Bitten By Wolves: Stories from the Soul of Molineux

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INTRODUCTION

‘Change’

ON 21 July 2016 Wolverhampton Wanderers confirmed that they had been bought by Chinese investment conglomerate Fosun International. ‘Our goal is crystal clear,’ said the Championship club’s incoming chairman, Jeff Shi. ‘We will do our very best to help take Wolves back to the Premier League as soon as possible and to stay there. We believe the club and the fans belong at the top of English football and getting there is our first and top priority.’

It was the beginning of another chapter in the history of a club that, perhaps more than any other in this country, has been through both the best and the worst that professional football can offer.

For more than a quarter of a century Wolves had operated under the ownership of two British businessmen. Under their watch, Sir Jack Hayward and Steve Morgan ensured that the club would never return to the chaotic days of the 1980s, a period of time where its entire existence was threatened on more than one occasion. Such stability came as a blessing. Supporters could enjoy attending matches at Molineux without the concerns and fears they held throughout much of that decade.

When Sir Jack acquired the club in May 1990 from Gallagher Estates, it heralded a bright new era off the pitch. The new owner was a hugely popular local man who invested millions of pounds of his own money in rebuilding the ground, after Jack Harris and Dick Homden had formed a consortium four years earlier to rescue the club from administration with the help of Wolverhampton Council. Three sides of the ramshackle ground were knocked down and replaced. Molineux was transformed into a stadium fit for the Premier League. Meanwhile, manager Graham Turner’s team, spearheaded by Steve Bull, had rebuilt Wolves on the pitch.

But it was also a long period of missed opportunities. Shi’s comments were not the first time such ambitious words had fallen on the ears of eager supporters.

‘Let’s make Wolves the leading club in Britain once more,’ said Sir Jack on his takeover 26 years earlier, in those days before the Premier League was formed. ‘We want to get into the First Division and then win the First Division title, and we want to win the FA Cup. The name of Wolverhampton Wanderers is known all over the world and we want to make sure that continues.’

The 1990s, in particular, turned out to be a soul-destroying period of under-achievement. Supporters watched through gritted teeth as modestly resourced clubs like Oldham Athletic, Notts County, Swindon Town, Barnsley, Bolton Wanderers and Bradford City were all promoted to the top flight ahead of Wolves. Sir Jack eventually oversaw a promotion to the Premier League in 2003 but it turned out to be just a fleeting visit.

Under Morgan’s tenure, a further three years at the top were secured. Grand plans were drawn up for another Molineux rebuild and land was secured to develop the club’s training facility. The new Stan Cullis Stand was ready for the start of the 2012/13 season as part of a planned three-sided redevelopment, but the remaining two structures were never built. In 2014 the Category One status academy was officially opened at the club’s Compton Park training base.

Both men left behind legacies off the pitch to be proud of. But at the end of the 2015/16 season, Morgan’s final one as owner, Wolves occupied 14th position in the Championship with 58 points. It was virtually a replica of Sir Jack’s very first season as owner. Back in 1990/91 Graham Turner’s Wolves finished the campaign two places higher in the same division, with the same 58 points tally. In more than a quarter of a century of their ownership, Wolves spent just four years in the top division. They had, effectively, stood still.

Yet when Fosun arrived there was much scepticism about the new foreign ownership. Change is not always embraced. There was a stumbling start to the new regime. After publicly backing the manager in place, Kenny Jackett, it became clear that there had been manoeuvrings from the owners behind the scenes to bring in the former Porto coach Julen Lopetegui. But at the 11th hour Lopetegui accepted the job as Spain’s head coach. Fosun’s ‘Plan A’ was in tatters with the start of the new season just days away.

Jackett had known for some time that he was a dead man walking, but remained in his post for a week as speculation mounted about his future. He was eventually dismissed on 29 July 2016. A day later the club announced Walter Zenga as the new head coach, exactly a week before the season’s opening game away at Rotherham United. It was the former Italian goalkeeper’s 16th managerial post in just 18 years.

