Bully Bites with Steve Bull

Wolves legend Steve Bull gives it to you straight in his weekly column and plots the way Villa could go down in Saturday's derby.

They might earn millions these days but take it from me, the Wolves players will still have been gutted on their coach journey back to Wolverhampton from Liverpool last Saturday.

To get so close to gaining three points away from home in the Premier League and then to lose two in the last few minutes will have been heart-breaking. Another certainty is that they won't have drowned their sorrows on the journey home in the way we used to 20 years ago - with cans of lager and plates full of fish and chips!

Jody Craddock must have been especially disappointed. He organised the defence so brilliantly, shed blood for the cause and yet still - somehow - ended up on the losing side.

The one and only lesson I hope Wolves will be able to take from their late disappointment at Everton is that it's no good defending excellently for 89 minutes if you concede in the 90th.

Taking a wider view – which I hope that Mick and the players might be able to do, now that the initial disappointment has worn off – the fact we are all so sorry not to have quite hung on for the win at Everton shows how far we've come.

Wolves may only have played nine matches in the Premier League so far this season, and we also might still be in the bottom six, but I've now seen more than enough to suggest we can compete this season.

I've also been heartened by the sight of several really good all-round team displays, rather than exceptional performances by just two or three, helped along by seven or eight journeymen. I think that many in the squad are starting to believe now that they really can perform at this level.

But they'll all need to be at the top of their games against Villa on Saturday because that's going to be a tough, tough match.

Villa have got two strikers in red-hot form and have a whole stack of other players ready to come forward and threaten danger at set-pieces. I'm sure Mick McCarthy and his coaches will be drilling into his central defenders, particularly, the need to not give cheap free-kicks away, around the penalty box.

Craddock and Ronald Zubar will both have been told all week, I'm certain, to stay on their feet and to not dive in when Villa's strikers run at them.

But if they play as well again as they did for the majority of the game at Goodison, then we might well be able to stop them from scoring.

In fact, this might be a particularly good time for Wolves to play them. Because, having just beaten Chelsea at home on Saturday, some of Villa's players might well arrive at Molineux thinking that all they have to do is turn up and they'll win. Let's hope so, because that attitude may cost them dear up against players like Kevin Doyle.

Last Saturday's opportunist goal at Everton proved again my opinion that Doyle may well become one of the best signings in the history of the club. It was very clever of Mick to buy a player who had already proved himself at this level. Take it from me, that finish at Goodison was really clever. He conned Everton's goalkeeper Tim Howard that he was going to chip him and then slid the ball underneath him. A brilliant finish – I'd have been proud of that one!

I scored a few goals for England to, which still give me a warm glow and for me that answers all the questions as to whether I could have ever made it at the top level.

Because I still found the net regularly at international standard, I don't doubt for a second – without being boastful – that I could have scored regularly in England's top division. After all, just look at what John Aldridge achieved at Oxford and then at Liverpool. If you can score goals, then you can score goals.

Which reminds me of an interesting story from Italia 90. Doug Ellis, the Villa's chairman, was out there with the FA and sidled up to me after one England training session and told me "you'll be playing for me next season, young man."

I was taken by surprise and replied "well, you know where I am. I only live up the road from you."

But, as it stands, they never came in for me. And I should know, because I never employed an agent. So, if they'd ever made me an offer, Villa would have had to have approached me, personally.

Even if they had, I'm still not sure I'd have signed for them. I was happy at Wolves, you see, and wondered whether it might ever get any better than playing football every week and scoring goals pretty often.

Even if Villa had offered me silly money, I was never in the game to make myself rich. I just wanted to play football and score goals. I might be writing this now as a millionaire if I'd ever had a 'megabucks' agent but I'm not sure that I'd be any happier. I always believed – and still do – in a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

The only real offer I ever received to tempt me away from Molineux came from 'Big Ron' Atkinson and Coventry. They offered me, at 32, a very good five-year contract and a crack at the Premier League. It was tempting but I thought that Wolves were a big enough club to overtake Coventry in the fullness of time.

It was just a shame that injury denied me the chance to help force Wanderers – and Graham Taylor – into the Premier League back then, where I'm certain that, together, we might have been able to have made a bit of a splash.

And history has proved me right that Wolves are a bigger club than Coventry...

BULLY TOP BETS FOR THE WEEK: -

Wolves are 13/5 to beat Villa with Sportingbet, which are not bad odds are they? I'm sure they'll have been influenced by Villa beating Chelsea 2-1.

But at very nearly 3/1 in a two-horse race, it's got to be well worth putting a small bet on Wolves to win.

Go to sportingbet.com/wolves for more Wolves bets than anyone else and to win match tickets and money-can't-buy experiences.