Roger Johnson breaks Wolves mould

Wolves blogger Tim Spiers prepares for the start of his club's Premier League season next week believing new captain Roger Johnson could make all the difference.

It seems customary to kick off the first offerings of a new football campaign by remarking how it seems like the end of the last one finished just yesterday.

Stephen Hunt's beautiful life-affirming chip into Paul Robinson's top right hand corner will live long in any the memory of any Wolves fan who witnessed it – for ever in fact.

But the glorious moment against Blackburn in May which saved us from Premier League extinction and the ignominy of trips to Doncaster and Barnsley on ice-cold winter evenings seems like a lifetime ago.

I'll level with you – it's actually been nice to have a few weeks off. I don't think anyone could stomach much more of the gut wrenching tension and anguish that Wolves served up in the weeks that our 2010-11 campaign began unravelling before our very eyes.

The panic-stricken horror started with Kevin Doyle hurting his knee against Macedonia and finished with us having picked up eight points from our final eight games.

At the end of it all, we survived by the margin of degrees that manager Mick McCarthy's nose deviates from straight on to left – a small but very significant amount.

Since that moment football has been put on my back burner, with the advances of the Copa America and the European under-21 Championships spurned in order to take in the delights of a few other sports.

Test match cricket, Formula One, Wimbledon and the Tour de France each did a sterling job of keeping me suitably distracted from having to lead a socially acceptable, non-sports based existence.

And there have been refreshing facets to all of the above, particularly a dose of sportsmanship and innocence rarely seen in the Premier League.

But as wonderful as it has been to watch Ian Bell's sumptuous cover drives, or Mark Cavendish's vivacious sprints to the finish line, there's just one thing missing - Molineux, gold and black and Wolverhampton Wanderers, the greatest team the world has ever seen, probably.

So it's time to start worrying again about Wayne Hennessey commanding his area, Michael Kightly's fragile leg muscles or George Elokobi's positional sense.

The new campaign is our third consecutive one in the top flight – an achievement not to be underestimated – but it brings with it a familiar challenge, survival.

Talk of mid-table is premature and the aim, first and foremost, should be to avoid any last-gasp dramas like last season.

Anything on top of that, say a final position of 14th or higher or a decent cup run, would be a bonus.

To that end, McCarthy's transfer activity has had a focus very much on quality, not quantity, evolution not revolution.

The signing of Jamie O'Hara on a permanent basis was as welcome as it was expected, while Dorus de Vries replacing Marcus Hahnemann has improved the goalkeeping department and kept Wayne Hennessey on his toes.

While there was plenty of talk of a bid for Roger Johnson, it was certainly a surprise to see him sign at Molineux and so soon before transfer deadline day.

Thankfully it seems debt-ridden Birmingham just couldn't hold out any longer for some badly-needed readies, although kudos to chief executive Jez Moxey for playing hard ball with the reported fee of £4million which, if true, could be an absolute steal.

Johnson has got a list of attributes which you wouldn't normally associate with Wolves defenders of recent years – leadership skills, stability, consistency and bravery.

He's the kind of guy you would trust not to steal anything if he was fixing your washing machine and you needed to pop out to the shops for 10 minutes.

The hope is that these skills will rub off on those around him and, if Johnson can marshal the back four, it could earn us a fair few points next season.

Organisation is the most important facet of a defensive unit and, although Jody Craddock leads by example, he's not the type to hand out rollockings if things are going wrong – something we've been missing since Paul Ince was around.

Hopefully, Johnson can fill that void and make a big difference, especially with the captain's armband after replacing Karl Henry as skipper.

As pleasing as our three signings have been, it would be nice to be able to talk about two or three more, although four weeks remain in the transfer window to rectify that.

The fact that we need a left-back is more glaringly obvious than the birthmark on Mikhail Gorbachev's head – everyone can see it and everyone's talking about it apart the man himself, in this case Mick McCarthy.

Stephen Ward's efforts up front last season – holding the ball up, linking with midfield, endlessly running the channels – confirmed that he is a striker by trade, not a full-back, which leaves us a player short even before you try and answer the George Elokobi question.

Links to Paul Konchesky, Ryan Bertrand and Lee Wallace were depressingly low-sighted – what we need, although clearly it's far easier said than done, is a Premier League standard left-back.

That, arguably, should have been McCarthy's priority this summer, while another centre-half and defensive midfielder would have been nice.

Still, as already stated there are four weeks to go and hopefully the talk of needing to sell before being able to buy, or of no targets currently being chased, is a smokescreen.

Pre-season has been fairly successful up until now, with an impressive victory at Celtic doing everyone's confidence no harm.

Most players have got through the fixtures unscathed and a win this weekend against Real Zaragoza would make it three on the trot ahead of the season opener at Ewood Park.

Plus the Stan Cullis Stand is taking shape nicely and the new training ground facilities look superb.

So yes, until the infuriatingly-incompetent referees, last-minute defeats and crippling injury lists begin to surface, it really is quite nice to be talking about Wolves again.