Graham Taylor is backing Mick McCarthy to lead Wolves to the Promised Land. Martin Swain reports.

Banish your fears Wolves fans and trust in Mick McCarthy’s young side to deliver the goods at the end of this Championship campaign.

Ex-boss Graham Taylor, who knows what it is to be chewed up and spat out by the Molineux mill, is convinced Wolves will stay the course this season and claim a place in the Premier League.

It is a promotion which Taylor believes will bring it’s own problems and difficulties. But that is for later – right now, the man whose Wolves reign never recovered from the heart break of a play-off semi-final defeat is bristling with confidence about the Championship leaders.

“Can they stay where they are? Yes,” he says emphatically. “Will they stay there? Yes. I’m confident. Very confident for them.”

He knows the nature of Black Country football folk – “I love ‘em; they don’t take any bullshine off anyone” – which means that despite Wolves’ handsome lead and goal-packed football, they will be preparing themselves for disappointment. Just in case.

But he reckons McCarthy’s team is built to last the pace.

“They’ve got legs, pace, youth, enough experience, enough physique. And they’ve got goals. They’ve got goals. It would be a terrible body blow if they didn’t go up from this position, it would make next season very difficult for them again.

“I like Mick, always have done. He’s dour with that little bit of humour. You have to understand and maybe you need to come from where we do – I’m from Scunthorpe and he’s from Barnsley – to get it.

“But I’ve always liked him as a bloke and last year, when things were not so clever and you heard people wanting him moved on, I’m was so pleased they didn’t.

“That would have been falling into the traps of the past and and the same pitfalls as so many other clubs.”

Some 13 years on from his Molineux exit, that last point is delivered with feeling. The bitterness he felt when Wolves ejected him under pressure from a disgruntled and frustrated fan base has long since dissipated but the disappointment still scars him.

For those unfamiliar with Taylor’s Wolves career, it was his first club posting after his ill-fated England managerial career and he longed for the chance to re-establish himself as the top club manager he had proved himself to be with Villa.

But after one full season, which ended with defeat to Bolton in the 1995 play-offs, he was sacked – sorry, invited to resign – in the first months of the next campaign when Wolves were struggling.

“I’m so pleased to see the way they are going about things now,” says Taylor, and there is genuine affection in his voice.

“I was part of spending Sir Jack’s money, part of the group of people who were so sorry we didn’t deliver what we should have delivered.

“But I will always feel that managers need at least three years to build their teams, which is why I am so pleased Wolves have stuck with Mick.

“My first season I spent learning about the players, which ones were on-side and which ones weren’t. From that you make your decisions.

“We finished fourth, the club’s highest place for 14 years if I remember, but of course the play-offs were such an immense disappointment it was difficult to lift everyone for the following season.

“It hit everyone so hard although I still felt we were in the building process. I had a 13-year-old Robbie Keane sat in my office; I had the plans for the training ground there – we were building.

“But we were 14th or 15th with a dodgy record and I was asked to resign. I was so, so disappointed. I’m old school. I was brought up on Wolves. For me to have my photo taken with Stan Cullis on one side and Billy Wright the other? You cannot imagine how much that meant to me.

“Wolves fans were hungry for promotion but I had just come out of the England situation – do they seriously imagine anyone was hungrier than me? God, how much did I want to get promoted. There will always be a special place in my heart.”

And he believes that the training ground he played such an integral part in planning all those years ago will be much appreciated by the current manager.

“I can look back on it now and realise it wasn’t always easy playing at Molineux,” he says. “Sir Jack Hayward was a wonderful benefactor for the club and did so much to rebuild it but we were always struggling because of our horrible training facilities.

“From Monday to Friday, we would be training in crap conditions and then be expected on Saturday to turn up at this wonderful stadium with all the history and expectation there, the fans all thinking ‘well come on then, let’s see it’ and I don’t think the players could handle it.

“But if you can get through that period, which unfortunately I didn’t, then you have got something special and I think Mick is there now.”

If they do make it, then he hopes both the club and its fanatical supporters will realise just how much the world has moved on.

“It is very difficult to stay up there – but that is for the future,” Taylor adds.

“I hope Wolves and the supporters will learn from the mistakes of so many who have gone before them, over-stretched themselves, and ended up in even bigger trouble than when they started. My old club Watford did just that after I left the second time.

“It may be that Wolves will have to accept that they will be a ‘yo-yo’ club for a time. But so were Bolton – until eventually, they got themselves established. So can Wolves.”