It must be quality over quantity now

Wolves blogger Nathan Lloyd believes the emphasis will be on quality rather then quantity next season as the squad is cut in line with new Premier League rules.

There were many who doubted it could be done - Danny Baker, Piers Morgan, Adrian Durham and our very own JIWAL amongst them.

So, pah! Well done to manager Mick McCarthy and everybody else at Wolves for achieving Premier League survival and proving these sceptics wrong.

Was I one of these doubters? Well at the beginning of this season I felt we could stave off relegation, given the teams in the mini-league that we were likely to be competing with.

But, by the start of December, we were probably at our lowest ebb this season with a miserly 10 points from 14 games and with only Portsmouth below us in the league.

I certainly wasn't alone at that point in questioning the manager's tactics in persisting with a 4-4-2 formation and an out of sorts Sylvan Ebanks-Blake.

But a- thunderbolt from Nenad Milijas against Bolton and a superb performance away at Tottenham meant Wolves recorded back-to-back wins for the first and only time this season to get our campaign back on track.

Or so we thought. The ridiculous argument about squad rotation in defeat at Manchester United took centre stage as Mick criminally decided to choose his own team, the rogue.

The fact that five of that starting eleven at Old Trafford will probably be on the team sheet against Pompey on Saturday seems to have been conveniently forgotten by the valetudinarians who run the Premier League.

But, that debacle aside, our season was beginning to pick up and after bedding in the 4-5-1 formation in January we completed the double over Spurs in February, with my vote for Wolves goal of the season from David Jones.

A fantastic March followed with victories over Burnley, West Ham and a point against Villa. April has been all about digging in and getting over that line, unfortunately at the expense of the entertainment factor, but I think we can all live with that.

Pompey and Sunderland are our final games of the season and we have a chance to finish as high as 14th.

With £750,000 on offer for every league placing, as I touched upon in my last blog, now isn't the time for experimenting with fringe players.

But what are your expectations for our tricky second season?

Our squad of 40 will have to be reduced to 25 to come in line with next season's ruling, which obviously means we will be saying goodbye to a lot of players after the Sunderland game.

There won't be room for passengers like Andrew Surman, Stefan Maierhofer, Matt Hill or George Friend and it also means that any academy players making the step up must play a bigger part.

The speculation has already begun about which players are targets, but because of the World Cup we probably won't see anybody coming in the first month of the transfer window.

One name seems to be dominating the conjecture at the moment and that is the potential home coming of one Robert David Keane.

Robbie still remains the most talented player I have seen pull on a Wolves shirt, but I doubt whether the pull of our tricky second season in the top-flight will be enough to lure him back.

The Tottenham striker will also be 30 by the time the new season rolls into town, has lost a yard of pace and would command a salary far higher than anybody else at the club.

But forget all that, if we could get him in, what a massive signing of intent and a huge morale boost for everybody at the club it would be.

I'm sure we wouldn't be first in line for his services and he knows he could probably stay up in Scotland and look like a world beater.

I also know we probably had the same 'Robbie Keane' debate last season, but this time it's different. Robbie wouldn't now walk into half the top flight teams in England like he used to be able to. So this time around Wolves might seem like a real viable option.

If we could sign four players to make a difference and fit in next season's squad, my four would currently be Pompey left-back Nadir Belhadj, Villa defender Curtis Davies, Spurs midfielder Jamie O'Hara and Keane.

That would mean losing as many as 20 from of our current squad, which actually isn't that difficult when you look at the list of players at the club. I counted 19 we could lose straight away, but perhaps that's just me being a malevolent blogger.

But would you like to see leave and who would you keep?

Onto tomorrow's game at Pompey and have you got your fancy dress sorted yet? I had an e-mail from Vicky Lawton this week requesting that Wolves fans dress up as Wizards in tribute to Mick our very own Merlin. So, pointy hats and cloaks at the ready then!

I did have a ticket with all the corporate trimmings for this weekend's game, but unfortunately - or fortuitously if the other half is reading – I will be 400 miles away at a wedding in the South West of Scotland.

I doubt fancy dress would be the order of the day at the wedding; I would hate to take the attention away from the bride as everyone asks who the nutter is in the corner in a pointy hat and Sportingbet.com plastered on his shirt!

But I am sure it will be a fantastic day for Wolves fans and Mick will probably be casting an eye over a few of the opposition players, the majority of which will probably be leaving in the summer.

I hope our fans don't storm the Fratton Park pitch at the end of the game. Those Pompey fans have suffered enough without us ramming our success down their throats.

You'll probably know I wasn't a big fan of the pitch invasion after the Blackburn game, despite some fans suggesting I planted the seed for the invasion in my last blog!

But in hindsight I know that we haven't had much to shout about in our recent history so, apart a few kids ripping up handfuls of the Molineux pitch as a souvenir and the moronic fisty cuffs outside after the game, no real harm was done.

It also means that it is unlikely we will see it repeated after the Sunderland game, which will make the end of season stuff run a bit smoother than last year!

I've got a sneaky feeling that the artist still known as Jody Craddock could just pip Kevin Doyle to the Player of the Season award, but then I thought that Sylvan would walk it last season, so what do I know?

Enjoy your Bank Holiday weekend and I'll be back next week with my own end of season bloggers awards.

Up the Wolves!