The Best XI

Wolves-Albion In Numbers

It has been six seasons since the old Black Country rivals were face to face in the same division. So, by way of a scene-setter for and countdown to Sunday’s big game at Molineux, we take a numerical view of the rivalry across many decades and hope our readers are suitably entertained by our findings. 

Robbie Dennison glides down the left wing at Molineux that he came to know so well.

ELEVEN was the number most strongly linked to Robbie Dennison, a scorer in two derbies in two seasons and part of the successful transfer-market plundering Wolves indulged in across the patch in the second half of the 1980s. Jimmy Mullen, Norman Deeley, Alan Hinton, Dave Wagstaffe and Danny Crainie are others in that shirt who considerably hurt the Baggies in the distant past.

TEN home and away League doubles have been achieved by Wolves over their closest rivals, the latest of them in the ‘Iwan Roberts season’, 1996-97, when the 4-2 win at The Hawthorns was followed by a 2-0 home victory at Molineux in the January. 

NINE depicted the role in the team of Jack Brodie, scorer of the first ever Wolves goal against Albion (in an 1882-83 Birmingham Senior Cup tie) and also of their first League goal against them (at Dudley Road in in December, 1988). Oh….and that was the shirt number overwhelmingly associated with other Black Country derby heroes Roy Swinbourne, John Richards and Steve Bull.

EIGHT goals were scored by League champions Wolves at home to Albion in 1954-55, four of them in the drawn Charity Shield clash of the clubs in the September and four, without reply, in a First Division clash almost four weeks later. 

SEVEN meetings between the old rivals took place in the 1887-88 season, including the FA Cup, Birmingham Senior Cup, Staffordshire Senior Cup and sundry replays.

SIX was the meagre number of games from which Albion emerged unscathed across 16 Molineux meetings from March, 1953 to March, 1965. Wolves won ten of them and Albion were victorious in only three. 

FIVE….there was much dancing and whooping in the Smethwick End of The Hawthorns following the dramatic late goal by Rob Hindmarch – a centre-half who generally struggled in his time at Molineux – on December 30, 1990. It earned Wolves a point and the north-easterner in the no 5 shirt a vote or two in various player of the year awards polls for many seasons.

FOUR times, Wolves have gone six consecutive derby clashes in the League without defeat – their best run in the rivalry. Their last such undefeated sequence came between March, 1955 and November, 1958.

Micky Lill uses a training session to demonstrate the finishing power that earned him a derby-day hat-trick.

THREE goals in the Sunday clash at The Hawthorns 30 years ago this week made big Iwan a Wolves hero. Other Wolves hat-trick men in the fixture include Johnny Hancocks (December, 1950), Micky Lill (March, 1959) and Terry Wharton (March, 1963).

TWO lots of high achievers….Wolves have won three League titles, four FA Cups, two League Cups and been to a major European final. Albion have been League champions once, got their hands on the FA Cup five times and lifted two League Cups. There’s a lot of history to feel proud about in the Black Country.

ONE heck of a long time has elapsed since these two old rivals last met with Championship points at stake……18 and a half seasons to be precise. In that 2007-08 campaign, Mick McCarthy was still relatively new in his long occupation of the Molineux hot seat and Tony Mowbray was in charge at The Hawthorns.

And…..a bonus entry….

ZERO – the number of paying spectators present in the last season of head-to-head Wolves-Albion games. That was the covid season of 2020-21, when the Baggies suffered the drop. The subsequent years apart have done much to crank up interest for this weekend.