Total football Wolves and a memorable first double over Tottenham in six long decades

A total of 18 passes whilst keeping possession, with only one outfield player and goalkeeper not getting a touch.

All finished off with a lovely pinpoint cross and neat volleyed finish.

Prime Manchester City under Pep Guardiola?  The famed Tiki-taka of the Spanish national team? Carlos Alberto for Brazil against Italy in the 1970 World Cup final?

No. Mick McCarthy’s Wolves. At home to Tottenham 15 years ago. A dream of a team goal from David Jones which was, fittingly, enough to win the game to earn Wolves their Spurs in a season in which they completed the double over the North Londoners.  For McCarthy and company, there was far more to life than just putting a shift in.

It was Wolves’ first league double over Spurs in almost six decades, since the first league title winning side of 1953/54, and it took another 14 years for a follow-up – with a pair of dramatic 2-1, last season.

The home triumph achieved thanks to Jones’ finish which somehow wasn’t Wolves’ Goal of the Season – albeit the winning Nenad Milijas strike against Bolton was pretty special – was in stark contrast to the backs-to-the-wall success at White Hart Lane a couple of months earlier when Kevin Doyle headed home early, and the team spent the rest of the game defending.

Spurs had beaten Wigan 9-1 in their previous home game.  But they couldn’t breach the Wolves back-line. In either fixture. Even with the likes of Jermain Defoe, Gareth Bale, Peter Crouch, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Luka Modric and Niko Kranjcar at their disposal.

If that was a testament to the hard work, organisation and downright determination of any team fielded by McCarthy, the goal from Jones was also a signal that this was a Wolves team which, when opportunity arose, could also play football.

For the man himself, he scored two goals in the Premier League for Wolves, and both were pretty spectacular, completing the set with a flick and volley from Karl Henry’s free kick ‘assist’ on the opening day of the season against Stoke eight months later.

“It was a really good finish from Jonah against Spurs, from a really good ball into the box from Matt Jarvis,” recalls Henry, then the Wolves captain.

“We played some really good football with almost everyone touching the ball during the move and showing a lot of composure and patience to wait for the chance.”

“With Mick McCarthy, I always remember that he gave the midfield players plenty of licence to get into the box,” adds Jones.

“And for me, with someone like Karl in behind, I know he was always going to keep it secure in the middle of the park and deal with my ‘looseness’ that allowed me to get forward.

“We showed plenty of patience in that move, but I always felt that as soon as the ball went out to Jarvo, or to Kights (Michael Kightly), that was our main threat in terms of getting the ball in from those areas.

“I made the run, and it fell perfectly for me to get a decent connection, and I was delighted to see it finish up in the bottom corner.”

A fantastic goal and a fantastic three points and, in one way, a small microcosm to demonstrate that for all the blood, sweat and tears expended by a typically forthright McCarthy team, especially in achieving Premier League survival with relative comfort in that first season, at times there was plenty of style and panache to their play.

At the time, the gap between Premier League and Championship wasn’t quite as mammoth as has been shown over the past couple of seasons. But it was still significant.  And so for Wolves, with reasonable investment but certainly not to the levels shown more recently, to secure safety in that first year with a couple of games to spare was no mean feat.

But of course, to do that, they had to adapt.

That 2008/09 Championship-winning season contained so many glorious moments.  Not to mention two seven-game winning streaks.

Mike Bassett would have loved it.  Four-four-two.  A pair of very skilled and pacy wingers in Jarvis and Kightly.  Goalscorers supreme in Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Chris Iwelumo.  The 5-1 demolition job on Nottingham Forest in late August, including a superb goal when Henry set Jarvis away down the left to ultimately assist Iwelumo, proved one of those magical Molineux afternoons.

To go from the Championship into the Premier League necessitated a difference in approach.  And the need, even for McCarthy whose natural approach was to attack with pace and power, to be more pragmatic.

“I wouldn’t say there was an immediate and dramatic change in our approach but Mick knew we had to adapt and there was a natural progression over time,” Henry recalls.

“A lot of us hadn’t played in the Premier League before, so we didn’t have a blueprint about how we were going to set about it.

“We always had an identity with Mick, being well-organised, using wingers, pressing teams and getting in their faces.

“But that had to change in the Premier League because we certainly couldn’t press in the same way.

“In the Championship, we would go and press high up the pitch which gave us a lot of success, but do that in the Premier League, and you quickly realise that teams can just play around you and pick you off.

“I remember we got done a bit like that early doors but adapted to become more solid as a unit.”

Henry and Jones formed a central midfield axis for so much of that title-winning Championship season, aided and abetted by Dave Edwards providing a more attacking outlet at times.

The two build up a strong working relationship on and off the pitch, with Henry hailing Jones’s ‘technical excellence’ as the two became mates away from football as well as midfield partners on it.

“We could dig each other about stuff and not be offended, even if I ended up with us talking about it all night and agreeing to disagree at the end of it,” adds Jones.

“I learnt so much from Karl.  I don’t think I have ever met anyone else with his mentality, one of the most competitive people I have ever known.

“There was so much I learned technically from him as well, tactics and the defensive side of the game, and that’s as many compliments as I am going to pay him!”

That change in approach from Championship to Premier League saw McCarthy often move to a three-man central midfield with Henry and Jones often joined by an extra body, and the 18-pass goal against Tottenham was actually Adlene Guedioura’s full debut.

The three of them were responsible for ten of the 18 passes in the build-up to the goal, demonstrating how Wolves often looked to try and keep possession even if a lot of their threat focused on that attacking wingplay.

“We could never be as open as we were in the Championship, with the two wingers high up the pitch, and pretty much going for it most games,” Jones explains.

