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My blog post on Nuno, Wolves, and the changing dream.

JayStringer

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Please delete if not appropriate to link to it here, mods.

I don't want to get stuck in Nuno in/out conversations the way fans did for years after Mick. So I summed up all my feelings here...


Now on with Bruno.
 

Nivada

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I don't want to get stuck in Nuno in/out conversations the way fans did for years after Mick. So I summed up all my feelings here...


Now on with Bruno.
Great post but the 'Within 10 minutes of an FA Cup Final' bit is wrong, we were within 30 seconds of the Final.
 

VancouverWolf

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Please delete if not appropriate to link to it here, mods.

I don't want to get stuck in Nuno in/out conversations the way fans did for years after Mick. So I summed up all my feelings here...


Now on with Bruno.
Hi Jay, hope you don’t mind me going off topic for a moment. Saw on your site that you write in a humorous style about crime.
Are you familiar with the books by Donald E. Westlake and his pseudonym Richard Stark? Is your writing kinda like his and if so would like to know titles.
I read some of his Parker stuff before I read that he also did the Dortmunder books too. Loved both of his styles.
Years ago, my son in his teens also took to them.

Ok…..back to football…..
 

JayStringer

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Hi Jay, hope you don’t mind me going off topic for a moment. Saw on your site that you write in a humorous style about crime.
Are you familiar with the books by Donald E. Westlake and his pseudonym Richard Stark? Is your writing kinda like his and if so would like to know titles.
I read some of his Parker stuff before I read that he also did the Dortmunder books too. Loved both of his styles.
Years ago, my son in his teens also took to them.

Ok…..back to football…..

Love Westlake, both the funny and the dark, but he's not a direct comparison to stuff I've written. Elmore Leonard is my GOAT. My more serious books (Old Gold, Runaway Town, Lost City) are Stark-like in their sentence structure, but not the same subject matter. Set in and around Wolverhampton but with some American spellings because American publisher. My funnier books (Ways to Die in Glasgow, How to Kill Friends and Implicate People) are a little Trainspotting-ish, sweary and violent and set in Glasgow, with Scottish/UK spellings.

So, that football chat.....
 

JayStringer

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Great read! Loved the analogy of micks team - carrying the piano up the flights of stairs but nobody able or talented enough to play it when they got there

Thanks. I think maybe I wrote the whole thing just to fit that in.
 

Contrarian

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That's really well written :D Much more insight that most of what the pro-writers write about us.

I like the way you state your point and then cast a few doubts on it. I don't know if it is just Nuno's reign or was always like it only I never noticed, but I feel much the same. More questions than answers. Seemed to be something unusual about us under Nuno. Extremes of one thing or another. Looking at virtually any stat regarding any aspect of the game, we were either among the best, or the worst! Worst first halves, covered the least ground, best at getting points when falling behind, worst at conceding from set pieces, best at dribbling past defenders, the only team in over 100 years to lose an FA cup semi-final when 2-0 up with 12 minutes to go... and there's much more than that, both good and bad!

You mention the pandemic, while it undoubtedly affected us, the Premier League is filled with overseas players and managers who wouldn't have seen their family. Linked to the above, it seemed to affect us more than anyone else, for reasons I don't know. I think the injuries may have impacted last season more than Covid, in the end. And again, we have this absurd swing from one extrene to another. Seasons where we had the lowest injury count ever recorded in the Premier League, to (in terms of key players, anyway) one of the worst records last season. And while Covid did impact us, finding that Nuno immediately was going for jobs at Everton and Palace casts some doubt on the full extent.

And my main memory of the season just gone (almost the only memory) is the home match to Arsenal, that was one of the craziest I've seen at top level! For a man who exuded sober calm and an ultra cautious approach, Nuno certainly seemed to attract an awful lot of these topsy-turvy barking mad events!

It's all been a bit of a surreal rollercoaster and I'm really curious to see if rather than being the New Leeds (as some hint at), can Bruno just make us a bit more normal? :D
 

VancouverWolf

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Great read and some very valid points.

I always said that I would never judge Nuno or the team in a covid year but that’s the luxury that I had but not afforded to Jeff.
I think Nuno’s condition of employment was to get Wolves up and to keep us in the PL above all else.
Just Keep Us Up.
So he agreed to the deal and Wolves kept their part of the deal…..player by player, window by window, they acquired better talent. Nuno knew that Wolves would never have a big cheque book…..he accepted that limitation. And Fosun too, accepted that Nuno was a PL virgin.

and then….covid.

Nuno was cheated by circumstance of his first real chance to coach with the Fosun restraints off. In the previous years he had done what was asked to do……and then some.
Now was to be be his time. Just when he had earned a better chance.

Cheated ……covid…..injuries…..and not just any injury, Raul, …..gone.
The absolute worst thing to happen…..as if the universe or a deity was deliberately putting up roadblocks. ( (Raul sooooo badly injured….think the gods like us?). Gods can be spiteful you know…..after 40 years in the desert, God wouldn’t allow Moses to see the promised land…..why?….because he tapped a rock twice with his staff.

So, we romantic Wolves fans wanted Nuno to lead us back to new glory days…..but somewhere, god chuckled.

What might have been…..
 

rincewind

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Good blog. I largely agree with you but maybe a little more positive about making a change now
I am glad Nuno could go with his head held high, it would have been awful if we had carried our late season form into next season and he'd been hounded out by fans after a dozen games.
There was something about us under Nuno as you say, even the good times were rarely straight forward.
 

crocos

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That's a really very good read indeed. And it says precisely how I also feel about things at the moment - as you say, Nuno got us dreaming beyond what he / the team / circumstances were able, at the moment at least, to actually give us. Something almost Shakespearean about it. I'll always love the man and the team for the past few years.
 

Alex Rae The Substitute

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Really good read. I sincerely hope your theory it could be the right thing to do to lay Nuno off proves correct.
 

Stingray II

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Enjoyed reading that, Jay. I'm in a similar place. Wishing the best for Lage and the future, but suffering from hurt from the loss of Nuno. Feel the same way about the fans too.
I just purchased one of your books from Amazon "Faithless St.". Don't know if that was your first, but it was the first-published on my Amazon listing. I like to start with reading a writer's earliest work then follow on sequentially. Those early books are real cheap too ($1.50). All us Mixers should buy one and support a writing-wolf.
 

Highlandwolf2

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Please delete if not appropriate to link to it here, mods.

I don't want to get stuck in Nuno in/out conversations the way fans did for years after Mick. So I summed up all my feelings here...


Now on with Bruno.
Excellent article. Thanks.

I've this minute bought one of your Black Country Noir novels and sure I will like it (nearest I have come to local novels is the Rotters Club by Jonathon Coe, a lot of which is set in Stourbridge (where I've worked) and surrounding areas).
 
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