History Beckons For Popular Marauder

Matt Doherty remains on the brink of an obscure piece of Molineux history as he awaits his debut for the club second time round.

No-one among Wolves’ top 50 appearance-makers has ever put the sort of time between two successive Wanderers outings as the returning Dubliner is now doing.

The last time he was selected in the first team before being transferred to Nuno Espirito Santo’s Tottenham was the delayed Europa League quarter-final tie against Sevilla on August 11, 2020.

By the time he next kicks a ball in a League or cup game in gold and black, it will therefore be more than three years since he last played in the side – well in excess of the gap in Wolves outings by any other such high achiever.

Our updated Legends section shows Doherty, who is likely to have his eyes on a run-out in tomorrow’s Carabao Cup visit of Blackpool, to be in 35th place in the club’s all-time appearance-makers list.

He became an outstanding member of the side who consolidated and then prospered in the Premier League, with his goals and assists providing serious end product to his powerful advances from the right-wing-back position.

By coincidence, the man immediately above him on the roster is his long-time former team-mate David Edwards, who was at Molineux on media duty at the Brighton game nine days ago.

Doherty’s 302 games for the club to date also leave him within striking distance of Conor Coady, who skippered him for several seasons and who leads him by 15 matches in this elite line-up.

Coady has already been named captain at relegated Leicester but has yet to play for them because of injury and faces several more weeks on the sidelines.

Wolves’ re-signing of Doherty following his spells with Spurs and Athletico Madrid prompted us to come up last month with a piece on players who had served the club across two spells.

We are grateful to historian Scott Pritchard for pointing out that there are others we could have named, including two of the Republic of Ireland international’s team-mates, Benik Afobe and Richard Stearman.

Doherty has so far had to be content with substitute-bench duty in 2023-24 but will now be hoping to see competitive action from the other side of the white line as the focus switches to knock-out football.

The Legends area of this website is one of the many that have been redesigned in this last few weeks, so we hope you will take a more detailed around and report any teething troubles you may encounter.