Wolves blog: Taking the Mick

Whilst sitting and watching the FA Cup Final a couple of years ago in a bar on a lad's weekend away, one of our gang Pete decided it would be hilarious to stick his finger in my ear.

My reaction was to recoil like someone had stuck a hot knitting needle in my lug 'ole, so I turned round and delivered a punch of Herculean proportions to his shoulder.

It was a complete over-reaction to what was just a bit of tomfoolery and, of course, I was sincerely apologetic.

So although I can understand Mick's initial shock at being grappled by an unidentified flying person at the end of the Barnsley game, once he had realised the fan was on his side, why did he continue with his grandad style fighting?

That one ridiculous scene at Oakwell, for me sums up Mick's complete disrespect of Wolves fans and their opinions.

We often hear Mick describe Wolves fans as nuggets or numpties, but rarely as the greatest fans in the land or the 12th man.

Perhaps these are just over used footballing cliches, but Mick will need the fan's onside more than ever next season as we try and overcome that tricky first Premier League season.

He could do himself a big favour and try harder in the pursuit to get the fans onside rather than continuing his one man crusade.

Anyway, now is probably the wrong time of the season to be getting bogged down in any negativity.

As a fellow Nathan said to me at work, this kind of success just doesn't happen to Wolves. To go into the final game of the season promoted with a chance to hit 90 points in the league is almost like a fairytale and an incredible achievement.

Of course it would be nice to go out on a high on Sunday, but all thoughts are now on next season and which personnel we could add to a squad arguably already stronger than our one and only venture into the Premiership in 2003.

I joked last time of a list of 50 potential targets I had drawn up, a joke missed by a couple of people. I'm not quite that sad, well not quite.

Perhaps it is slightly obvious, but I think Wolves targets will be the best the Championship currently has to offer and those players already in the Premiership, but struggling to get into the starting XI.

I think Michael Mancienne is unfortunately a non-starter as in the summer he could find himself torn between the cultural metropolis of Madrid, shopping at Armani, Chanel and Versace - or the city of Wolverhampton with its glorious Mander Centre, which seems to be slowly metamorphosing into one giant pound shop.

The experience of Liverpool defender Sami Hyypia would probably be a useful acquisition, but at 35 years old and alongside Christophe Berra it would leave us woefullyexposed for pace.

The spine of the team will be where Mick will need to get it right.

I like the rumour of Steve Sidwell joining in the summer, but he will be on a good wage at Villa and we already know that although salaries on offer at Wolves will be the highest they have ever been, Steve Morgan and Jez Moxey won't be venturing into silly territory.

If we want to avoid the fate of our Black Country neighbours, this season, I would have thought that Mr Morgan will need to invest at least £30million and offer wages at least on a par with some of the other top flight clubs in the bottom half.

Stoke may have wasted £10 million on signing Dave Kitson and Seyi Olofinjana, but they also spent another £20 million on successful transfers such as James Beattie, Matthew Etherington, Danny Higginbotham and Ibrahima Sonko.

They have taken a gamble and it at the moment it looks like it has paid off.

As demonstrated in the record breaking crossbar challenge on Soccer AM last Saturday, this current Wolves team appear to have a real bond and a fantastic team spirit.

So it will be essential in the summer to find that fine balance between injecting some new blood into the team to raise the quality, but not to the detriment of the fine team spirit.

I'm chuffed for our skipper Jody Craddock on his new contract, just reward for coming in towards the end of the season and shoring up a leaky defence.

I'm not keen on any of our loan players staying after Sunday and I'm sure there will be plenty more who will be waving at the stands for the last time come 3pm.

Second place in the league will be an interesting battle on Saturday. Birmingham had it in their grasp and then two fantastic Preston strikes put there promotion party on hold.

It was amazing to see that only a couple of hundred people had stayed behind at St Andrews to applaud the players on the end of season lap of honour.

Even at the conclusion of some of the most miserable seasons at Molineux, there were always a decent number who had stayed behind to say thank you to the players and staff.

Sunday will be a fantastic occasion. The result is almost immaterial. From the vibes I have from the fans, the Molineux pitch will not be ventured on for a second time and I don't think anybody will dare mess with El McCarthy again!

Let's hope we are saying a fond farewell to a Championship league and that we don't have to revisit it for many years to come.

Have a cracking weekend.