Mick McCarthy was sacked by Wolverhampton Wanderers in February 2011 after a poor run of results, which ended with a 5-1 home defeat to their bitter rivals West Bromwich Albion. The sacking of McCarthy didn’t come as much of a surprise and the club’s CEO Jez Moxey describing his decision at “not easy”, but he didn’t seem to have anyone lined up to take McCarthy’s place as took him two weeks to promote assistant manager Terry Connor to the role of manager. Connor was charged with securing the club’s top flight status, which he failed to do, which wasn’t really a surprise considering he only had 13 games of the season left and the players seemed to lack any sort of confidence. Wolves finished bottom of the league with just 25 points and went 14 games without a win from February 12th until the end of the season.
The club began life in the Championship well, picking up six wins in their first ten games, but things started to go badly halfway through October, Stale Solbakken’s men didn’t win a Championship match in nine attempts and Solbakken was relieved of his duties on January 5th after losing to Conference Premier side Luton Town in the 3rd round of the FA Cup.
Two days after the sacking of Stale Solbakken, the then-Doncaster manager Dean Saunders was hired by Wolves and was given the task of ensuring Wolves’ Championship survival. He began his time at Wolves with draws against Blackburn and Sheffield Wednesday, but they then failed to pick up a win in seven games and only managed to score seven goals in that time. Since then, Wolves only won five matches under Saunders and it looked increasingly likely that the club would be relegated and on the last day of the regular Championship season, Wolverhampton Wanderers were relegated for the second season in succession.
At the start of the 2012-13 season, Wolves fans had hopes of promotion and at the very least, a top half finish, but their team never really got going under Solbakken and this set the tone for the rest of the season. There are a few factors that led to Wolves being relegated to League One, but the one overriding cause is the sacking of Mick McCarthy in February 2011, the Yorkshireman probably wouldn’t have kept the club in the Premier League, but he would have been the right man to lead Wolves back into the top flight.
Sadly with TV revenues increasing season by season, it is seen by club owners as vital that their team should be in the Premier League and managers are sacked for either not keeping a club in the top flight or for not leading the club to promotion to the Premier League. Maybe football clubs should look at Wolves as an example of how to not deal with managers – even if the club is near the bottom of the table, perhaps it would be a better idea for the club to keep managers in charge for the rest of the season as well as the next, even if the club is relegated, just to give the club some sort of stability.
The man who takes over from Dean Saunders has a huge job in rebuilding a Wolves squad that is low on confidence. The only objective of the new manager will be getting Wolves back to the Championship so that the club has an opportunity to get back to where the fans feel they belong – the Premier League. At the moment though, for everyone connected with Wolverhampton Wanderers, the Premier League looks a very long way away.
Thomas Baxter