Premiership Experience? Don’t you mean experience of Premiership relegation?

By: Toby | July 12th, 2009

“We need to buy some experience”, “we need someone who’s been there and done it” I keep on hearing this whenever I talk to a Wolves fan about our summer recruitment campaign, that, while they’re happy so far with the likes of Doyle and Zubar, they want players who know the Premiership well and who’ve played in the league for a few seasons. I have one question on that matter.

Why?

When you look at the sides relegated this season, Newcastle, Middlesbrough and West Brom two of those sides had vast, vast amounts of Premiership experience and still floundered to the bottom of the league. Newcastle boasted a side with players such as Duff, Owen, Barton and Nolan all player who have been touted around clubs in the bottom half, desperately seeking that golden enigma of “experience”. Well, combined, those four lads have clocked up 1090 Premiership games. And what good did it do for them? Nothing, maybe, because they’d “been there” “done that” had that essential “experience” they thought that they were too good to go down? Maybe because they had played in that league for so long, for better sides, when they rolled up to the likes of Stoke and Hull they thought that it’d be another three points in the bag even before they got off the coach.

A lot can be said for the positives for naivety, Stoke were the purest examples of this idea last season. They turned up to every game, regardless who it was against and just went at them in the same way they would any other side, they were defensive and strong and it worked for them. When you look at their Premiership experience you’d be hard pushed to find four players who could rack up 1000 games of Premiership football, their highest capped player at that level wasn’t bought until January, and prior to joining Stoke, James Beatie had only just managed 300 games in the top flight. He wasn’t a success because he “knew the game” he was a success because he’s a great target man in a team that likes to play it high and hansom.

So what do Wolves need in terms of experience? Maybe one player, maybe one older head to keep the younger ones from loosing theirs for when we do have an inevitable period next season when we can’t buy a goal for love nor money, but I wouldn’t say we need any more than that. You’ve got to remember most of these “Premiership” players that are up for grabs are either A) B Teamers who’ve probably got as much a grasp of the League as our current players or B) Players from the Relegated sides…well…that’s not really what we need. Let’s go out there with a side that’s young and full of heart, not afraid of any side in the league and willing to play the football we all know they’re capable of I worry a Premiership stalwart would curve that creativity, and encourage caution.

Re-assess the situation in January by all means, but for now, I’m all for the continuation of buying young, hungry players with a point to prove, it’s got us this far, why can’t it keep us up?

What do you think? I’m fifty fifty on this myself, so I’d be interested to hear what you’ve got to say.