It has been a strange few days but turned it out nice in the end for Wolves blogger Nathan Lloyd ahead of the trip to Stoke.

I mentioned earlier in the week in my fan’s analysis how we suffered from yet another useless referring performance, this time courtesy of referee Peter Walton.

I’m getting a bit bored at berating the blinkered officials and the lack of decisions that seem to be coming our way, so let’s instead dwell on what was an excellent Wolves performance against Villa.

The Wolves players performed admirably against a team who were made to look clumsy at times by our energy and pace.

The finest exponent of them all was Karl Henry, who superbly shackled the Villa and kept it beautifully simple with his distribution.

I’m not sure Karl will be bound for South Africa next summer, but in my opinion he has been our best and most consistent player this season and he’ll no doubt be fired up for the tricky trip to the Britannia Stadium on Saturday to face his old team Stoke.

Every lazy pundit and journalist across the country seems to roll out the same old tired cliches when they are discussing the merits of the Potters’ Premier League exploits – long ball, long throw, direct play, etc.

I don’t think they play like a Sunday league team, and anybody who watched the goal on Saturday against Tottenham which was passed patiently and incisively from back to front will hopefully share this opinion.

Their manager Tony Pulis has put together an intimidating set of big, powerful players who can also play a bit.

Their front two of James Beattie and Ricardo Fuller will cause any defence a problem, but they may find it tough on Saturday to make an impact against our defenders Christophe Berra and Jody Craddock.

Along with Henry and Chris Iwelumo, Jody will be returning to face the team he once ridiculously played for, which was surely Mick’s biggest ever clanger as Wolves boss.

We should all be thankful that Craddock never took up Tony Pullis’s offer of a Stoke contract as, for me, his return to the side last season was one of the fundamental reasons we ended the campaign as champions.

I don’t think Mick will, or should drop any of the personnel from Saturday’s game against Villa.

It will be interesting though to see if both Iwelumo and the returning Stefan Maierhofer make the bench and if there is a place on there for Andy Keogh at all.

How will Stoke feel going into the game?

They had that fantastic win against Spurs last weekend in the league and then they were annihilated in the League Cup in midweek against Pompey, albeit with a vastly changed starting 11.

The Stoke fans inside the Britannia Stadium – which again is looking impenetrable – were recorded as the loudest in the top-flight last season, so the 3,000 travelling Wolves army will have to be in fine voice to drown out the dreadful drones of Delilah.

It’s going to be a tough ask, but us fans have been surprised before on our travels and if we can go and grab any points from the Potteries, it would be a fantastic return.

Enjoy the game on Saturday and wouldn’t it be just fantastic if Jody, Karl or big Chris popped up with the winning goal!

So, which questions did I ask Wolves manager Mick McCarthy when I met him before the Villa game on Saturday? Well, in a nutshell, I didn’t get to ask him a thing.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, I’d won a competition with Sportingbet.com to attend the Villa game and meet Mick before kick-off.

Unfortunately, the organisers vetoed it as they saw me as a journalist and didn’t feel it was in the spirit of the competition.

So, just after a smashing bit of brunch in the sponsor’s lounge, the other nine lucky competition winners stood up and walked down to the manager’s office for a quick chat with the great eagle himself, leaving me to tuck into another pastry and play billy-no-mates!

Ah well. I was a tad disappointed as I’m certainly no journalist, just a passionate fan who types up a blog in his office at home.

But I didn’t want to take away from the other competition winners’ experience.

Anyway, as you can see from the picture above, I got to meet Bully and we had a interesting chat about our Express & Star columns.

And I was only going to ask Mick if he preferred nuggets or chips!

Apart from missing out on the chance to meet our manager, it was a cracking day all round and I’d just like to thank Gareth and Sportingbet.com for their excellent hospitality.

Up the Wolves!