It represented a tumultuous beginning to Fosun’s ownership of the club. The words, at the time, of Wolves’ much-loved vice president Rachael Heyhoe Flint echoed the fears of many supporters. ‘Let us never forget the proud history and legacy of Wolverhampton Wanderers and respect all its traditions.’ Fosun had upset the status quo.

The football industry makes a great play of traditions. Heritage is important to the identity of any club. But when examining the past, it is not always the case that history is represented as accurately as it should be. Wolves’ traditions include three league titles, four FA Cups and two League Cups. The club played a key role in the birth of European club competition and produced many a home-grown international, including England’s longest-serving captain, Billy Wright. But the last major honour was won four decades ago, in 1980, and memories of it are the preserve of an ageing band of supporters.

Just as important to Wolves’ heritage and traditions are those days when the club could barely cobble a team together, when two sides of the ground were shut and another stand sat marooned like a beached whale 50 yards from the pitch. All this under an absentee ownership, the Bhatti brothers, who ran the entire operation into receivership. Wolves, at various times, has been both the pride and embarrassment of the city. Supporters fell in and out of love with the club too.

Yet it never died. Owners, managers and players can only be responsible for their own periods of time at a club. They represent the pieces in a jigsaw that is never finished. Fans carry the puzzle with them throughout a lifetime of support. Bitten by Wolves is an exploration of the different moments and eras in the club’s history that have contributed to making it what it is today. It is a rich and colourful history. These changes that have taken place at Molineux over the generations have helped make it one of the most distinctive clubs in English football.

Fosun’s opening three years at Molineux were, in many ways, a microcosm of the wider Wolves story. Hindsight has shown that they were willing to learn quickly from a muddled first season. Zenga enjoyed a promising start to the 2016/17 campaign, with two wins and two draws from the opening four games. But it was not long before serious concerns spread. Behind the scenes all was not running smoothly as overseas recruits failed to get to grips with the Championship. Zenga and general manager Andrea Butti rubbed many of the backroom staff up the wrong way with their new approach and abrupt style. ‘Bacon Butti’ was one of the less flattering nicknames to be overheard amongst some of the staff.

The approach to recruitment was different to anything the club had previously experienced, with an influx of unproven European players who appeared ill-equipped for the demands of second-tier English football.

In the event, Zenga’s time at Wolves was brief even by his own track record. On 25 October 2016, after just 14 league games of the season, the Italian was dismissed with Wolves occupying 18th place in the Championship table. Zenga’s 87-day tenure represented a chastening first few months in charge for Fosun. First-team coach Rob Edwards, assisted by under-23s coach Scott Sellars, was put in temporary charge while Fosun plotted their next move. Edwards remained in position for just two games before Paul Lambert was introduced as the club’s third permanent manager in the space of little over three months.

Lambert masterminded a headline-grabbing FA Cup run, including a famous third-round victory against Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool at Anfield, but there was little progress in the league. It took a pair of impressive victories on the road in west London at Brentford and Fulham in March to lift the club away from any relegation danger.

There is no doubt Lambert would have expected another crack at the job for the following season. In April 2017, Shi gave an endorsement of the manager in an interview to the Express and Star newspaper: ‘I like him very much – I chose him. When we choose a coach we think the character and personality is important,’ he said. ‘For Fosun our culture is about working hard, commitment and entrepreneurship. That’s the culture in our group and also the formula for being successful all over the world as a company. For the club it’s the same thing, we need a head coach to have the same genes as us.’

But the reality was that, as with Zenga before him, Lambert was only ever a stop-gap appointment. And as with Jackett’s dismissal a year earlier, the manner of his departure left a bad taste. Wolves were gaining a reputation as a ‘hire and fire them’ outfit. The consensus in the media was that Sir Jack would be ‘turning in his grave’.

On 1 June 2017 Nuno Espírito Santo became the club’s fourth permanent manager in less than a year. As the media gathered ahead of the press conference that morning in the Sir Jack Hayward Suite on the first floor of the Billy Wright Stand, the talk was along the lines of, ‘Here we go again.’ What was the next move going to be for a club whose reputation was becoming tarnished? What muddied the waters further was that the new head coach was the very first client of football agent Jorge Mendes.

