England Star On His ‘Nightmare’ Wolves Experience

“On the very first morning, I half-regretted it and thought: ‘Sh*t, what have I done?'” Darren Anderton and Wolverhampton Wanderers were not a match made in heaven.

The marriage between the two parties lasted only a season and, for the former Portsmouth, Tottenham and England midfielder, that was at least three-quarters of a season too long.

The statistics of his stay here do not make spectacular reading: He made 24 League appearances and scored one goal. The cups brought him another two games, one of which saw him net against Chester.

He nevertheless looked a class act and, as ever, there is a side to the story that not many of us had heard and which is at least worth listening to. The 54-year-old’s autobiography provides it.

The trigger for him coming to Molineux was Glenn Hoddle, who also happened to have been the manager during some of his most successful years with Spurs and England.

Anderton’s initial reaction was to rebuff the interest and extend his 13-year stay in the Premier League. Birmingham, where he had spent the 2004-05 campaign, were happy to give him another contract but, equally, would not stand in his way if he preferred to drop a division in search of more regular opportunities.

“I’d seen how Glenn had done ok with Wolves the previous season, with one defeat in the final 25 games,” he wrote. “I thought they’d walk the League, with players like Paul Ince, my old England mate, and Joleon Lescott. I thought I’d be back in the top flight by the end of that season.”

At 33 and with some 475 club apparances to his name, Anderton was also in demand from his home-city club, Southampton, who had Harry Redknapp in charge.

The player was a Saints supporter, with Kevin Keegan as his boyhood idol, but opted for Wolves, adding: “I believed they were destined for the Premiership. I had no problem playing for Glenn again either, although, in his last game at Spurs, he had put me on the bench and left a bad taste in my mouth. His man-management wasn’t ideal.”

Anderton, who had once hit what looked like being an FA Cup semi-final winner for Pompey against Liverpool, admits he probably should have pulled out of the deal as he wasn’t convinced. But he jumped into it anyway and made a goal-scoring debut in a 5-1 rout of League Two visitors Chester in the Carling Cup.

A draw at Cardiff in his first League game in gold and black was satisfactory and three points off QPR made it a promising start for the player and his club.

But a knee injury suffered in a home defeat against Colin Lee’s Millwall sidelined him for a month, after which he felt frustrated at Hoddle’s policy of bringing him in and taking him out, insistent as he was that he needed a longer run to get up to speed.

“We were drawing lots of games but I felt I did well,” he said. “Yet the season was going nowhere.” Too right, it wasn’t.

On no fewer than 19 occasions, the points were shared, with 17 of those games finishing 1-1 or 0-0. At times, it was mind-numbing stuff.

Anderton describes Hoddle’s training as ‘long-winded’, with Monday afternoons often devoted to lengthy video analysis of a weekend game. But it was the shortest, sharpest work of the lot that did for the 30-times-capped England international after he had flown to Germany to aid his recovery from a hamstring injury suffered against Stoke in early March.

His just-mended hamstring went again in the second of the sprints he was asked to do and both his season and his Wolves career were over, with Hoddle following him out of the door by resigning in the July.

Colin Cameron, Carl Cort, Jeremie Aliadiere, Jody Craddock, Tom Huddlestone, Mark Kennedy, Kenny Miller, Lee Naylor, Michael Oakes, Seyi Olofinjana and a certain Rob Edwards were among the other well-used players in the squad, so there was clearly quality around.

But he summed up: “My time in Wolverhampton Wanderers proved a nightmare. I wanted to do well for Glenn with the history we’d had and the team seemed good enough to comfortably ensure a play-off spot. But it is clear the side wasn’t as good as everyone thought, including myself.”

There was one up-side to his move to these parts, though. The Birmingham squad of which he had been part were fined a total of £30,000 by Steve Bruce for ignoring a curfew on a pre-season trip to Spain. The move to Wolves at least got him out of paying his share!

And drinking escapades provide another entertaining book anecdote for those with Wolves’ interests at heart. Anderton, who had made his full League debut in a 0-0 draw against Wolves at Fratton Park in the November, was still a young player when Pompey came to Molineux for the final game of 1990-91.

It was a ‘dead-rubber’ game for the visitors, as it largely was for Graham Turner’s Wolves and senior pro Warren Aspinall asked manager Tony Barton if it would be permissible for the players to utilise their overnight stay in the West Midlands to have a couple of beers.You can guess the rest….

“Micky Ross, Shaun Murray and me ended up in a nightclub until two in the morning,” the 2010 publication goes on. “The next day, someone got injured after 20 minutes and on I went. It was boiling hot and I felt awful. Shocking! I never drank the night before a game again.”