Wolves’ search for a manager has done nothing for their image or indeed their immediate chances of staying up, writes Martin Swain

It was difficult to imagine that things could get any worse for Wolves as those players trooped off the pitch at the final whistle of their last game.

Beaten at home by the dreaded rivals from across the fence. Not just beaten, of course, but humiliated. And back in the bottom three.

But everything that has happened since then has been the equal of the worst moments Mick McCarthy’s floundering team have experienced this season.

The culprits are not the players obviously; they have not kicked a ball in anger since that crushing 5-1 defeat.

No this time, it’s the suits who are in the firing line with their two most visible characters, owner Steve Morgan and chief executive Jez Moxey, knowing only too well their performance will be the subject of some ferocious criticism.

When McCarthy was sacked – a decision that the majority of Wolves fans accepted and greeted as a kind of  reluctant necessity – it was confidently imagined and even predicted within the hierarchy that his replacement would be swiftly installed.

Since then, the club has been exposed as having a leadership which has been indecisive and dithering, uncertain and – in the case of one candidate in particular – guilty of conduct unbecoming.

This is not how Wolves should want to do business and the main men know only too well if boardroom performances were judged by a league table, they too would be in the bottom three right now.

From Alan Curbishley to Neil Warnock to Steve Bruce to Brian McDermott to Curbishley to Bruce and now David Jones and then Walter Smith . . . whoever does end up with the challenge of trying to spare the club from relegation in the next 13 games is going to struggle to convince himself, his players and the fans that he was anything other than a kind of Hobson’s Choice.

That Smith, a wise old owl and safe pair of hands even if he moves at the pace and carries the bearing of a particularly slow episode of ‘Morse’, has rejected the club’s advance is another punishing blow to Molineux’s esteem.

It has followed the rejection by Curbishley, not once but twice.

It has followed the club being used fairly blatantly by some ambitious Championship thrusters to get some bargaining power in their contract negotiations. It has followed some fairly undignified treatment of the one man who has refused to go anywhere – Bruce.

Although Wolves fans have given a distinctly negative response to the prospect of the axed Sunderland boss pitching up at the Molineux, I am sure they would agree that he deserves a little more respect and courtesy than has been surprisingly abandoned by the Molineux hierarchy.

Bruce has been left dangling in the wind, the back-stop candidate which the club is too scared to appoint because of all the negativity his name has attracted from the online community of fans. Fair enough. But who’s running the club – the supporters or the directors?

It may be Bruce is not the man for the job but if Morgan and his directors thought he was, they should have been strong enough to make the call and not fret about the public’s reaction.

Otherwise Alan Pardew wouldn’t currently be working the oracle at Newcastle or it would be plain Alex Ferguson  still, the great man’s blood having been demanded by supporters long before he won his first trophy.

But the fate of Bruce has been typical of this whole, messy, shambolic affair for Wolves which has confirmed that on sacking McCarthy, Morgan was guilty of football’s cardinal sin – not truly knowing what you wanted to put in place. Of course, every club is entitled to draw up a shortlist and weave their way through two or three candidates before settling on the chosen one. But this job hunt has carried none of that certainty of purpose.

This job hunt has seen Wolves flapping like a fish on the sand, veering wildly from 13-game three-month projects to long-range projections, from proven and experienced hands to the young and up-and-coming.

Smith has turned down the job because he clearly has misgivings about the equation between what he is expected to achieve, the tools he will be given to reach for that and the risk it carries to his sound reputation.

“There are few people in the game with his experience, knowledge and technical ability,”Ferguson famously once said of Smith and how Wolves could have done with those qualities now.

Smith has reached legendary status in his homeland of Scotland and with a managerial career possessing so many notable achievements, there are many north of the border who expect him to follow his great friend at Old Trafford down the road to a knighthood.

It’s a wonder he has not yet received honours from Her Majesty for his services to sport. His coaching credentials were soon apparent, having led the Scotland youth team 1982 European Youth Championship and he was to later work with the under-21s and the full side at the 1986 world Cup alongside his friend Ferguson.

He and Graeme Souness won three league titles together at Rangers, before Smith stepped into the big chair and started off another six title wins a row to clinch the famous nine in succession for Rangers, one of the club’s proudest claims in the Old Firm duel.

An extraordinary team ethic and passion for winning, combined with iconic signings like Brian Laudrup and Paul Gascoigne was Smith’s legacy as he left the Gers in 1997 having lost out on ten-in-a-row to Celtic.

Smith made the move south to Everton to replace Howard Kendall in 1998, but his time at Goodison Park wasn’t as successful –  Everton finished in the bottom half of the table for three consecutive seasons.  But when his country came calling in December of 2004 to rescue Scotland from the Berti Vogts era, Smith revived his nation’s fortunes, its world ranking improving by 70 places.

With nine SPL titles, five Scottish Cups and five Scottish League Cups Smith is right up there with Bill Struth as the greatest manager Rangers have ever had – it was these credentials which brought a panicking Wolves to his door.

Smith keeps himself to himself and leads a very private life.

He has much respect in the game and carries himself with much dignity – he would not have enjoyed news of his proximity to the Wolves vacancy breaking into the public domain. Neither would he have enjoyed the fact that his rejection of the offer has heaped more embarrassment on his prospective employers.

Chief executive Moxey was perhaps the most fretful about the timing of McCarthy’s sacking but nothing could have prepared him for the way Wolves have been bounced from pillar to post in seeking a replacement in this wretched hunt for a manager.

It is, of course, made a post all the more difficult to sell because of what will be taken on by the new man whoever it may be.

A team with shattered confidence and plunging headlong, it would seem, back into the Championship.

Neither is it a team blessed with dormant ability, one which can be revived by a fresh face at the top, a tweak of the personnel and the unleashing of some talent ignored by the previous manager.

Wolves are what they are and you pretty much see it every week – a toiling team and at their best when they can raise their tempo to disrupt the opposition.

Smith would have had the experience and know-how to organise the side more efficiently and restore some of that confidence.

But the Wolves job is not an easy monster to take on which is why so many candidates are worried about risking the potential stain on their CV in the event of a relegation.

It is a monster still to be pacified.