In November 2015 Mendes had sold a 20 per cent stake in his Gestifute agency to a subsidiary of Fosun, Foyo Culture and Entertainment. When Fosun bought Wolves from Morgan in July 2016, they had gained Mendes as an adviser in their recruitment process. For months the British media had been questioning the ties between Mendes and Wolves’ owners, despite that relationship being approved by the Football Association as far back as December 2016. There was a jingoistic tone to much of the coverage, suspicious of a foreign owner with an enviable contacts book.

Now Nuno was in the firing line. ‘I am a client of the best agent in the world,’ he explained at his unveiling. ‘He does his job, I do my job. Being at Wolves, for us, is a big challenge as coaches. We know after the big clubs we have coached before with success that we had options, very nice options. But we are here to work and make Wolves a better team. So this is important, that the people who are here physically – day by day at the club – these are the people who are going to make Wolves a better club, and a club that can proudly regain the success of the 50s and 60s. This is what we hope to do.’

With his coaching team watching on from the back of the room, Nuno outlined his vision further. ‘We will bring commitment and we will try to make the players better each day. We are a coaching staff that really looks to develop the players. We can bring hard work, organisation, good planning and strategy. Things that we believe can make Wolves a better team and a winning team. We believe that our idea can succeed.’

Shi’s commitment to making a success of the club was illustrated by his decision to move his family from their home in Shanghai, China, and set up residency in Wolverhampton. The mistakes made during the first season of Fosun’s ownership were recognised and acted upon. But not even the most optimistic Wolves supporter could have imagined the journey the team would go on between August and May of the 2017/18 campaign. The Championship title was secured playing a style of football that had never before been seen at Molineux.

Nuno and his team had captured the hearts of a fan base. Supporters took ownership of the success. The appetite to share experiences and memories grew as the season progressed. Fans proudly showed off this new identity that had been bestowed upon them. Wolves finished the season in style, celebrating the Championship title with a thumping 4-0 win at Bolton Wanderers in front of almost 5,000 visiting supporters in late April.

On the first Bank Holiday Monday of May, the whole city was able to show their appreciation of the team. Tens of thousands lined the streets of Wolverhampton for an open-top bus parade that headed to West Park for a promotion party in front of another 30,000 supporters. The club entered the summer on an incredible high. Never before had a Premier League season been so eagerly anticipated. Fosun’s short tenure had reinvigorated a whole supporter base. Word from Shanghai was that the international conglomerate now regarded Wolves as ‘the jewel in the crown’ of their overseas investments.

In 2018/19 the most expensively assembled team in the club’s history left its mark on the Premier League, qualifying for Europe for the first time in almost 40 years. It was clear, as the season progressed, that the club was changing before our eyes. Changing again.

The stories documented in these pages were collected during Wolves’ first year back at the top under Fosun’s ownership. This is a club that has taken on many guises since its heyday as champions of England. Here are the accounts of those who have played unique roles in observing or shaping Wolves over several decades, from the glory days of the 1950s that Nuno referred to at his unveiling, to the darker moments and sometimes forgotten times.

No other club in England has experienced such a broad spectrum of highs and lows. This collection of interviews, stories and events paints a picture of how Wolves have become the club of today. Supporters, former heroes, staff and others have shared their own individual tales. Including behind-the-scenes insight from the current management and players, Bitten by Wolves is a journey through the soul of an iconic football club.

Chapter 1

THE HISTORIAN

‘Every club needs a Graham Hughes’

WOLVES SUPPORTERS are walking up to Molineux for the opening game of the 2018/19 season with a sense of anticipation not witnessed here for generations. It is the first season of Premier League football under the ownership of Fosun International. Navigating the close season is always easier when there is nothing to look forward to. No hope or belief. But this was a summer that tantalised like no other, filled with so much expectation.

