Monday, August 22, 2005

Kenny Miller for Wolverhampton Wanderers (vs Manchester Utd), 17 January 2004

Which idiot made Wolves favourites for the Championship?

Have they never watched Wolves before? Did they never see us fail to escape from the division season after season for all those years? Did they somehow miss that?

I wish I had.

I'm tempted to say that the year we won the playoffs was a total fluke - we were as hopeless as always for most of the season, beating sides better than us, and losing to the also-rans (as usual), but somehow we got to the final and didn't blow it. In fact, we positively wiped the floor with that really quite good Sheffield Utd side. We did it! The promised land! The Premiership!

We didn't disgrace ourselves in the top division by any means, but it wasn't much of a surprise that we slipped straight back down again, was it? After all those years of heavy investment in the likes of Tony Daley, Andy Sinton and Geoff Thomas, when we finally got up, we hardly spent a penny. Oh well. Surely we'd break the mould amongst relegated sides and bounce back up. Ah. No. Last year was our worst for a long time, and we responded by sacking our best manager for years, Dave Jones and employing Glen Hoddle. The long unbeaten run of 20-odd games that followed looks good on paper, but contained barely any wins. 46 draws in a season will bring you nothing but relegation.

And yet we were amongst the favourites for promotion at the start of the season, and a good start saw more people tipping us for success. So what do we do? we lose our record to Leeds, having dominated the game.

Surprised? No.

Disappointed? Not really.

I think we'll probably finish in the top 6, and then fail in the playoffs. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not expecting to be.

I can live with the failure. It's the hope I can't stand.

6 comments:

weenie said...

And now you've signed Sicknote Anderton...

*sigh*

red one said...

Yes, as Weenie points out, you have more than filled the vacant place in the treatment room.

Glenn Hoddle: brilliant player, dreadful manager - mainly due to complete lack of people skills and fixation on certain players regardless of merit - and deeply unpleasant human being.

*sigh*

as a Spurs fan who has been through all this, you have my sympathy.

red

swisslet said...

no more diamond lights....

red one said...

Don't go there, Swiss. Don't even think about it...

red

swisslet said...

do you know, I had a hit on my blog from google with the search term:

"Diamond Lights Lyrics Hoddle"

Should I be more alarmed that someone was actually looking for that, or that they ended up on my blog?

>>>shudders<<<

ST

Anonymous said...

It must have been me looking for the lyrics to Diamond Lights (a tale of 2 mullets or a tale of 2 muppets?)....for scientific and piss-taking purposes only! Called my World Cup team Diamond Lights as I couldn't think of anything with a less tenuous or more naff link to football. I wanted the lyrics to drive home my naffness.