Wolves announce second signing

After a month of inactivity, Wolves have made their second signing in as many days!

Dorus De Vries, who helped Swansea to promotion last season, has signed on a free transfer. At only thirty he brings experience and there is still plenty of room for improvement.

We now have our replacement for Marcus Hahnemann, and I think it is a good signing. He kept 20 odd clean sheets last season, and was an integral part of Swansea's free flowing football. He is comfortable on the ball and releases it early.

He is certainly moving out of his comfort zone as he said so himself. He was sure to be number one at Swansea, so it's an ambitious move to try and fight for the number one jersey here with Wayne Hennessey and Carl Ikeme.

It will be interesting to see what happens though, if Hennessey continues his good form will he be content after a few months? We have changed our number one goalkeeper for the last two seasons, is that Mick's plan again?

O'Hara signs!

The news that all Wolves fans have been waiting for has finally come. Jamie O'Hara has signed a five year deal with Wolves.

It was never in doubt, despite silly rumours that QPR were in for him and the suggested £5m is more than reasonable.

With a full pre-season behind him, and his back injury out of the way I fully expect him to be even better than in his loan spell. He is a step up in class, the kind of quality we need to be buying in all positions from now on.

There were rumours we would announce a double signing today, with a Championship goalkeeper joining us. Among the list of linked keepers are Dorus de Vries, Adam Federici and Andy Lonergan. All are good goalkeepers and would be a decent back up to our current number one, Wayne Hennesey.


Competition

The winner of the Elgar shirt competition is Paul Field. I've sent you an email, well done!

Competition time

With no one winning the fixtures competition, here is the promised one for the Elgar shirt!

It is easy to enter, just send your answer through the contact me page. For the subject put 'Competition' with your answer below! Be sure to put your correct email, otherwise I can't contact you if you win.

Here's the question: How many caps did Billy Wright win for England?

The deadline is tomorrow lunchtime, so I will announce the winner around then.

Good luck.

Make room for more!

Although we do not need to confirm our 25 man squad until September, there is a lot of talk about who fills where in our squad. 

With Hahnemann, Basso, Jones and Mancienne all departing, it leaves it at 21. Bring Ikeme back in, and it's back up to 22.

Who are the incoming three then? I'm not 100% sure, but I think we have to name a third goalkeeper even if he is underage and that is largely the reason why it looks like we are set to sign one. Up to 23 then.

We've been linked with a move for Roger Johnson

Then there is a space in the defence. God knows how many we have been linked with so far. It's well known that we are likely to sign at least one, if not two, centre backs. Up to 24.

With David Jones leaving at the end of his contract, it leaves room for another centre midfielder. This is an interesting one. We don't really know what formation we will play. Mick looks like he wants to make 442, and stumbled across a formula for it towards the end of the season. If we were to sign a centre midfielder, along with Jamie O'Hara would that mean dropping our captain, Karl Henry? Up to 25.

As many of you will probably agree, I don't think we will sign only three players. The left back position is another priority, but I don't think it would mean selling George Elokobi. It would leave us with only one definite left back (assuming we bought one) so I can see us selling at least one centre back and unfortunately, it looks ever more likely that Steven Mouyokolo will be that man. We may want to sign two centre backs, so would that mean selling another centre back, or a fringe player like Dave Edwards, Adlene Guedioura or even Michael Kightly?

Here's what a 25 man squad could look like for us:

Hennessey
Ikeme
GOALKEEPER

Foley
Zubar
Craddock
Stearman
Berra/CENTRE BACK
CENTRE BACK

Happening again very soon, hopefully

Elokobi
LEFT BACK

Hammill
Kightly
Jarvis
Hunt
Henry
Milijas
O'Hara
Guedioura
Edwards
CENTRE MIDFIELDER

Doyle
Fletcher
Ebanks-Blake
Ward

That also means no place for Greg Halford, Sam Vokes, Andy Keogh or Stefan Maiehofer who all look set to leave Molineux this summer. 

If we signed good, capable players there to add to a group of players with 2 years Premier League experience we would be looking at quite a strong squad. So if we did, what would be our expectations?

Because you know what, I don't think my heart could taken another season like last year's.

Wolves fixtures released

Wolves will begin the 2011-12 season with a trip to Ewood Park. Bring back memories?

I'm not very excited about that, can you blame me? When do we ever beat Blackburn, expecially away?!

We follow that game up with at home to Fulham, with their new manager Martin Jol and then we are away to Villa.

Happy days

It's not a terrible start, but it's not a nice one either. Our boxing day day fixtures sees us go to the Emirates to face Arsenal, and we finish away to Wigan.

