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Although the easing of lockdown regulations will have, no doubt, come to a welcome relief to many, the down side is that it means that Preview Percy has emerged blinking into the sunlight. Here's his look at Saturday's visit of Wolverhampton Wanderers then...

So, after what feels like ten years we return to action, our first post-apocalypse outing featuring Wolverhampton Wanderers at home. Kick-off is at 5:30pm and the thing will be on Sky. Engineering works are, for obvious reasons, completely irrelevant, though Network Rail have agreed to come and dump a pile of laundry at the bottom of the stairs to make your journey to the TV slightly more difficult in case you were missing all the hassle.




Well this is a slightly surreal situation isn’t it. At this stage in proceedings it is traditional for me to in form you of their current place in the league and to make reference to their current form. Of course, “current” form lacks a certain relevance at the moment – the break being about as long as the average pre-season. For the record they are currently in 6th place, which would be good enough to qualify for the group stages of the Thursday Night league, assuming that a) we ever finish this season; and b) we ever start the next one. Actually they are halfway through a Thursday Night League tie against Olympiakos, the first leg in Piraeus finishing 1-1.

Interestingly, and I probably use that word quite wrongly, three of their last five games finished in 0-0 draws, those being away at Man Utd and home to both Leicester and Brighton. In between the Leicester and Brighton draws came a couple of wins, 3-0 at home to bottom club Norwich and 3-2 away at Spurs, which left them with 43 points from 29 matches, ahead of Sheffield United on goal difference, though the hypocrites do have a game in hand, this being written before their earlier restart.

Daisy the personal assistant with the beautiful smile informs me that, before everything went pear-shaped, their top scorer was Raul Jiminez. The Mexican international, whose previous loan spell at Molineux was made permanent at the end of last season, has 13 goals this season. His importance to the side can be gauged by the fact that the next highest scorer, Diego Jota has six.

They did a bit of business in the last window. They took another step towards their clear aim of signing every Portuguese player on the planet by bringing in winger Daniel Podence. He arrived for a fee of just shy of €17m. I would tell you what that is in sterling but Daisy tells me that when she went round to the travel agent to ask them it was, for some reason, shut.

The second arrival didn’t hang around long. Promising right-back Luke Matheson arrived from the distinctly un-Portuguese climes of Rochdale. Clearly regarded as a prospect rather than as an immediate first teamer, Matheson was immediately loaned back to the Spotland outfit for the rest of the season, though given the fact that whatever Division Three is called now seems to have called it a day for the season I suppose he has returned to the Midlands. Either way I wouldn’t bank on him taking any part on Saturday.




Although the goalscoring plaudits rest firmly with Jiminez, arguably a bigger threat from an assist point of view is presented in the form of Adama Traore, a player who, as a result of a geographical miscalculation on the part of Wolves, was actually born in Spain rather than Portugal. Traore is of Malian heritage and his international future has been the subject of some debate. Mali would obviously be quite keen to give him a game.

However, he does have a few Spanish U21 caps to his name and his future seemed to have been sealed when Spain included him in the squad for a couple of what were optimistically called Euro 2020 qualifiers last November. As it transpired injury saw him pull out of the squad and he has gone on record as saying he hasn’t made up his mind as to which country to play for yet. Still there’s probably four years to go before Euro 2020 kicks off so he has a bit of time to play with.

Perhaps unsurprisingly under the circumstances they are listed as having no injury concerns – though this doesn’t take into account any secret closed-door friendly matches that may take place between my writing this and kick-off.

Well at this point I normally take a look at the wild and wacky world of Association Football. Except however wild and wacky it has been in the past, what we have now is somewhat off the scale in terms of wildness and, er, wackiness. Matches behind closed doors are always a bit surreal – as anyone who watched any of the recent Bundesliga relaunch may have noticed. I’d be willing to bet that, after an initial spike, viewing figures for those matches dropped like a stone. It’ll be different for us of course watching a match for which there will be some emotional engagement but it will still be hard work.

Of course, the total lack of football doesn’t prevent footballers from making a bid for entry into the daft club. I realise that yes they are an easy target on which to blame society’s ills but by golly some of them do themselves no favours.




M’lud I give you exhibit A: in the form of Kyle Walker. Whilst some of us have had to spend the last three months effectively in solitary without so much as the companionship of one’s personal assistant with the beautiful smile to help one through the wee small hours, Mr Walker elected to hold a party and to, er, hire some guests of the female persuasion, shortly before urging supporters to stay at home in an interview the next day.

Then there was furloughgate. Spurs and Liverpool both decided to avail themselves of the government funds available to cover wages and salaries. This didn’t go down well up and down the country and both clubs eventually dropped their claims. The Liverpool Echo – never one to miss an opportunity to put a positive spin on the worst of stories from that part of the world - triumphantly declared that Spurs had been forced into the U-turn by Liverpool’s magnificent decision.

