Martin Swain: Whatever has happened to Kevin Doyle?

What a prime opportunity, folks, to see if they can throw any light on a question which must be baffling all at the club. What on earth has happened to Kevin Doyle?

I mean, who is this chap still nominally occupying the No. 29 shirt and what has he done with the real guy? Because while the Ireland international striker never had the type of game to single-handedly take teams apart, he is surely, surely better than sitting forlornly on a bench unable to find a place in a League One attack.

Or so you would have thought. But Doyle's story is one of a sad, inexorable decline from the garlands thrown in his path by grateful Wolves fans after those Herculean solo performances as Mick McCarthy's lone striker in 2009-10, so instrumental in shepherding the team to Premier League safety.

Remember those days? McCarthy even got into trouble with the traditionalists that season when he famously hailed one 'Doyler' showing against Liverpool by declaring: "I'm not sure there can have been a better centre-forward's performance at Molineux than Doyle's."

Wolves had just drawn 0-0 so it was even harder to swallow for a club with such a formidable lineage of No. 9s. But Big Mick was unabashed.

That was January 2010. Unfortunately, and bizarrely, that was as good as it got for Doyle. When Wolves were relegated two seasons later, everyone thought he would be a champion in the Championship. He wasn't. And when Wolves went down another division 12 months later, we all thought that Doyle would cruise through League One like a thoroughbred. He hasn't.

Instead, he has become all but invisible.

Before now, a transfer window could not pass without his name figuring as a target for other managers. A year ago, Dean Saunders was rejecting overtures from Celtic; before that, August 2012, Villa and Everton were after him.

Only last March, Celtic boss Neil Lennon made it clear that he would be back for Doyle. Now when Lennon talks about a Wolves player he says he can't talk about, it's Leigh Griffiths. How has this happened? Of all the young men McCarthy brought to Molineux in the first flush of his regime, no one offered a more impressive photo-fit of the earnest, appreciative and diligent professional than the £6.5m centre forward from Reading. Indeed, that was evident in his choice of Wolves in the first place, favouring an inferior wage package to an offer from Sunderland.

Theories abound. His former international manager Giovanni Trapattoni, reckoned Doyle effectively left his legs in the enormous demands made of him by McCarthy's strict 4-5-1. He was, at that point, a superb back-to-goal forward, able to occupy top-class central defenders despite an unremarkable stature.

Doyle has never been prolific but this game has always been about threading players together and providing opportunities and space for others. Most of all, he is no shirker. This is not a player who gets the hump, downs tools and picks up his wedge. Doyle may be under-inspired at the moment, perhaps struggling for motivation, but that will not be a conscious reaction, no matter how disenchanted he may be with the Jackett regime.

So, yes, pop along to Jody's 'do' – it's at WV1 on February 27 – and see if you can persuade Jackett or Ricketts to throw any light on the decline and fall of a once fine Premier League footballer.

But I suspect they, like us, will struggle.