“We would have got punished far more if we tried that in the Premier League – the gaffer knew that which is why he changed the shape and the personnel, and we probably tried to play more football.

“We had midfielders who were comfortable on the ball and in possession, and often, if we had someone like Jarvo on the left, there might be Foles (Kevin Foley) or Eddo (Dave Edwards) on the other wing who were able to come inside and make the pitch a lot tighter.

“You do get more time on the ball in the Premier League, the opposition tend to let you play, and I think we played well in a lot of games, although also got punished because of the extra quality we were coming up against in such a high-quality league.”

So where did that leave Jarvis, the flying wideman who forged such an exciting duo of wing wizardry alongside Kightly in the Championship?

How did life change for him at the higher level, one which, like the majority of the squad, he had worked so hard and progressed through the lower leagues to reach, eventually going on to be capped at senior international level by England?

“As a winger, in Mick’s team, whether it was me, Kights, Eddo or Hunty, as well as attacking we all knew we had to do the horrible hard yards going back the other way to protect the full backs,” Jarvis recalls.

“It was called the graveyard shift!

“We knew in the Premier League we were going to be under the cosh a lot of the time, and that opposition teams would dominate the ball, so that hard work was vital.

“In the Championship you would also have to do that defensive work, but you could get away with it a little bit more – it was cat and mouse – because we would often win the ball back and if I was then on the wrong side of the full back, I was away.

“They always say that in the Championship, you have less time on the ball but it is easier to do something with it, whereas in the Premier League you have more time on the ball but it is harder to make something happen.

“In the Championship, the defender might be all over you but if you get past them, you are away.  In the Premier League, you can have that time and get set but the full backs are quicker and stronger and can get back if you go on the outside or often block the cross if you turn in on the inside. It was two very different challenges.”

What all three definitely agree on, as well as the shift in tactics as Wolves graduated to the Premier League, was the pivotal role, particularly in that first season, of the man at the hub of the formation.

Whether it was 4-5-1, or 4-3-3, the key man was often striker Kevin Doyle whom, after many seasons of prolific goalscoring, found himself more readily employed as a lone frontman, selflessly putting in a multitude of hard work and effort down the channels and holding the ball up, to help Wolves gain a foothold.

“Doyler was magnificent in that role,” Henry enthuses.

“Playing with two strikers was great in the Championship when you are trying to press, but in the Premier League, once they break that line of press, you are left one player short.

“If you have a number 10 who can drop in, or an extra central midfielder, it makes you far more compact.

“Even some of the good teams in the Premier League have found that it is difficult to play with two strikers, taking Aston Villa as an example with Ollie Watkins and Jhon Duran.

“Watkins is great at playing that role as the lone striker and that is exactly what Doyler did for us – he was selfless.

“For a team down at the bottom, we needed a number nine who was going to run the channels, who could occupy two defenders, and hold the ball up to help drag us up the pitch.”

So back to the Spurs game, and the goal.  All those passes, with plenty of movement, using Doyle as that spearhead.

“Doyler was pivotal for us to play the way we wanted to play,” adds Jones.

“We weren’t a team that smacked the ball forward, Doyler was a runner down the side, not someone like Chris Iwelumo who you could look for with a big ‘diag’.

“He would fight his corner, but we had to build up the pitch and play through the lines and get bodies forward, just like we did with the goal against Spurs.”

It was Jarvis, as he did so often in both the Championship and Premier League, who would eventually provide the assist.

A turn inside onto his right foot and pinpoint low cross - a signature Jarvis move - but what determined whether he aimed to deliver it, or instead went outside and down the line?

“Once I got the ball in that area, there was never any thought about just hanging onto it, I always wanted to attack,” he explains.

“In terms of whether to go on the outside or cut back, a lot of the time it was instinct.

“The first time I got the ball in a match, and was one-on-one with a full back, I always knocked it up the line and had a footrace to see if I could get the better of them.

“I wasn’t really one for tricks, it was more about body movement, to maybe feint inside and go out or vice versa, but if I got half a yard, I would always try and put in a cross.

“We worked on it in training a lot, where I would try and put the ball if I go to the line or what I would do if I turned inside, and, just like Jonah that night, it was about players arriving to get on the end of it.”

There were many other moments of quality in that first season back, noticeably a few weeks later when Wolves took seven points from a claret & blue treble including scoring three clinical goals to win at West Ham.

And what was never in dispute was the team’s character and personality, that double-clinching win against Spurs the perfect response to the anguish of conceding two late goals to lose at Birmingham just three days earlier.

“Mick always demanded a huge amount from us, not just on the pitch but in terms of character, and nine times out of ten, he brought players in who had a lot of character, heart and fight,” says Henry.

“There is a lot to be said about being honest, organised and well-drilled, that was what his success was built on and what we tried to carry onto the pitch.

“We had a great team spirit but that can only ever take you so far, and to take that jump from fighting relegation in the Premier League to becoming established in mid table, it needs more.

“We were a team which lacked that extra bit of quality, we all knew that, and to move to the next level, you need to double the transfer fees, and double the wages, and that is what happened a few years later under Nuno, with excellent results.

“We were lower league players who turned into Premier League players, but we were still able to hold our own, and compete in a lot of games, and enjoy plenty of highlights like that goal and three points against Spurs.”

As Henry explains, a lot has changed at Wolves from those days a decade-and-a-half ago, and, even post Nuno, the team under Vitor Pereira aiming for a fourth successive Premier League win against Tottenham on Sunday is one which has been far more expensively assembled, and boasts far more technical quality.

But it’s always worth remembering the moments, the moments when despite the odds being stacked against them, Wolves showed they could keep up with the Jones’s.