Europa Rush – The Side Effects

Never have Wolves played more competitive first-team matches by the end of September than the 15 they will have completed after this weekend’s home clash with Watford.

Even with the reduced top flight we have had in the Premier League era and with the advent of international breaks, the workload at Molineux has been intense this summer and autumn – thanks, of course, to the club’s involvement in the Europa League.

And the knock-on of these extra challenges is a number of individual landmarks that we thought we would update you on in case they have passed you by:

*Nuno Espirito Santo has overtaken Sammy Chung and now stands 12th in our Managers list after overseeing 112 senior Wolves games to date. The next men above him are Kenny Jackett and Ronnie Allen on 150.

*Matt Doherty has gone past his former team-mate Richard Stearman and into 43rd place in the Legends list and, in the process, reached the 260-game mark for the club. Immediately above the Dubliner now is Hednesford-born Jack Miller, whose 269 matches stretched from 1896 to 1905.

*Jesus Vallejo has become the 1,037th man to play League football for Wolverhampton Wanderers – some two and a quarter years after Jon Dadi Bodvarsson achieved the landmark of being the 1,000th.

*Conor Coady continues to steam towards the Legends area of this site and is due to make his 193rd League and cup appearance for Wolves when Watford arrive at Molineux tomorrow.

*And we see more and more evidence of the cosmopolitan game football now is, with Wolves not only fielding an Italian for the first time in Patrick Cutrone but preparing to play for the first time in the coming weeks in both Turkey and Slovakia.

As for that demanding early-season workload, try this for a comparison……Wolves played nine games last year before October dawned but 14 the season before in the Championship.

Tellingly, despite two Carling Cup wins apiece, they had only eight matches under their belt before the end of September in both 2010-11 and 2011-12.

In 1971-72, the campaign in which the club reached the UEFA Cup final, they played 13 matches before the end of September.