Meanwhile, a club in South Korea tried to limit the effects of playing behind closed doors by placing dummies in the stands. Closer inspection showed that many members of the “crowd” were in fact inflatable dolls purchased at the local equivalent of Ann Summers. Maybe that’s something we could consider at the Olympic. If only there were someone within the club who knew where to source such items.

One thing the club will be doing will be placing a mosaic collage of supporter photos in the stands. Let’s hope whoever has to pour over all the photos for selection purposes is at the top of their game – when someone tried something similar in Australia many were surprised to discover that their club’s celebrity supporters included the likes of Adolf Hitler and Harold Shipman, whose photos had been supplied by some of the more mischievous elements of the convict descendants.

And so to us. The owners laudably elected to keep paying staff without recourse to taxpayer funds and, fair play, Mr Sullivan chipped in to cover the shortfall in match day donations to the foodbank. See we do give credit where due.




I guess in the grand scheme of things the trials and tribulations of a football club don’t really amount to the proverbial hill of beans. However, with due acknowledgement to, and filtering out the outside world for the time being, possibly the most disappointing news to emerge from Rush Green in recent weeks has been that of the impending departure of Jeremy Ngakia.

In the, what is it four, games he has played thus far he has shown promise to suggest that a decent future awaits. The stories as to why he is leaving seem to be coloured by which direction they come from. On the one hand it is argued that the club have made an offer commensurate with the status of a young professional four games into his career. On the other hand it has been suggested that the player’s representatives have simply indicated that he is off at the end of the month irrespective of offer.

The position with this damned virus doesn’t help things. Player contracts expire on June 30 and with games continuing well into July we have a situation whereby free agents could quite legitimately start playing for another club on 1 July irrespective of whatever happens to the transfer window – free agents can sign whenever they like.

Personally I think there is far too much pressure on young players to move on before their time. Rarely does it serve a player well to interrupt their development so early I may be wrong but this has all the hallmarks of something already having been arranged for 1 July. If another club has been tapping him up wouldn’t it be good if for once the FA stepped in. Don’t hold your breath.

Last time out, and some of us have had birthdays since then, we went down 1-0 at the Library. It was the second season running that the defeat did not reflect the true pattern of play and a point was the very least we deserved, the winner coming by way of a fortunate deflection and half an hour in front of VAR.




Looking at the selection for this one we have pretty much a full squad to select from, a knee injury to Ogbonna being the sole area of concern at the time of writing. I did believe that Jack Wilshire was to have been an absentee. However, when I looked closer at the screen it turned out to be a simple case of screen burn from all the other times I had visited the physioroom site.

And so we move onto the concept of the prediction. God knows really. We haven’t even got the usually totally misleading precedent of pre-season friendlies to be fooled by. Current form doesn’t exist and we will have no idea how the enforced break has affected each team until a few games in. So I will go optimistic and hope that the break will have done us good. If Winstone the Turf Accountant is open please put me down to wager the £2.50 that I was going to spend on a face mask on a 2-1 win to us – I’ll pop in just as soon as the rest home allows me out of the front door.

Enjoy the game!





When last we met at the Olympic: Lost 0-1 (Premier League September 2018)

Missed chances proved costly as Sanchez’s late nightmare getting caught in possession let in Traore to net a 93rd minute winner.


Referee: Michael Oliver

One of the “little and often” influencers. Whilst the likes of Dean love to make attention-seeking errors of nuclear explosion style proportions, Oliver prefers to influence matches with those little subtle touches. Look out for one side being allowed quick free-kicks whilst their opponents are made to seek out the precise blade of grass four times before being allowed to proceed in front of a freshly-packed defence. It will be interesting to see how PGMOL’s finest will get on at Anfield without 40,000 Norwegians telling them what to do.


Danger Man: Adama Traore

Opponents often have no idea what he is going to do. Usually because he has no idea either.


Percy’s Poser

Last time we visited the Islington Gazette who reviewed local author’s book using the following headline

’You wouldn’t want to do that now’ – Carolyn Clark recounts peoples’ memories of XXXXXX XXXXX in the XXXXXX’X XXXXX

Well done to Mrs Bridie Furlough of Walton On The Naze who correctly identified the missing words as “taking baths and Regent’s Canal”. If you’re still out there Bridie, unfortunately the voucher for a free Rolls-Royce expired just the one day before the dealership re-opened. Jolly hard luck.

This week we look at the “Flashback” feature from the Wolverhampton Express and Star. Back in 1988 they were getting rather excited over a local attraction the headline:

XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX gets royal seal of approval

Best of luck!

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