Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, commonly referred to as Wolves, is an English professional association football club that represents the city of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands region. This article covers the history of the club from its formation in 1877 as St. Luke's F.C. to the present day.
Formation
The team were founded as St. Luke's F.C. in 1877 by John Baynton and John Brodie, after a group of pupils at St Luke's Church, Blakenhall, had been presented with a football by their headmaster Harry Barcroft. Two years later, they merged with local cricket and football club The Wanderers to form Wolverhampton Wanderers. The club were initially given the use of two fields – James Harper's Field and Red House Park – both off Lower Villiers Street in Blakenhall.
In 1881, they moved to a site on the Dudley Road opposite the Fighting Cocks Inn. The club then became one of the twelve founders of the English Football League in 1888 and finished the inaugural season in a creditable third place, as well as reaching their first-ever FA Cup Final, losing 3–0 to the first "Double" winners, Preston North End. In the first year of the Football League, Wolves benefited from the first own goal in the league's history, scored by Gershom Cox of Aston Villa.
Early cup triumphs & inter-bellum adventures
Wolves remained as members of what became the First Division from 1888 until relegation in 1906, winning the FA Cup for the first time in 1893 when they beat Everton 1–0 at Fallowfield Stadium in Manchester. Two years after relegation the team enjoyed another FA Cup win, as a Second Division club, surprisingly beating Newcastle United 3–1 in the 1908 final. After struggling for many years to regain their place in the top division, Wolves suffered relegation again in 1923, dropping into the Third Division (North). Wolves' first promotion was won just a year later, narrowly claiming the Third Division North title at the first attempt ahead of Rochdale.
Following eight more years back in the Second Division, Wolves finally achieved a return to top division football in 1932, claiming the Second Division title and another promotion. In the years leading up to the Second World War, the team became established as one of the leading club sides in England. In 1938, Wolves needed only to win the last game of the season to be champions for the first time, but were beaten 1–0 at Sunderland and Arsenal claimed the title. They again finished as runners-up in 1939, this time behind Everton, and endured more frustration with defeat in the last pre-War FA Cup Final, losing 4–1 to underdogs Portsmouth.
The Stan Cullis era & the birth of European football When league football resumed in 1946, Wolves suffered yet another heartbreaking failure in the First Division. Just as in 1938, victory in their last match of the season against title rivals Liverpool would have won the title but a 2–1 defeat gave the 1947 championship to the Merseyside club instead.
That game had been the last in a Wolves shirt for Stan Cullis, and a year later he became manager of the club. In Cullis's first season in charge, he led Wolves to a first major honour in 41 years as they beat Leicester City 3–1 in the FA Cup Final, and a year later, only goal average prevented Wolves winning the First Division title. The 1950s were by far the most successful period in the history of Wolverhampton Wanderers. Captained by Billy Wright, Wolves finally claimed the league championship for the first time in 1954, overhauling fierce rivals West Bromwich Albion late in the season. Two further titles were later won in successive years, as Wolves cemented their position as the premier team in English football and became globally renowned for their on-field success as well as high-profile floodlit friendlies against top European club sides and the pioneering development of the Cullis "kick and rush" style of football.
Building upon Buckley's principles of hard work in training, exceptional physical fitness coupled with early pioneering use of sports science, strict discipline and a doctrine of all-out attack on the field, Cullis's kick and rush method incorporated long passes and speed of execution, hitting the opposition penalty box faster and more frequently to apply the percentage principle to goalscoring. The method was characterised by a defensive resilience, built as it was around the England internationals Bert Williams in goal and Billy Wright at half-back, but also incorporated quick movement of the ball and swift attacking support for the player in possession, particularly around the wing play of Johnny Hancocks and Jimmy Mullen.
Their innovation on the pitch was matched elsewhere, as Molineux was one of the first grounds to provide their team with floodlights in the summer of 1953, as the club also blossomed financially thanks to high-profile friendlies with top sides such as Real Madrid who all came and suffered defeat at the hands of Cullis' men. The following series of famous "floodlit friendlies", beginning with a game against a South African XI, had a huge effect in raising the profile of the club, enthusing many such as the young Wolves fan George Best"the headlines belonged to my favourite team, Wolves. Even then kids liked to follow the successful team: they always appear more glamorous for that reason. I must have filled up half a dozen scrapbooks, and I wish I still had them. It was reading those reports of the Wolves games that got me hooked. I became aware of the great traditions of the Wolves team and their exploits domestically and internationally ... I was originally inspired by Wolves, because of the glamorous international ties they were involved in ... Wolves were one of the first to play under floodlights, and there was just an extra-special feeling about a game being played in the evening. It was sheer theatre." George Best, Hard Tackles and Dirty Baths: The inside story of football's golden era: Ebury Press and others who were lucky enough to be able to watch the games on the BBC in some of football's first televised games. Other major club games at the time included victories over Borussia Dortmund, Valencia CF,A 4–3 win. Young, P.M. 'Centerary Wolves' pp. 134, 1976, Sunderland Press Ltd. and a 3–0 victory over Real Madrid achieved 'by indefatigable tackling, by the characteristic longflung pass and by a directness of approach that showed the Spanish the virtues of traditional English football'.Young, P.M. 'Centerary Wolves' pp. 134, 1976, Sunderland Press Ltd.
