On the last day of the Championship season I was on the south coast to see an under-strength Brighton and Hove Albion side coast to victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Split
The players seemed to buy into what the club was trying to build back then. I also mention this to illustrate that there are many good people who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes for many years at Molineux. They will now face the prospects of cutbacks in their departments and possibly even job losses as the budgets are reassessed for a campaign in League One. Meanwhile, on Saturday at Brighton, midfielder Jamie O'Hara sarcastically gave the thumbs up to supporters who were singing a fairly harmless, if accurate, song about his wages not being value for money.
These are fans who have travelled at great personal expense to watch their team all season. If players are happy to lap up the adulation when the times are good they should be big enough to take a bit of flak on the chin when it is not going so well. O'Hara didn't hang around to applaud the fans at the end of the game, heading straight down the tunnel instead. His arrival in 2011 on top wages, along with that of Roger Johnson, split a dressing room that was built on a strong team ethic and had no egos. Those signings undermined McCarthy's previous good work.
Under Terry Connor, who was thrust reluctantly into the spotlight, and then Stale Solbakken, a man with no working experience of English footballers, the dressing room gradually became a divided and at times poisonous place. Dean Saunders didn't have a chance. All four men would no doubt do things differently given their time again, but that is consigned to history.
Collective
When Wolves slipped through the divisions first time around they went through a sackful of managers too. Five permanent ones and three temporary appointments between 1984-86. Eventually they settled on Graham Turner who, with the significant assistance of Steve Bull, worked small miracles to win back-to-back promotions in 1988 and 1989 and bring a bit of pride back to the town. But Turner did more than just win football matches. His promotion winning team was a close-knit bunch who dealt with adversity as a collective. On the occasion they were forced to train on the club's pot-holed gravel car park owing to a lack of facilities they turned it into a regular Friday pre-match ritual.
The 21st century Wolves is suffering no such hardships. And despite a second successive relegation there will still be thousands of fans renewing their season tickets next season. Morgan is lucky. Unlike the Wanderers of the mid 1980s, this club still has a decent heartbeat. Leadership has been in short supply in the boardroom but as any fan around in the 1980s will tell the club's owners, this isn't what rock bottom looks like. The next managerial appointment will be the most important one in a generation. Morgan can't afford to get it wrong.
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