When Wolves Picked Off The Title Holders….

So what, in this difficult season, have Wolves managed to do for the 31st time in their history?

It is nothing to do with so far failing to win an away League game – an indignity they last suffered in their Premier League releation season of 2003-04.

More positively, following their achievement in bringing down Liverpool at Molineux last month, 31 is the number of seasons in which they have beaten the reigning champions in the League.

The first sufferers were Preston, whose ‘Invincibles’ tag was rather undermined by the 2-0 defeat they suffered at Molineux in 1889-90 and the one at Deepdale by the same score the following season.

Sunderland, Portsmouth, Liverpool and, more improbably, The Wednesday have all lost to Wolves in consecutive seasons following back-to-back title triumphs but what about those clubs who suffered home and away while trying to defend the winning of the Championship crown?

The 2019-20 season was an especially golden one for Wolves in as much as Nuno’s men did the double over the Manchester City side who had lifted the title the previous spring.

They won 2-0 on a Traore-inspired afternoon in the autumn, then the same jet-heeled winger scored a beauty to launch an astonishign fightback in a 3-2 victory on a memorable Molineux night just before Covid struck.

City also fell 2-1 here in 2023-24 and Liverpool’s 2-1 loss just over a month ago confirms this as a particularly prolific time for the biggest scalps of all to be taken. But there have been other major highlights.

At the start of the decade best associated with Bill McGarry’s team of renowned cup fighters, Wolves beat 1969-70 League champions Everton twice in a few months, 2-0 in the snow at Molineux on Boxing Day and 2-1 at Goodison Park at Easter.

Less surprising was that Wolves used their own status as champions-elect in 1957-58 to complete a double over the previous season’s title winners, Manchester United, especially as that was the year in which Old Trafford went into mourning after the Munich tragedy.

In all, the club have faced the champions in 70 seasons, so their feat in beating them in not far short of half of them appears remarkable.

They, as the bottom-of-the-table side, also memorably won away to defending champions when defeating Liverpool at Anfield in 1983-84.

And that underlines the point that even the most demanding of campaigns can contain unforgettable highlights.