Wolves legend Steve Bull gives it to you straight in his weekly column and gives the Albion fans a few home truths while looking to the gold and black’s trip to Stoke.

We might only have taken a point against Villa last Saturday, and not all three, but I was still delighted by what I saw. Let’s not forget, our ‘friends’ from up the road arrived at Molineux having just beaten Chelsea and went back to Birmingham delighted to have returned with so much as a point.

So, yes, a draw wasn’t a bad result for us. But the more I think about that game, the more I think that we could have won it.

Had the referee awarded us that blatant penalty in the first-half, the result could have been very different. I know the officials have got a hard job to do but, as it was, the poor old ref seemed to realise he had made a mistake early on and then gave us every decision going, including another penalty, to try and make up for it.

I did like the way Sylvan Ebanks-Blake took his spot-kick though – once I had watched it back on the TV replay that is. I couldn’t bear to actually watch the penalty being taken at the time. I turned my head away and hoped that I would hear a roar. He hit the shot with real venom, looking like a man determined to bag his first Premier League goal.

I hope now he can use that momentum to go off on a goalscoring run. The first one is always the most difficult to get, believe me.

Unlike Alan Shearer or Gary Lineker, my goal record doesn’t include an awful lot of penalties. I think I only ever took three professionally – scoring two and missing one – and I still have nightmares about the one that got away.

Because, logically, there is really no way a centre-forward should ever fail to score from 12 yards with the goalkeeper not allowed to move until the ball has been kicked.

But sometimes in the nerve-jangling seconds before the ref blows his whistle, the keeper can suddenly start to look enormous and the goal much smaller than usual!

I was lucky, I suppose, that we had Andy Thompson at Wolves, a brilliant penalty expert who loved taking them. My excuse always used to be that I was helping to share the goals around the side!

But back to the present day. I have said before in this column that, in order to be in with a real chance of making an impact this season, we have got to stop giving silly goals away. Maybe our manager Mick McCarthy and the boys have been reading it, because that is just what they have done.

I was impressed by the whole team performance on Saturday, from the goalkeeper right through to the strikers I thought it was spot-on. If we play like that every week we can cause a few stirs this season.

Stoke away has always been a tough fixture, though. In the years when I was playing, the Victoria Ground was tight and intimidating – so close to the fans that you could hear every word they were shouting at you.

I never had a problem putting the blinkers on and ignoring them, but other players found it difficult. Their new stadium retains the same atmosphere, but combines it with a really open and windy location where getting the ball down and passing it is often difficult.

Their manager Rony Pulis has taken maximum advantage of that fact down the years, which is why Stoke have got such a strong home record. Plus, in making sure that every ball-boy has a towel and pushing Rory Delap forward to take almost every available throw-in, they are able to turn every throw into the equivalent of a corner.

If I were Mick, I would be drilling into the team not to give any throw-ins away in their own half. It might not be pretty, but boot the ball forward or into touch in opposition half at every opportunity, because they won’t be able to score from there. Believe it or not, you can practice that type of thing in training during the week in the lead-up to playing a particular side.

One player who will have a special interest in playing well at the Britannia on Saturday will be Karl Henry. He started out there, despite being a Wolverhampton boy, before returning ‘home’ to Molineux three years ago.

He is one of the many Wolves players who really seems to have risen to the challenge of Premier League football, consistently playing so much better than he did a year ago.

And there’s nothing quite like visiting a former club to inspire you. I speak from personal experience because I always used to try especially hard at the Hawthorns.

Just in case there are any Albion fans reading this piece who don’t know the true story, I never chose to leave West Brom. I was sold for more or less nothing by Ron Saunders, for reasons best known to himself.

In fact, I had just got into the first team at the Hawthorns in 1986, had scored three goals in my first five games, and really fancied going on and making a name for myself, because I had enjoyed my time there as a youth team player.

But that chance was taken away from me and for the rest of my career I got nonsense and rubbish thrown at me by Albion fans, who didn’t seem to want to know what the truth was. It made me extra determined to play well and score against them every time that I lined up against the Baggies.

I hope Karl’s name will be on Saturday’s scoresheet, because I predict a 1-0 win to Wolves after a tight and scrappy game.

A point wouldn’t be a bad result because it would keep our unbeaten run going. But, if we play as well as we did against Villa, we will win.

BULLY BETS FOR THE WEEK: -

Stoke v Wolves will be a tight, scrappy game with very little free-flowing football. Despite the fact Stoke had a great result at Spurs, I fancy Wolves to nick it and 1-0 is a great price at 9/1 with Sportingbet.

The goal may well come from a set-piece, so I’ll also put a few bob on Christophe Berra to score at 33/1.

Go to sportingbet.com/wolves for more Wolves bets than anyone else and to win match tickets and money-can’t-buy experiences.