'Dirty' Wolves go into Fulham battle
Wolves columnist John Lalley warns his club have more pressing things to worry about than their 'dirty' tag the last time they played Fulham.
Wolves columnist John Lalley warns his club have more pressing things to worry about than their 'dirty' tag the last time they played Fulham.
No team has won fewer away games in the Premier League than Fulham.
Their solitary victory at Stoke has, however, been offset by their eight draws on the road and the fact that they have conceded a meagre 19 goals in sixteen matches away from Craven Cottage.
Whatever the statistics suggest, Wolves will not have it easy this Saturday but it is a match that we simply have to win if we are to regain any of the momentum we surrendered against Newcastle and Everton.
Usually, at this time of year, Fulham are routinely winding down for the summer, safe in the knowledge that mid-table security has been secured yet again on the strength of a formidable home record. This time around, there might just be more of an edge to this particular fixture.
It was at the Cottage back in early September that we endured the first of the soon to be depressingly recurring late concessions that have cost us so dearly all season.
It was our first game after the Match of The Day hatchet-job on Wolves highlighting the competitive side of our game against Newcastle, which the programme presented as gratuitous brutality with Joey Barton risibly cast in the role of victim.
Overnight, Wolves were branded as 'dirty' with the tabloid press quick to pick up the baton offered by their television colleagues.
The smear campaign was from the outset a farce proved by the short-lived duration of the hot air that was spouted.
Not a peep has been uttered since suggesting that Wolves are a bunch of savages and little wonder. Once a hint of sanity prevailed, the entire label of over-aggression on our part evaporated and disappeared for the non-story it always had been.
But seven days after Newcastle visited Molineux, the crazy rumblings were at their height and, inevitably, when Bobby Zamora was stretchered off badly injured, the howling condemnation of Wolves reached a crescendo.
Karl Henry's challenge on the luckless Zamora was legitimate, not remotely reckless, but why let reality derail a rumbling bandwagon?
Anyway, Fulham usually ranks as one of the most pleasant away trips on the circuit.
A staid, civilised and old-fashioned place alongside the river with an innate charm, a throwback to the days when football didn't take itself quite so seriously and the game was played without a permanent snarl on its face.
But, on this afternoon, the antique stirred and rocked with resentful indignation, influenced by the diet of nonsense fed to them the week before.
Even the venerable old main stand, with its vintage wooden seats and demure railway station brickwork, waded in with raucous vilification suggesting that the name Wolves was a disgrace to the Premier League.
We were branded as a mob of psychotic hoodlums intent on survival by savagery. Al Capone would have got a fairer hearing!
Late on, a rattled Christophe Berra needlessly got himself sent off, Wolves imploded to the delight of the home crowd who strongly believed that justice had prevailed and that sanity had returned to the capital.
Post match, Fulham captain Danny Murphy disparaged the Wolves approach ignoring the fact that he was the culprit himself of the worst tackle in the entire game.
Seven days later, frightened to make a tackle, Wolves conceded late to lose at Tottenham and then repeated the frailty to let Villa off the hook at Molineux.
By now, confused and apprehensive we didn't know whether to stick or twist, so when Karl Henry flew into a remarkably foolish lunge next up at Wigan and saw red, our misery was complete.
After a promising start, our season had been needlessly destabilised and we are still paying for it six months down the line. Similar inhibitions returned to scupper us in the two capitulations against Newcastle and Everton.
But indifferent results for our companions in strife last Saturday still present us with a genuine chance to determine our own destiny.
The hesitancy of the last two performances could not have surfaced at a worse time for Wolves. Saturday's game will surely indicate whether we really are in the business of reasserting our survival scrap or, God forbid, we finally have caved in under the strain.
The likes of Zamora and Murphy may have their own agendas after events in London earlier on this season, but Wolves will surely need no extra incentive.
All the same, giving just a thought to those derisive September chants about us being a disgrace to the Premier League could spur us on a little.
Turning up at Craven Cottage next season and listening to more of the same sounds just fine to me!
