Not Such A Level Playing Field

When Wolves overhauled Albion and won the League title for the first time 70 years ago, they lost ten times in 42 First Division games.

Manchester City and Arsenal, the top two in this season’s thrilling race at the top, have suffered eight defeats between them in 76 matches.

It is another sign of football’s changing face; one that for 30 years or more – the glorious Leicester story in 2015-16 apart – has made the race for the domestic game’s biggest prize a closed shop. 

Despite all the hype and, yes, the occasional case of the biggest hitters being brought down by the smaller fry, the top flight’s elite are so far ahead of the rest now, loaded down as they are with their decades of Champions League pay-outs.

We have moved on a million miles from the 1954 days of Wolves finishing top, Albion second and Huddersfield third. And not necessarily for the better.

The Molineux Class of 74 agreed at last week’s League Cup night at the Grand Theatre that the club’s best chance of winning another trophy lay in the cups. There was no mention of them challenging for the Premier League title and nor should there be. The days of they, Nottingham Forest, Derby, Ipswich, Burnley and probably Villa being champions sadly appear to be consigned to distant history. 

Wolves’ latest campaign ended not only with the launch of their efforts to have VAR scrapped but also with a game against Liverpool. That’s three times in six years they have signed off their programme at Anfield and, looking back to the days of yore, they finished a season at home to the Merseysiders in 1946-47, 1964-65 and 1975-76, the first and last of those occasions bringing crushing disappointment.

Klopp-mania always promised to make Sunday’s clash hugely difficult for Gary O’Neil’s side and, in many ways, their campaign has gone on two months too long.

So where are Wolves now at the start of their summer break? Most supporters would, I suspect, have settled for a 14th-place finish given the Financial Fair Play sales-fest last summer.

But it is still the club’s lowest final placing since they returned to the Premier League in 2018 and the closing run of eight defeats in 11 games, with only one win, is a stark reminder of the shallowness of their squad as they plan for next season.

They achieved something in staying well clear of the relegation places throughout and even had their dizzier fans wondering at the end of the winter whether they might mount a challenge for Europe. But we shouldn’t forget that the weaknesses of Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton have helped a lot of sides ‘in the pack’ over the last ten months.

It can’t be healthy for the game when the three promoted clubs all go straight down by a large distance, although Rob Edwards has surely bolstered his reputation nonetheless at Kenilworth Road.

Luton, lest we forget, only landed in the top flight by beating Coventry on penalties in the play-off final last spring and, with three weeks less to prepare and from a much less promising position than those who went up automatically, at least had a spirited stab at survival before running out of steam near the end.

Now we await the re-arrival in English football of another former Wolves coach, Julen Lopetegui, while continuing to look with great interest at the work of various Molineux favourites elsewhere.

We have savoured the runaway title triumphs overseen by Paul Cook and Robbie Keane in the very different settings of the National League and the Israeli top flight respectively. The next phase of their careers should be fascinating.

On the other side of the coin are the relegations suffered by Rob Kelly as no 2 at Rotherham and Paul Simpson in charge of Carlisle. Mark Venus had been in line to be working at a lower level next season, too, after Birmingham’s drop to League One. But his boss, Tony Mowbray, resigned at St Andrew’s yesterday, leaving questions over the duo’s future.

Mowbray and Venus are also at the centre of a cautionary tale for owners and chief executives. In the autumn, they were rushed out of Sunderland a few months on from leading them to the play-offs and subsequently pitched up at Blues after the ridiculous sackings there of John Eustace and Keith Downing.

Sunderland, with Michael Beale coming and then going, proceded to make no impact whatsoever on the Championship promotion race while Blues, after the nightmare gamble on Wayne Rooney, are in League One.

All this, remember, after Watford sacked Rob Edwards early in 2022-23 on the back of ELEVEN games in charge and then saw him win promotion for their arch-rivals. Do the hirers and firers ever learn? Apparently not judging by the bizarre dismissal of Neill Collins at Barnsley one game before he was due to lead them into the play-offs. What on earth would Stan Cullis have made of all this nonsense?

We hope Darren Ferguson stays in place at Peterborough despite the letdown of a second successive defeat in the play-off semi-finals. He led Posh to the winning of the Bristol Street Motors Trophy at Wembley this spring and will be fancied to have them challenging at the top end of League One again next season.

Right, two and a half months off for everyone at club level and then the madness begins again in early August the other side of the Euros!