Wolves legend Bert Williams blasts overpaid stars after relegation
Wolves legend Bert Williams today condemned the club's relegation as "horrendous" and laid the blame with their over-paid players.
Relegation to League One was confirmed by Saturday's 2-0 defeat at Brighton, which sealed an unwanted slice of history as Wolves became the first English club to twice fall from the first to the third tiers in successive seasons, writes Tim Nash.
Williams, England's oldest living international at 93, starred for the club in the glory years, making 420 appearances for Wolves, winning the League and the FA Cup.
Passing on his comments via his carer, he said: "This is a terrible blow – unbelievable. This club has been going nowhere for several years but the last two seasons have been horrendous.
"I hope the shortcomings of our players are sorted out very quickly.
"I feel so sad for all the loyal fans who have subsidised the club for many years.
"There have been some dreadful displays on the pitch; players in my day after such a poor display would have been afraid to go into the changing room.
"We have players with baggage on big wages; Stan Cullis would never have allowed this to happen.
"If he was thinking of signing a player he had him well vetted by his scouts first."
Bert blamed the players' poor performances for the sharp decline.
"We have too many playing for our money and not for the club," he said. "In my day we played for pride and passion and we would have gladly played for nothing just to play for the Wolves.
"I never heard money mentioned once in our dressing room.
"My top wage was £15-a-week during the playing season and it dropped to £12 in the summer months – even Billy Wright, the captain of England, was on the same wages.
"In the 1940s and 1950s Wolves were not only the best team in the country, we were the best team in the world and now we're facing life in the old third division."
Williams, who lives in Shifnal, believes the club hasn't learned from the mistakes of the mid-1980s – when they dropped from Division One to Division Four in successive seasons – after splashing out £20m on the new Stan Cullis Stand.
"We are in this sad position because we never learned from our mistakes in the past," he added.
"We went down to the fourth division in the 1980s because we built the John Ireland Stand before we built our team to play in front of it and now we've done the same again."