The memorable Championship winners’ promotion parade around the city is still fresh in the mind, when over 80,000 lined the streets of Wolverhampton and West Park on that May Bank Holiday. The new kit, the new Premier League fixture list, the new players. Most of all the new players. Fosun backed up the previous season’s expenditure with another round of squad-strengthening. Mexican striker Raúl Jiménez arrived on loan from Benfica. Full-back Jonny Castro Otto came in on loan from Atletico Madrid. The club-record transfer fee was broken when capturing Spanish winger Adama Traoré from Middlesbrough for £18million.

But it was the signing of Portuguese star João Moutinho that genuinely stunned supporters. The 31-year-old arrived from Monaco on a two-year deal for just £5million. The midfielder stands as the third-most-capped player in Portugal’s history, after Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Figo. In addition to 113 caps for Portugal, he was a key member of the team that won the European Championships in 2016. He also has three Portuguese league titles, three Portuguese cups, the Europa League and a Ligue One title on his curriculum vitae.

All around, there are signs of change. The infamous subway underneath the city ring road, once a congregating point for crowd disorder in the 1970s and 80s, has been given a bright and colourful makeover. An admirable collaboration of club, university and council. A timeline of images, from the club’s formation in 1877 to the current team of Championship title-winners, adorn the walls.

The Civic Centre piazza has been transformed into an inner-city beach, playing host to a pre-match entertainment roster of events such as penalty shoot-outs, football darts, table football and face-painting. Local radio station, Signal FM, have brought their roadshow to the event, with live music being performed. Street food stalls and a bar ensure the hundreds of supporters who have been drawn to the fan park are fed and watered. It is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it is a thoughtful and concerted effort by the club and city council to put something more into the matchday and modernise a day out at the football.

Yet Wolves are unable to escape their history. It is all around them. The Billy Wright Stand and Stan Cullis Stand are the two largest structures of the four stands. Statues of the two giant figures of Wolves’ glorious past watch over fans as they wander up to the turnstiles. At the worst of times it has weighed heavily on the subsequent custodians, almost a shameful reminder that the club should be doing better. At its best, the club’s illustrious past acts as a guardian, as if watching over owners, management and players, checking that they are aware of what has been achieved here, inspiring them to aim higher. History is strange like that.

The seemingly unattainable benchmark for any success at this club is the 1950s. Wolves ended the 1949/50 season as the second-best team in the country, missing out on the league title, on goal difference alone, to Portsmouth. They finished the 1959/60 season lifting the FA Cup at Wembley, pipped to a league and cup double by Burnley by just a single point.

During the ten years between those points, under the iron-fist management of Cullis and led on the field by the England captain Wright, they won three league titles. Wolves were the pioneers of international club football during this time, hosting prestigious floodlit friendlies against the top sides in Europe, which in turn led to the inception of the European Cup in 1955.

A museum at Molineux, inside the Stan Cullis Stand, charts the history of the club from its inception to the present day. There is also a smaller display of artefacts in the reception area inside the main entrance of the Billy Wright Stand. On any given matchday, the club’s current custodians will walk past this display on their way to the first-floor boardroom. Jeff Shi is the Wolves chairman, appointed by the owners Fosun International. Occasionally he will be accompanied by Guo Guangchang, chairman of the Chinese conglomerate itself. Jorge Mendes, football’s widely tagged ‘super agent’ and unofficial adviser to the owners, also checks in from time to time.

On hand to greet the owners, officials and the steady stream of guests who walk through the doors each matchday is Graham Hughes. Although, sometimes, he will have to take a seat and watch the arrivals go by. The years have taken their toll on Graham, who walks with the aid of a frame now. Aged 86, he has seen more than most. First as a supporter, and later as an employee, Graham carries with him more than just the history of the club. He holds some of its secrets too.

Graham began his job as the club’s dressing room attendant 30 years ago, although that job title does not do justice to the roles he has undertaken at the club, which have ranged in variety from running the post-match baths, stadium maintenance, sorting the post, tending the pitch and arranging players’ tickets. ‘Every club needs a Graham Hughes,’ said former manager Mick McCarthy during his time here.

‘I used to help out here back in the 1981/82 season and then I went full time in 1989,’ Graham recalls. ‘Everybody mucked in. The motto in those days was, If the job wants doing, do it.’

