Cup Fortunes That Point To A Slice Of Club History

Imagine if Wolves had recorded 112 victories in knockout football in 1958-59, the last season they won the top-flight title.

Or 120 across the campaign in which Nuno Espirito Santo led them in such style to the Championship crown in 2017-18.

Amid such unimaginable numbers, how many extra pieces of silverware might Billy Wright have lifted in his final few months before retirement? And could Nuno’s stock in these parts have been even higher?

The figures make for utterly absurd concepts, of course, but are you detecting the mathematical theme? Wolves have currently won four times as many cup matches as League games in 2025-26.

So we have light-heartedly thrown that comparison back to much happier days…..times in which the club registered 28 and 30 League victories respectively.

The present-day squad are in sight of making some bizarre history. Their narrow success in the mud at Grimsby yesterday means they have now collected two basement-division scalps in the FA Cup to go with the two top-flight ones they gathered in the Carabao Cup in August and September.

As we start to look forward to an attractive fifth-round tie at home to Liverpool, we hope and trust that the modest improvement the side have shown since the turn of the year will extend to more Premier League wins in the next three months.

But there is a real possibility that Wolves could end a season with more cup victories than League ones for the first time in their 149 years.

Their lowest ever tally of League wins in a season was the five they mustered in their top-flight relegation year of 2011-12, with their distant predecessors managing only six in the 1983-84 First Division.

The difference with now, though, is that there were only two cup successes across those two campaigns….so the win tally across the seasons was still dominated by League football.

Certainly, their fortunes in knockout football were nothing like as fruitful as they are currently proving to be for the side managed by Vitor Pereira and now Rob Edwards in what has still been a very challenging six months.

Under Mick McCarthy and Terry Connor 14 seasons ago and under Graham Hawkins almost 30 years before that, League wins still heavily outnumbered those achieved in the cups.

What we are seeing unfold before our eyes this winter is just a bizarre off-shoot of the prolonged struggle for League points – and the occasional respite that is coming along in the meantime.

*This is the fourth time in ten seasons that Wolves and Liverpool have been drawn in opposition in the FA Cup, with the Merseysiders so far having won only one of the four games those ties have contained.