The Black Country derby games will be on in mid October and early February.

Full fixture list here: http://www.wolves.co.uk/page/Fixtures/0,,10307,00.html

No one got the first fixture right, so we will have another competition for the shirt on Monday!

Competition time! Predict who Wolves will get in first game of the season

The football season is still a while away, but football fans everywhere can't wait on Friday. At nine in the morning the fixtures for the season will be announced. Until then, all we can do is speculate on who we will get first or last, when the Black Country derby's will be or when we get another chance to beat Manchester United.

There's an Elgar t-shirt up for grabs (see the picture on the right), if you can correctly predict who Wolves will get on the opening day o f the Premier League season.

It's easy to enter, just enter your prediction (e.g. Fulham, home) below in the comment box! Make sure you put the right email, so that I can contact you if you win.

On another note, congratulations to Bob China who sneaked into first place on the final weekend in the prediction league. Wolfie looked like he had it in the bag, but did not make his predictions for the last round of games. The table will be up tomorrow.

How do you solve a problem like Mouyokolo?

“It didn’t work out for Steven Mouyokolo and it didn’t work out for Jelle Van Damme – we got our dough back on that one – but overall we’ve got the nucleus of a 40-point Premier League side that played in the hardest league for a long time and is still here.”

Does that quote from Mick signal the end for Steven Mouyokolo? 


Who? Don't you remember him?

I don't blame you. Signed from Hull last summer, Tiger's fans despaired. If there were two players they least wanted to sell it was the two we had bought from them. Stephen Hunt has gone on to prove his worth, but this guy has been an enigma.

Quick, powerful and comfortable on the ball. This is what Hull fans told us but so far we have seen the opposite. All we've seen is him being bamboozled by Johan Elmander and bullied by Jason Roberts. He promised a lot in the cup game at United, he look half decent but lacking fitness. We haven't seen anything since. 

I have a small glimmer of hope that with a full pre-season, he may improve. He had plenty of niggling injuries throughout the season, and in his few appearances has looked short of fitness. If he can get fit, maybe then can he finally prove he can be the centre back we were told he was?

He's also still relatively young. He's twenty four and has three years remaining on his contract. Will he still be here to show us what he can do?

'Super sub and real star for the future'

When Nathaniel Mendez-Laing made his debut versus Swindon, and produced a man of the match display it looked like we had a player who could be breaking through soon. Since then he hasn't made an appearance in a Wolves shirt. he's been on loan in League One this season with Peterborough, so I looked for Peterborough fans and found two on theposhforum.co.uk who were willing to give me a short report on 'NML'.

This is what Kelly Green (forum user name - Junior15) had to say about Nat:


Super sub and real star for the future. It’s hard to believe that this guy is only nineteen, what he lacks in ball control he more than makes up for in strength, speed and skill.

His stats don’t really do him credit; nine starts, twenty five substitute appearances and five goals. Mendez-Laing is a deadly force to have on the bench; a real impact player. Similar to Craig Mackail-Smith he never gives up and will run for any ball. Compared to the start of the season his confidence has begun to flourish and where he once wouldn’t take on defenders he will now power down the flanks and won’t let anyone stand in his way. His youthful desire is what has given Peterborough that extra kick in the last minutes of the game. He has saved their back numerous times creating, and scoring last minute chances. Sadly when starting a game Nathaniel seems to get lost this could just be a lack of confidence.

This guy deserves more minutes on the pitch and in years to come I can see him being a solid, creative winger for a top level team. The potential is definitely there now it’s time for Mendez-Laing to shine.

'BristlePosh' had this to say about him:

Keen as mustard, loved his attitude and his pace, when he learns to play for ninety minutes like he does when he comes on as a sub he'll be one hell of a player. It would be nice if he could remain another season, but I wonder whether the fact that he is not getting the number of starts he probably needs, maybe will play against us getting his services, With players like Boyd, Mackail-Smith, McLean (until Janurary) and Tomlin, it was always going to be tough for him to get the starts he needs. Perhaps a different First division side maybe the place for him next year, where he would get more starts.

The general feeling on Mendez-Laing seemed to be that he was a very good impact player, but that he doesn't have enough in him to complete a full game. Maybe this is about the tempo he plays at. Whenever I have watched him, he looks strong and powerful but lacking with the finishing touch.

It's good to see that he has contributed significantly to Peterborough's promotion, the fans seem to have a lot of affection for him.

I wouldn't be surprised to see him go on loan again, possibly to Posh but hopefully atleast a Championship club. He could even get a couple of games for us in the cups, it's always nice to see what the youngsters can do in those games.