Wolves’ Sporting Star columnist John Lalley reflects on the unlikely emergence of another Molineux hero this season in goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann.

Fortunes change rapidly in football, as Wolves have proved with a four game unbeaten sequence which might just prove to be the defining shift in our entire season.

Only a month back, a disappointing blank at Bolton left room for wild pessimism with furious grumbling about our failure to add some players with Premier League experience to our young squad.

The January window had closed, with many fans distinctly unimpressed that all we had done to boost our survival hopes was to loan a couple of long shots from the backwaters of Belgium.

The Molineux hierarchy received consistent reminders of their failure to deliver on the pre-season pledge to recruit players with the necessary Premier League experience, as it had been nothing but hot air.

But there had indeed been one recruit who fitted the category absolutely admirably, it just took the first four months of the season before anyone appeared to realise.

Goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann must qualify as just about the unlikeliest hero of the season. Of all the summer transfer business conducted by the club, some of doubtful pedigree it has to be said, the arrival of the American from Reading created the least interest.

The 37-year-old duly engaged in the well rehearsed ritual of reciting the expected call to arms, of not being here to make up the numbers and being determined to challenge for a first-team place.

We listened with minimal interest, wondered why the manager had signed the guy and speculated that he might play a couple of Carling cup matches, sit on the bench a lot and have the odd kick about with the reserves at Telford, then drift off in his middle age at the season’s end with a few quid to precipitate his retirement.

We then avidly turned our anticipation to the important signings to come to blast a significant hole in the £30million war chest promised by Steve Morgan. No, the arrival of a free transfer veteran Yank was small beer – or so we thought!

After all, just a few months previously, Wolves fans had not been slow to concur that the triumvirate of Wayne Hennessey, Carl Ikeme and a recuperating Matt Murray represented just about the most impressive array of goalkeeping talent on the books of any club in the country.

Murray, of course, was soon to be revisited by the freakish curse that has blighted what surely would have been a glittering career. Ikeme, himself no stranger to injury had taken his belated chance last season after Hennessey was suspended after being sent off at Preston.

During his brief tenure, Ikeme confirmed Murray’s assessment that he was ‘an awesome keeper’ with a string of superb displays to confine Hennessey to the bench. In the outstanding win at Sheffield United Ikeme was indeed ‘awesome,’ so good in fact that the frustrated Blades’ forwards gave him such a fearful battering that he was stretchered off the field.

Hennessey saw out the promotion campaign and ensconced as first choice must have expected to prove himself worthy of a place at the highest level. His confidence did seem positively restored until his November nightmare at Chelsea.

Hahnemann then simply had to be given his chance and, from the outset, he has responded superbly. With Wolves reverting to a more containing set-up, he has excelled with his overall consistency and assurance, inspiring increased levels of confidence in the players in front of him.

You simply cannot over-estimate the influence he has exerted on the team. On Saturday against Everton, he oozed authority and his last gasp intervention in stoppage time helped save a point that could prove to be crucial.

Unlikely as it may have appeared in pre-season, Hahnemann is as vital to our operation now as Kevin Doyle, our other recruit from Reading, even though he cost us nothing in comparison to the record fee we paid for Doyle. It has been a remarkable change of fortune.

All of which leaves a frustrated Hennessey looking back on a season of stifled progress. With Hahnemann at 37 on the brink of clinching a deserved contract extension, the Welsh international faces the unappealing prospect of beginning next season as second choice.

But the challenge should act as a stimulus. From the moment I saw Hennessey in our academy, I’ve never deviated from the opinion that he is destined for a successful career at the top of the game.

His fortunes can change too; he has to back his undoubted ability and prove again just how talented he really is. It’s easy to forget that he is still a very young man; time really is on his side.

As for Hahnemann, I doubt he worries too much about swings in fortune, any player happy with a shirt number 13 as he is, clearly doesn’t bother himself with superstition.

He has been fantastic these last twenty odd games and, like the rest of us, has cause for guarded optimism that we will enjoy another tilt at this league next season.