But his association with the club began much further back. ‘The first game I can remember is against West Bromwich Albion in the 1941/42 season,’ he says. ‘It was the semi-final of the wartime League Cup. That was when Billy Wright broke his ankle and he had to come off. In those days they used to open the gates about 20 minutes before the end, so, as we had no money, we used to come in. Sometimes we’d sneak in, but one day we got chucked out by one of the directors. To work here now, well, it’s a privilege and an honour.’

When the club built their museum in 2012, Graham played an important role. ‘Being a collector as well, it’s great,’ he adds. ‘There’s over 25,000 items in it. The earliest thing we’ve got is from 1730, a brass kettle from the Molineux Hotel.’ Graham points to an old sheet of paper that has been delicately laid out in his reception display. ‘This is the wage book for the 1888/89 season.’

Graham was a teenager when the country’s post-war football boom began. Wolves’ attendances would regularly break 50,000 as the club swiftly established itself at the top. Christmas Day 1948 is etched in his mind – not for anything that happened on the pitch, more for the unconventional build-up to a home fixture with Aston Villa, during an era when games were played on 25 and 26 December, usually against the same team.

‘We cycled in from Codsall, which is five miles away, with my brother on the crossbar,’ says Graham, recounting the story with a smile. ‘He put his foot in the front wheel and I went straight over the handlebars, there was blood everywhere. We were about 200 yards from the village doctor. So I got into the surgery and he patched me up. My wheel was wobbling away, but we still got to the match.’

In the 1990s, as a member of staff, Graham was knocked off his bike again. This time the players had a whip-round to buy him a new one, along with a high-visibility jacket. He saw the funny side, continuing to cycle in to work until the years caught up with him more recently.

Back in those halcyon days as a supporter, it wasn’t just the bike he relied on to get to the ground. More often than not he would bump into the heroes who helped Wolves become one of the giants of the English game. Wright, the man who captained England on 90 occasions, was one of those who would join supporters on their journey to Molineux.

‘He was on the same bus that we got to the match,’ Graham explains. ‘Five past one bus from Codsall. Billy Wright used to get on halfway and it was always packed. He’d walk through with all the supporters, who’d be shouting, Have a good game Billy. And he’d reply, And you enjoy it.’

Graham reveals that when Wright was made captain of England the news was broken to the player on the bus.

‘He was coming back home from the match one day, on the bus, and the conductor said, Congratulations, you’ve just been made captain of England. It was in the stop press of the Express and Star, but he didn’t know about it.’

Wright is regarded as the club’s greatest player. He was made captain of Wolves in 1947, taking over from Cullis, who became assistant manager to Ted Vizard before taking the managerial reins a year later. After captaining England in the 1950 World Cup, Wright won the Footballer of the Year in 1952. He was the inspirational leader on the pitch during the club’s three title wins, making 541 appearances before his retirement in 1959. A colossus of the game, who caught a bus to the match with the supporters.

‘Wolves were the first club to sign a television deal, you know,’ Graham continues. ‘When they played Honved. They only had two cameras, like. They agreed on a match fee of £600 to televise the second half of the match. I’ve still got the letter that Sir Stanley Rous had written down.’

The floodlit friendlies are as much about European football history as they are about Wolves’. In 1953 the club installed floodlights at Molineux at a cost of £10,000. A number of friendlies were organised against international opposition, including Racing Club Buenos Aires, First Vienna, Spartak Moscow and Honved. They captured the public’s imagination at a time before the advent of European club football.

The Honved fixture, on 13 December 1954, broke new ground. A crowd of 54,998 packed inside Molineux for the game. Wolves wore a specially made shiny satin shirt, designed to stand out under the floodlights for the benefit of millions of television viewers, who were watching live night-time football for the first time.

The match took place a year after England had been stunned by Hungary at Wembley, losing 6-3 to a Ferenc Puskas-inspired side, and just six months after the Hungarians had routed England 7-1 in Budapest. Honved were the champions of Hungary and their side contained five of the ‘Mighty Magyars’ team who finished runners-up in the 1954 World Cup Final. Wolves were champions of England, scoring 96 goals on the way to their first league title under Cullis.