These high-profile games continued against top national sides such as Racing Club of Argentina and Spartak Moscow of the USSR, before meeting Honvéd of Hungary in a landmark game for English football, televised live on the BBC. Wolves faced a Honvéd team that included Ferenc Puskás and many other members of the "Magical Magyars", 1954 World Cup finalists and one of the historically great sides that had recently beaten England twice. In front of the watching nation, Wolves came from two goals down at half time to beat the Hungarian side 3–2, which coupled with their previous European exploits, lead the national media to proclaim Wolves "Champions of the World". This was the final spur for Gabriel Hanot, the editor of L'Équipe, who had long campaigned for a Europe wide club tournament to be played under floodlights.
The UEFA Congress of March 1955 saw the proposal raised, with approval given in April of that year, and the kick-off of the first European Cup the following season. The 1959 title win saw Wolves play in the European Cup for the first time, being only the second English club after Manchester United to enter. Later, Spartak Moscow, Dynamo Moscow and Real Madrid all came to Molineux and were beaten, as Wolves saw mixed successes in the European Cup against teams such as Red Star Belgrade, Schalke 04 and Barcelona, during Real Madrid's period of domination. Wolves were also League Champions in 1958 and 1959, and in 1960 became the first team to pass the 100-goal mark for three seasons in succession. Coming agonisingly close to a hat-trick of titles and the first double of the twentieth century,This was later achieved by Tottenham Hotspur in 1961. Wolves finished just one point behind Burnley and had to make do with a fourth FA Cup win, beating Blackburn Rovers 3–0 in the final.
Cullis sacked, Wolves American champions The early 1960s saw Wolves begin to decline, and Cullis was sacked in September 1964 at the start of a dreadful season during which the club was never out of the relegation zone. Relegation meant the club's first spell outside the top division in more than thirty years; however, the exile would last just two seasons, as an eight-game winning run in the spring of 1967 led the way to promotion back to the First Division as runners-up to the 1966–67 Second Division Champions Coventry City.
During the summer of 1967, Wolves played a season in North America as part of a fledgling league called the United Soccer Association. This league imported twelve entire clubs from Europe and South America to play in American and Canadian cities, with each club bearing a local name. Wolverhampton Wanderers, playing as the "Los Angeles Wolves", won the Western Division and then went on to earn the League Title by defeating the Eastern Division champions Washington Whips (Aberdeen of Scotland) in the championship match. (This FIFA-sanctioned league merged the following season with the non-sanctioned National Professional Soccer League, which had also begun in 1967, to form the North American Soccer League).
The Seventies resurgence The club's return to the English top flight heralded another period of relative success, with a squad that included stars Derek Dougan, Kenny Hibbitt and Frank Munro finishing the 1970–71 season in fourth place, qualifying them for the newly created UEFA Cup. En route to the 1972 UEFA Cup Final, they beat Académica 7–1 on aggregate, ADO Den Haag 7–1 on aggregate, FC Carl Zeiss Jena 4–0 on aggregate, Juventus 3–2 on aggregate in the quarter-final and Ferencváros 4–3 in the semi-final. Wolves lost the home leg of the two-legged final against Tottenham Hotspur 2–1 (goal from Jim McCalliog) and drew at White Hart Lane 1–1 with a goal from David Wagstaffe.
Two years later in 1974 they went on to beat Manchester City in the 1974 League Cup Final, taking the trophy for the first time. Despite relegation again in 1976, Wolves were to bounce back at the first attempt as Second Division champions. By 1979–80, things were again looking promising for Wolves: the club finished sixth in the First Division and reached the 1980 Football League Cup Final, where record-signing Andy Gray scored the decisive goal which defeated the reigning European Champions and League Cup holders Nottingham Forest, thus bringing League Cup glory to Wolves for a second time.
Decline and rescue Wolves went through a bad spell in the 1980s. The Molineux Street stand, built in 1932, was demolished, along with 71 terraced houses on Molineux Street, in 1979, and a new stand built at a cost of £1½ million ready for the 1979–80 season. However, the cost of this redevelopment, combined with the economic recession of the early-1980s (which hit match attendances hard), triggered serious financial difficulties for the club.