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Crash and Burn
Monday, April 29th, 2013 12:20 pmI haven’t really mentioned football on these pages for ages. There hasn’t been much to say over recent weeks and months.
This time last year witnessed Wolves barrelling out of the Premiership and into the Championship. The chairman, Steve Morgan, sacking the manager, Mick McCarthy while on a skiing holiday and with no clear view as to a successor. The team played worse and were relegated. The manager with the best track record of getting teams out of the Championship was the very manager we’d just lost, so where to go form there?
One year and three managers later, the club is about to enter the record books for becoming the first to fall from the first level to the third level of English professional football twice in its history. It remains to be seen whether it will emulate the feat of the mid 1980s, when it became the first to fall from the old first division to the bottom of the fourth in consecutive seasons, but given the inevitable clear out of players at the end of the season, it is a possibility. I expect it will be an expensive clear out, too. Many if not most of the players will be on contracts negotiated when they were at least theoretically Premiership players.
So, having blown around £20,000,000 on a stand that most supporters didn’t want when the team clearly need say, £20,000,000 spending on it, Wolverhampton Wanderers face another huge bill to pay off the contracts of under-performing and over-paid players it can no longer afford (or indeed, is no longer allowed to pay for). That’s more money that could have been spent on building the team.
So next season, 2013-14, the City of Wolverhampton will have the finest stadium in League One and it will probably be populated with crowds of about 8,000 on a good day, nearer 5,000 on an average and about 3,000 on the chilly December evenings against the might of such iconic teams as the Milton Keynes Dons.
It is to weep.
And more to the point, I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that out of the local rivals in that division; Shrewsbury Town and Walsall, that Wolves will be the senior side.
I mean, not even the Baggies’ fans can be arsed to take the piss now. When they have Villa, and the Blues to take the rise out of, why bother with a sideshow?
This time last year witnessed Wolves barrelling out of the Premiership and into the Championship. The chairman, Steve Morgan, sacking the manager, Mick McCarthy while on a skiing holiday and with no clear view as to a successor. The team played worse and were relegated. The manager with the best track record of getting teams out of the Championship was the very manager we’d just lost, so where to go form there?
One year and three managers later, the club is about to enter the record books for becoming the first to fall from the first level to the third level of English professional football twice in its history. It remains to be seen whether it will emulate the feat of the mid 1980s, when it became the first to fall from the old first division to the bottom of the fourth in consecutive seasons, but given the inevitable clear out of players at the end of the season, it is a possibility. I expect it will be an expensive clear out, too. Many if not most of the players will be on contracts negotiated when they were at least theoretically Premiership players.
So, having blown around £20,000,000 on a stand that most supporters didn’t want when the team clearly need say, £20,000,000 spending on it, Wolverhampton Wanderers face another huge bill to pay off the contracts of under-performing and over-paid players it can no longer afford (or indeed, is no longer allowed to pay for). That’s more money that could have been spent on building the team.
So next season, 2013-14, the City of Wolverhampton will have the finest stadium in League One and it will probably be populated with crowds of about 8,000 on a good day, nearer 5,000 on an average and about 3,000 on the chilly December evenings against the might of such iconic teams as the Milton Keynes Dons.
It is to weep.
And more to the point, I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that out of the local rivals in that division; Shrewsbury Town and Walsall, that Wolves will be the senior side.
I mean, not even the Baggies’ fans can be arsed to take the piss now. When they have Villa, and the Blues to take the rise out of, why bother with a sideshow?