Journey into the unknown

We’re going to Wolves on Saturday. Yippee.

There’s an old saying that, er, says it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive. When it comes to Saturday’s journey it’s better to do almost anything than to arrive where we’re going.

Wolves away. What a glorious experience those two words conjure up. Wolvesworld, where global domination is always just round the corner. Where friendlies are more important than trophies. Where being eighteenth means you’re as good as the top six. Where the seventies have never gone out of fashion and the eighties never happened. Actually that last one might be true because you’ll never find a Wolves supporter who can remember anything about the decade.

Wolves have had a pretty turbulent history and a few years ago they were convinced that they were about to rule the world, leaving Real Madrid floundering in their wake. Now they’re selling everything that isn’t nailed down and they’ve gone back to having the Albion as their rivals. That’s what comes of having a dodgy Chinese owner – there’s no way we would fall for anything that daft.

They tend to get through a manager every year and the current one is Portugese, surprisingly, as are a few of their players although not as many as there used to be because for some reason Jorge Mendes isn’t too keen on visiting Wolverhampton any more. We’ve bought a few players off them and sold them even more of our cast-offs, including the time when they bought Andy Gray and in return paid for us to become European champions, which was good of them.

There’s nowhere to drink in Wolverhampton, well nowhere for us in a place ten miles away, but don’t get to the ground too early otherwise there’s a chance you might get a game. If you do you’ll get a win bonus, although you’ll have the inhabitants of Wolvesworld telling you that scoring more goals means you’ve lost.