How Wolves can come back stronger

It's not a catastrophe, a tragedy or a disaster. It is a relegation. A wounding, painful event for everyone connected to Wolves but not anything which cannot be repaired and rebuilt with the benefit of lessons learned.

Wolves fans are facing the pain of their team's relegation but as Martin Swain says, it's not the end – and the fightback starts now

At the moment, many Wolves fans will be hurting too much to see things that way.

But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and the time will come when the club must confront this setback as a renewed challenge and not a damning indictment.

However, there are big lessons to be learned and one sure way to extend the agony of these past few months is to ignore them.

So here's five things I believe all at Molineux need to address as the club now prepares for the challenges of the Championship.

Speak to your public, Mr Morgan

Steve Morgan is not a man in pursuit of the reflected glory of football, an owner who has come into the game to feed his ego and lap up the spotlight.

But his discretion in keeping his public commentary to a minimum has aggravated these contentious first months of 2012.

Morgan has a wounded public out there right now and he needs to address them, calm them and reassure them as quickly as possible.

The owner has not escaped criticism over the events which followed the season-lurching moment that was Molineux's Black Country derby. As is always the case in football, there has been an awful lot of wisdom after the event but his decision to sack Mick McCarthy was justified. Sacking McCarthy at that stage of the season without a clear and certain plan in place to recruit a successor was not.

This animosity towards Morgan is, however, unfair and undeserved. He didn't have a new man ready to replace the long-serving McCarthy out of respect for the only manager he had worked with up until that point.

He had no appetite to 'go behind Mick's back' and start talking to a successor before he had dealt with the floundering former boss. It was naive but commendable. Sadly, football is for the ruthless and sometimes the unprincipled and Morgan will be a wiser man for this experience.

His was a mistake made from the best of intentions as have been any other misjudgements from the boardroom level. He may have got that wrong but he is an owner who desperately wants the best for the club and has visionary plans in place to bring them about.

The Molineux faithful need to hear that. They need to know the passion, determination and energy for putting Wolves back on course is intact.

And only one man can deliver it.

Appoint a new manager

It is not possible to write these words without feeling for Terry Connor. I can only endorse what the interim manager declared in the wake of the relegation-confirming defeat . He has nothing over which to reproach himself; he has conducted his period in charge with honesty and integrity in the most trying of circumstances.

But Connor's candidature is now too toxic to be extended into a new season. He has been unable to bring about the improvements required to win a game since taking on the task of waging the survival battle and is now associated with a record run of defeats and its inevitable outcome.

It may be that in another place and at another time, Connor would be able to acquit himself more favourably as a fledgling manager. But he has not struck a convincing figure in the thick of this Wolves debacle. To hear Matt Jarvis and Michael Kightly still addressing McCarthy as 'the gaffer' in interviews since the former manager's exit passes a clear comment on the difficulties the former coach faced in putting some clear blue water between what had gone and what was ahead.

Wolves fans have rightly and commendably acknowledged the difficulties and refused to turn on Connor. But the Championship brings about a different mood at Molineux – expectation and a demand for an immediate return and sustained promotion challenge will fill the air.

The Championship is getting harder and harder as it becomes occupied increasingly by relegated teams baring their Premier League parachute cheques. This is not going to be easy and Wolves will take with them a losing habit which they must get out of their system as quickly as possible.

A fresh voice in the command post is essential.

A change of style, please

Wolves Premier League adventure under the now broken 3Ms is over after 111 games. In that time, they have scored 112 goals. They have won just 25 times and scored three in a game on only eight occasions. You don't need me to do the maths.

Yes football is tough and competitive and sometimes by necessity a gruelling war of attrition. But it is also meant to be fun, vibrant, exciting and thrilling, a reason to drag hard-pressed pounds from the pockets of hard-pressed supporters beyond their sense of loyalty and devotion.

And, let's be honest, being a Wolves fans has been bloody hard work these last few years.

Such is the intensity which drives the club, Molineux can be an insular institution and there is no doubt all at Wolves are culpable in failing to see the advances in style and approach being made at other clubs of either similar or even lesser reach while the McCarthy Way was backed.

But I am afraid for all the mighty progress the former manager brought, he ultimately added to the view that he is a major player for the second tier but a man who struggles in the first.

In choosing their man to take the club forward, Wolves need to embrace a radical change of style. One that still brings successful football but football more pleasing on the eye, more threatening to the opposition and executed by more technically-focused players. Football that can go back into the Premier League with more to offer than parking the team bus across the penalty area.

It's time to look after the ball, Wolves. We all know what happens when you keep giving it to the opposition.

Challenge the players

An inevitable consequence of relegation is the fear of a fire-sale of the club's best players. Wolves' accounts are sufficiently solid for the club only to consider offers that make overwhelming commercial sense and there is no reason why they should be bullied into transfers they do not want beyond any release clauses which may have been pre-written into contracts.

Of course, keeping unhappy footballers at a club can be a de-stabilising factor so it is time to recall the most famous half-time team-talk in the game's long history.

Folk lore has it being first delivered by Joe Mercer when his Aston Villa team were four goals down at Tottenham eons ago. Mercer poked his head around the dressing room door and said simply: "Gentlemen, you got us in this mess – you can get us out of it." He slammed the door shut and Villa won 5-4. It should strike a chord with these Wolves players now.

For all the reservations about their performances this season, this squad possesses many admirable qualities and especially a sense of duty to the name of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC. Do not doubt it.

They have the chance under new direction and new leadership to repair the damage to their reputations. Some will be tempted to jump ship, the nettle that is Roger Johnson's unhappy first season at Molineux has to be grasped and a new manager will inevitably want to shape things a little differently.

But it is up to these players to prove that wounded pride remains a powerful motivating force 60 years on from Mercer's moment of inspiration.

Keep calm and carry on

Wolves' hierarchy must shut their ears to the furious babble of criticism and vitriol flooding the media now and stick to plans which undoubtedly serve the long-term benefit of the club.

But it's not easy. The voice of the public is now more readily heard than ever, and can bring about uncertainty and hesitation.

This was apparent in the days which followed McCarthy's sacking when Steve Bruce was identified as a freely available potential replacement of Premier League experience.

Within hours, the club picked up on a barrage of opposition to Bruce which certainly jolted the selection process – and yet a couple of weeks later, with Connor in charge, they were being pilloried by the same forces for not appointing him.

I am not saying Wolves should have appointed Bruce. In fact I don't believe he was the kind of figure the club needed. But I am saying it was worrying to detect Morgan and Jez Moxey being pushed into areas they may not have wanted by the irrational passions of their supporters.

They have to remember that for the fans, this is an emotional business which does not always make for logical thinking. That is the province of the boardroom and Wolves' rulers must stick to what they believe in, ignore the flak and pursue their goals with conviction.

A football club cannot be run by 28,000 different voices.