned out to be a close run thing as Sheffield Wednesday only did enough to pip us to 17th spot and safety by a solitary point albeit with a vastly superior goal difference.
The season before we had a good run in the Dave Bradwell Cup just falling short at the second to last hurdle, but last season proved to be the complete opposite with barely a win to be found and dismally exiting in the most lacklustre fashion at the group stage.
Overall, it’s been quite a journey for this current Wolves outfit from their humble beginnings as Bradford City in old Season 20. The original squad was quite young but very inexperienced and was built from as close to the bottom as you could get back then in the old third tier Conference division. The side has steadily evolved over the seasons with limited finances and with a second name change to Preston North End along the way. Then came the enforced leap from the Conference to the Championship at the end of Season 23 due to reducing team numbers resulting in fewer divisions. This certainly didn’t help the cause by suddenly pitting the slowly evolving squad against far stronger teams before we were quite ready. We were starting to see the green shoots of progress and then along came the big restructuring of the league that coincided with a move to Molineux and another name change to become Wolves which in turn led to a creditable first season in the newly minted Championship where the club gained yet another undeserved promotion despite finishing 5th. Although at least this time the Molineux side did look reasonable for most of the campaign until we dropped away from the sharp end of the table after a horrendous run of form to finish the season (bit of a theme starting to appear isn’t there dear reader).
After that little sojourn down memory lane (as we oldies are predisposed to doing), back to the present and from a new player point of view we made few but I feel significant changes along the way last season, the most notable was the multi player deal that saw Dutch striker Cody Gakpo, Belgian midfielder Youri Tielemans and French striker Marc Terrier depart Molineux for a very brief stay at Celtic Park and Senegalese striker Nicolas Jackson, English attacking midfielder Nathan Tella and Czech defender Jaroslav Zeleny join from Celtic. Although Zeleny was later sold as he was struggling to make enough minutes for the club to retain him going forward.
To add a little depth to the midfield and cover for injuries and suspensions we also brought in Ruben Loftus Cheek from Sevilla on a season long loan on condition he got his guaranteed required minutes, which he did and in truth he did well for us both from off the bench and his occasional starts. Whether we explore the loan market again is questionable as we have always felt it better to give playing time and potential improvement to our own contracted players rather than players who go back to their parent club a better product.
One unforeseen positive for the season was the form shown by striker Chris Martin who showed enough in the minutes he managed to get under his belt to rate up and trigger a contract extension to stave off retirement and keep him at Molineux for one more season.
One example of the difficult season we have just experienced was exemplified by the difficulties experienced by our top keeper Aaron Ramsdale who was made captain at the half way stage of the season and thereafter hovered around the cusp of 24 to 25 rated thereafter. As it is he probably gained a net positive of only a couple of dozen ability point gains for a full half season where normally he would be near to the full 500 for a half season.
So much for last season and now onto the future. The plan for this close season is firstly, and most importantly, to increase the ground capacity of Molineux from 55,000 to 65,000. With the current financial climate it seems prudent to try to recoup, even if only in the long term, as much as possible from gate receipts as we can going forward. However, with only £30.2m to spend this will only leave us with 8m for other options. We have been floating the idea of transfer listing the exceptionally consistent midfield general Alex Mowatt to bring in a little extra cash into the club. But the thinking at the moment is to see what the Opt-in scout is likely to bring us and assess whether our new 19 year old attacking midfielder is up to the task of holding down a spot in the starting line up or whether he will be a bench warmer for the season. It may even be that despite our reservations we look again at the loan market to see if we can bring in a back up to our pair of first team strikers. The only downside of adding depth to our squad is ensuring these extra players play enough minutes to trigger future contract extensions as the last thing any club needs is to lose personnel unnecessarily. It is sometimes a fine balance between the need for cover for injuries and suspensions and being forced into playing a weakened team and risking not achieving much needed points.
With regard to our youth academy, much like the senior squad, the academy side had an uninspiring season with most of our youth players lagging well behind in development compared to most other clubs. It didn’t help in having a negative impact against our better defender at the season’s half way point. However, we are undeterred by these setbacks, are still fully supportive of the academy project and are looking to make improvements where we can, albeit maybe at a slower pace than we would have liked due to our current financial constraints. We were hoping to engage the services of a youth scout for the next five seasons, but at this stage it’s not looking likely that we will have the necessary £25m available to invest in this option and certainly bringing in a full time youth coach at £20m is going to be way beyond what we can achieve at this point in time. The most we are likely to be looking at is the sourcing and purchasing of one extra academy player to bring our numbers up to eight.
Looking towards the upcoming season on our return to the Championship, we have to be pretty confident that we can bounce straight back up to the top tier at the first time of asking. However, that comes with the caveat of the great unknown on what other teams around us will do in the transfer market to strengthen themselves. But I think overall we have a good chance of putting our diabolical last season behind us and we can enjoy are far better one this time round. We are looking towards this new season with far more optimism than we have felt for a few seasons now. We know that there are likely to be a few more bumps along the road, but I feel we should be there or thereabouts come the final whistle in the final game.
We will once again be relying on our young strike partnership of Gabriel Veron and Nicolas Jackson to be as clinical as they can be and finish the chances set up for them. But most importantly we will once again have one of the best keepers in the game, Aaron Ramsdale, between the sticks for us to keep our goals against tally as low as possible. The rumours coming out of Molineux are that it is expected that the English goalkeeper will be named captain for the first half of the up coming season.
The only issues we have to bear in mind as we roll through next season is the fact that we have three players who will retire once this coming season is over. Ghanaian defender Daniel Pappoe, Brazilian striker Ryder Matos and fellow striker Scot Chris Martin have all decided to make this their last season and will hang up their boots once the final whistle of the new season is heard. There is every likelihood that these future gaps in the first team squad will be filled by promoting a couple of the academy players at the end of this coming season to coincide with their retirements.
1,580 words