Interview: Globetrotter Barry Douglas eyes his best adventure yet with Wolves

Cruzerio to Estoril to Al-Hilal to Wolves (Leo Bonatini) isn’t exactly a well-trodden road. In fact Porto to Wolves (Ruben Neves and Willy Boly) or Monaco to Wolves (Ivan Cavaleiro and Ruben Vinagre) would both be considered highly unusual until a year ago.

But Queen’s Park to Dundee United to Legia Warsaw to Konyaspor to Wolves surely tops the lot.

That’s the unorthodox career history of the club’s new Scottish left back Barry Douglas, who after four years of overseas adventures is hoping his latest one will be the most exciting yet.

“There’s an element of bravery but you just need to be open minded,” Douglas, who swapped Scotland for Poland in 2013 and then moved to Konyaspor in southern Turkey 18 months ago, said.

“The opportunity came to go to Lech Poznan, I didn’t know much about it, I went over and saw the place for myself and it looked exciting so I was like yeah, why not, I’ve got nothing to lose.

“I went over and did well and the opportunity came to go to Turkey.

“At that point I was probably a lot more open minded to go anywhere, so we went and embraced it and enjoyed it.

“Everyone’s different. The good thing is I have my wife who was in the same boat as me and happy to go away and see different places and experience different cultures and languages.

“That’s why we were happy and successful and didn’t really miss home as such.

“It was more than just football, it was a chance to go and see parts of the world that you’d never see.

“It’s definitely opened my eyes. It’s a big world out there, not just limited to Britain.

“I’ve no regrets, I loved my time away. It’s made me grow as a person as much as it has playing football.

“I think it’s improved me as a footballer because there are so many different aspects of the game you see, different points of view, different managers. Nowhere is the same.

“I’ve taken it all on board and it gives me a bit more ammunition, you could say.

“Being back here is a new adventure again, a new manager, new ideas. We’ll see. Hopefully it all goes well.”

The early signs for both Wolves and Douglas are promising.

The 27-year-old, whose overseas travails certainly haven’t weakened his thick Scottish accent, looks to be one of the first names on Nuno Espirito Santo’s team sheet having impressed during pre-season and on his debut against Middlesbrough on Saturday.

“I’m finding my feet well,” he added. “It’s a good group of boys so it’s been easy to adapt into the dressing room.

“It probably makes it easier to settle because so many of the guys are in the same boat.

“Everyone’s helping each other. No one’s feeling left out, there’s always help on hand.

“It’s exciting times to be at Wolves. They’ve clearly showed they have big ambition which as a player is great because we need to make those ambitions a reality.

“It gives us big targets to hit. We’ll take it one game at a time, we won’t get carried away.

“It’s everyone’s dream to play at the highest level possible and there’s no better league than the English Premier League.

“We won’t get ahead of ourselves, it’s going to be a tough season with a lot of good teams.

“Hopefully come next summer we’ll be speaking differently.”

Douglas has already enjoyed a varied career which has included a Polish League title, a Turkish Cup and European football. But he hopes the best is yet to come.

The left back has ambitions to play for his country and of course be in the top flight next season with Wolves.

The season couldn’t have got off to a better start after Saturday’s 1-0 win over promotion favourites Middlesbrough at Molineux.

What was telling after the game was that Nuno, while obviously pleased with the victory, had a few criticisms of the performance.

Douglas believes that both he and the team can certainly make improvements.

He said: “I was pleased with my performance but I’ll look back at it and see the things I can improve. One is my corners because they were terrible!

“But the most important thing was three points for the team.

“It was a great atmosphere, hopefully we can keep the stadium full. Obviously it helps the players to know you’ve got that backing behind you.

“We can play much better. The first half we played really well, it was just maintaining that throughout the whole game.

“The second half we dropped off a bit and invited pressure onto ourselves, which again we can take positives from because we showed we can deal with the pressure.

“We’re going to be an aggressive side, keeping the ball, lots of possession, so there are little things we’ll work on in training and hopefully we can transcend that in the match.”

The Championship is clearly the priority but Wolves will hope to continue with their winning ways in the renamed Carabao Cup tonight.

After successive home wins – and clean sheets – against Leicester and Middlesbrough they’ll look to make it three in a row at Molineux.

“We want to keep the momentum going,” Douglas added.. The thing the manager’s trying to instil in us is that winning mentality, regardless of who you’re playing.

“This will be no easy match. The guys will treat it like a normal game, we’ll focus and prepare and hopefully get the win.

“It’s good. There are lot of positives happening right now.”