The game was billed as a European club final by the international press. When Wolves came back from 2-0 down to win 3-2, the British press was enthralled. Peter Wilson, a widely respected Fleet Street sports journalist, wrote in the Daily Mirror, ‘I may never live to see a greater thriller than this. And if I see many more as thrilling I may not live much longer anyway.’

Headlines such as ‘Hail Wolves – Champions of the World’ and ‘Wolves The Great’ were written. This reaction was greeted with scepticism in the European press. It set in motion a chain of events that led to the formation of the European Cup.

In France, L’Equipe’s football editor, Gabriel Hanot, a former French international and long-time proponent of a European club competition, wrote, ‘Before we declare that Wolverhampton are invincible, let them go to Moscow and Budapest. And there are other internationally renowned clubs, Milan and Real Madrid to name but two. A club world championship, or at least a European one, should be launched.’

L’Equipe produced a format for a European club competition, to be considered by UEFA. The UEFA congress of March 1955 saw the proposal raised, with approval given in April. The first-ever European Cup competition was held in the 1955/56 season. But Wolves could not retain their title. Instead, it was Chelsea who won the First Division, only to be barred from entering the tournament by a Football Association concerned that their participation would affect domestic midweek attendances. The FA relented the following season, and Wolves entered the competition for the first time in 1958, after securing their second league title of the decade.

By then, Wright’s career was drawing to a close and his half-back colleague Bill Slater was emerging as the natural successor as captain. Graham recalls, with great fondness, the time Slater walked through the Molineux reception doors ahead of Manchester City’s match here in 2003.

‘He had his grandson with him. I saw him in reception and Bill asked if it was possible to get some Manchester City players’ autographs, because his grandson was a City fan,’ Graham explains. ‘As it was early, I just knocked on the away dressing room door. Kevin Keegan, who was their manager, opened the door. I said, Bill Slater would like some autographs. He said, Bill Slater? Bring him in. So he came in with his grandson and had photographs taken with all the players.’

Four months into the 2018/19 season, in December, Slater passed away at the age of 91. There are very few more iconic photographs in the history of Wolves than the one of Slater holding up the FA Cup at Wembley in 1960, sat on the shoulders of Ron Flowers and Peter Broadbent. Slater was a unique figure in the history of Wolves. His was a career that was fulfilled just as much away from the game as in the throes of title battles and cup finals. Slater was the last of the great amateurs.

His move to Wolves happened purely because of a posting in his professional day job. He was appointed as a lecturer of physical education at Birmingham University in 1952. His early career with Blackpool and Brentford had always played second fiddle to his academic studies. When he was posted to Birmingham he wrote to Cullis asking for a game. On signing, he received a stern rebuke from the disciplinarian manager because he had politely asked only for a match with any of the club’s teams. Cullis told him that he wanted men with ambition whose only desire was to play for the first XI.

Two months after signing amateur terms, Slater made his debut in October 1952, replacing Wright, who was playing for England that day. It was an unforgettable experience as Wolves thumped Manchester United, the champions of England, 6-2.

The three league titles Slater won in the 1950s owed much to the strength in depth of the half-back positions. He earned an international call-up for England, along with team-mates Wright, Eddie Clamp and Ron Flowers. It was Slater, Clamp and Wright who made up England’s half-back line on three occasions at the 1958 World Cup finals, on one occasion famously shutting out eventual champions Brazil, who averaged three goals a game in their other matches.

Incredibly, Slater’s trip to represent his country left him out of pocket. He was given leave of absence by the university but his wages were docked accordingly. The Football Association’s own expenses for players representing their country did not quite cover the loss of earnings. Cullis persuaded Slater to turn semi-professional during his time at Wolves. His ten-pound signing-on fee came with the player’s stipulation that he be allowed to carry on teaching at Birmingham University.

A young Alan Hinton joined the club in 1957 and, on hearing of his passing, recalled the dedication Slater showed to his football: ‘He often ran alone around Molineux in afternoons when he missed normal Wolves sessions due to