Molineux just keeps on growing

Wolves blogger Nathan Lloyd reflects on how far the club have come after plans for a new 40,000 redeveloped Molineux took a big stride forward this week.

Heaven is at Molineux and that's where we come from.

After yesterday's fantastic news, it looks like Wolves will be staying on the same spot. So begins yet another chapter in our illustrious history, as we wait with baited breath to see the plans for a rumoured 40,000 capacity stadium.

Well done to the council - not words I say often - for not selling out. I would hate for club owner Steve Morgan to be forced down the out-of-town stadia route, like Derby County's Pride Park, which is a soulless plastic shed compared to the atmosphere of the great Baseball Ground.

I remember all too well the excitement that surrounded the last time the stadium was being rebuilt at the hands of Sir Jack Hayward.

The picture above was taken from the newly built Billy Wright stand on the opening game of the season in August 1993.

I remember listening to the Beverley Sisters playing on the pitch and proudly looking over at the continued rebirth of Wolverhampton Wanderers.

A couple of goals that day from Bully helped the Wolves to a 3-1 win over Bristol City.

By December of that year, the rebirth was complete and the redeveloped Molineux welcomed a memorable game against Honved, with both Billy and the Hungarian Ferenc Puskas making an appearance before the game.

We had certianly come along way from me putting my pocket money into a rattling tin to help save Wolves from extinction at the hands of the incompetent Bhatti Brothers in the early 1980's.

Although the Premier League football we all craved took a while to follow the redeveloped stadium, we certainly had some exciting seasons trying to get there.

Now as we stand on the precipice of survival in the top-flight and another stay in this chimerical division, I am feeling the same excitement as I did back in 1993.

We are now just one point shy of where we finished in our first campaign in the top tier, but this time we have six more games to reach safety and a rather splendid five point gap - make that six with goal difference - between ourselves and the bottom three.

I warned in my last blog about counting chickens and all that, and I know I should still have a cautious approach to staying up.

But even if we get nothing from a post-Barcelona Arsenal team at the Emirates, I don't expect Burnley or Hull to get any points either at the weekend given their tricky respective fixtures.

With Portsmouth as good as gone, the two other current incumbents of the relegation places play each other next Saturday before we face Stoke on Sunday lunchtime.

If the Burnley and Hull would be kind enough to both lose at the weekend and then if the Clarets could win at the KC Stadium, a victory for Wolves on Sunday could give us an outright eight point gap.

Although we wouldn't be mathematically safe - a word only ever used this time of year - I don't think we would be caught.

Lots of ifs and maybes, but the slightly fortuitous point against Everton made it eight points in our last four games - games where we have finally been rewarded with some points to match their excellent football of late.

It's been a remarkable change of fortunes that now find us sitting at the dizzy heights of 14th and just six points behind Roy Hodgson's Fulham, who are supposedly having a good season - but haven't we already beaten them at Molineux?

When manager Mick McCarthy changed things to a 4-5-1 to play to the club's obvious strengths in personnel, it took a few games to bed in with the team, but that formation looks like being one of the key reasons to our probable survival.

I think the measure of Mick's success is that he is now being touted as an outside bet for the Celtic job. Contrary to what many of you think, I would actually be gutted if he left, not that I think there is a cat in hell's chance that will happen.

And until the manager and the team have 'mathematically' kept us up, I won't start talking about where the team needs strengthening for next season.

Instead, I promised I would ask what the readers think about the pre-match and half-time entertainment at Molineux. I would love to send some feedback to the club because at the moment they rarely get it right.

The game against Everton was a classic example of them getting it as wrong as an Ashley Cole text message. The organisers, and I use that word loosely, tried to cram about 30 minutes into a half-time slot that is barely 15 minutes long as it is.

Jackie Graham may have been a good soul singer in her day, but it doesn't work when her voice is screeching through the 15 watt Tandy speakers in the Steve Bull Stand.

It was also disgraceful that more time wasn't awarded to the presentation with Billy Harrison's great grandson and Bobby Thomson's family, which almost went unnoticed.

Instead we had the overkill of Graham and her daughter rambling through some birthday announcements, young Wolves doing a training session and the Sportingbet challenge.

I'm not legally obliged to say so, but I do like the SportingBet challenge, especially when someone with a personality, like Don Goodman, is having a bit of banter with the contestant.

Don is back for the Stoke game and although it might be a little tricky to prise him away from his employees at Sky, I'd certainly like to see him down at the Molineux more often.

For me, you can keep all the other fluff. Personally, I just want to know the other half-time scores and I certainly don't need the latest tune from HMV deafening me.

We know that the screens probably are not going back on until the redevelopment takes place but, although I do enjoy it when the odd dancer falls on her backside from the two-step dance academy, do they really add anything?

We've all seen that, away from Molineux, most Premier League clubs do it better than we do.

Saturday against Everton was probably the worst it's been all season and I'm beginning to think it's just a ploy by the club to get everybody down in the concourse to buy their overpriced pies.

We are a top-flight club now and who ever organises the entertainment at the club needs to realise it. So, answers on a postcard as to what you would like to see changed.

On to the weekend's game and having seen Andrey Arshavin, William Gallas and Cesc Fabregas all limp off against Barcelona, Saturday isn't looking quite so daunting down at the Emirates.

Arsenal still have bags of quality even without that trio but, with our tails up, who knows what might happen in North London?

Thanks to Marrs-guitar from the Molineux Mix for identifying the team in the photo and have a cracking Easter weekend.

Up the Wolves!