Bully Bites Back with Steve Bull

Wolves legend Steve Bull gives it to you straight in his weekly column and voices his thoughts on the player possibilities coming into Molineux this month.

There is nothing like playing in big games if you're a professional footballer. It can actually be quite an odd experience, if they are called off at the last minute and you're robbed of the chance.

Having built yourself up all week for a certain role or to mark a specific player, you can be left feeling empty, down and frustrated at a postponement. You've trained really hard all week for nothing.

But that disappointment never lasts for long, because one of the beauties of football is that there is nearly always another match just around the corner and this Saturday's – at home to Wigan – is arguably even bigger for Wolves than West Ham away would have been last week.

The reason I say that is, while a draw at Upton Park would have been acceptable on Sunday, nothing less than three points at Molineux this weekend will be good enough. And my feeling is that the Lancashire side really are there for the taking.

Roberto Martinez's side have often been quietly impressive at the DW Stadium – apart from when Wolves won there early in the season – but away from home they've been all over the place.

It is worth bearing in mind, for instance, that while we superbly won 1-0 at White Hart Lane late last year, Saturday's opponents lost 9-1 there just a week or two earlier.

An awful lot will depend on which Wigan team turns up - the one which knocks the ball around nicely and looks dangerous on the counter-attack, or the one whose defence collapses like a deck of cards.

But if I were manager Mick McCarthy I'd be worrying about our own performance most of all. My feeling is that if we play anything like as well as we did at home to Bolton and Burnley then we will comfortably beat Wigan.

One of the added elements of interest to this match is the fact it falls halfway through the January transfer window. Things are now beginning to heat up in that department at Molineux, with Wolves being linked with an increasing number of players. For all our alleged interest, there seems to be very little element of panic and I would take that as a really positive sign.

My take on it is that Mick is now confident in his own mind – even if he won't say so publicly – that our present squad is good enough to keep us up. What the manager is now trying to do is add a few extra elements to kick us on for the rest of the campaign and into next season.

I also find it interesting that the majority of the players we've been linked with – Leeds' Jermaine Beckford and Hull's Stephen Hunt in particular – are either forwards or attacking midfielders, suggesting that Mick is more than happy with his defensive-minded players.

It means it might well be worth taking a good look at Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Matt Jarvis on Saturday, because they might be two of the players who could be knocked down the first-team pecking order if any new arrivals in their roles arrive before the end of January.

I wouldn't say the Wigan match is the last chance for Ebanks-Blake to make a goalscoring impact, but it certainly might help ease the pressure.

All the present talk about Beckford is an interesting conversation. I've heard people wondering what on earth we're doing looking at a player from League One, as others saw his performance at Manchester United on TV and think he might be the answer to all our prayers.

My feeling is that if you can score goals, you can score goals. Sure, the pace of play and quality of defending improves as you rise up the divisions, but if your entire life revolves around your name being on the scoresheet every Saturday, as mine did, then you can always find a way of hitting the net. I think he'd be a great buy.

Stephen Hunt would be another fantastic addition to our squad. I've always rated him. He's a busy little player with an eye for goal who could add some real spark to our midfield. It's a mystery to me why he's not in Hull's starting line-up every week.

But the fact that he isn't offers Mick a great line of argument in trying to persuade him to move. I didn't really ever want to leave Albion back in 1986 but what I was told when Wolves approached me was 'come to Molineux and you'll get a start up front every match.' There really is nothing like starting and playing matches week in, week out.

Perhaps all the bad weather and postponements will have allowed Mick to have a bit more time on the phone.

But, for the players, there's no escape. Our domed artifical training pitch will have seen them working harder than ever. It's all a bit different from my days in the 1980's and 1990's when 'time indoors' meant running around in our gymnasium – which was like an old-school gym.

Our coaches in those days used to just make us run endless laps around it. If any of us complained that it was tough on our knees – which it was – we got extra!

Whatever the weather, we used to end our Fridays having a kickabout on the players' car-park. A stray shot or two used to result in various car alarms going off!

Bumps and bruises used to be a regular feature, too, so if you ever wondered how or why we used to quite regularly appear on Saturdays with grazed knees or bandages on our elbows, now you know.

No wonder modern-day fitness coaches now look back at that era and describe us as having been 'The Bash Street Kids' by comparison with today.

BULLY'S BETS FOR THE WEEK: -

I'm going to employ a bit of kidology with my Wolves tip this week, because I've noticed that every time I predict a draw we win!

So I'll opt for 1-1 (5/1 at Sportingbet) with Sylvan Ebanks-Blake to score first at 11/1, even though I actually think we'll win 2-0.

For more Wolves markets than anyone else, go to Sportingbet.com/Steve Bull