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!