GOLDEN GAMES: WOLVES 5-1 BOLTON, 25 NOVEMBER 2017

Underlining that we were indeed the real deal

John bloody McGinlay. Sam Allardyce (Bolton - we don’t want him, you can keep him). Gary Megson. Owen Coyle and his shorts. Owen Coyle insisting on calling it “the Barclays Premier League”. Nicky Hunt. Bent Kevin Lynch blowing for full time as the ball bobbled around in their six yard box, 0.5 seconds before Scott Taylor rammed it into the roof of the net. Uriah Rennie robbing us. Their stupid old ground with a crap supermarket taking up half the away end. Their crap new retail park ground which isn’t even in Bolton. Mark “blue WKD” Davies. Sending us Mixu Paatelainen. Sending us Simon Coleman. Peter Shilton having the best game he’d had since Cameroon in Italia 90, when he shouldn’t even have been there (why were they allowed to sign someone on loan in the middle of May?!). That Beasant-infused cup defeat in 1993. They employed Paul Robinson (not the goalkeeper, the fat Albion one).

Not him either.

No, I’ve got no time at all for Bolton Wanderers, and for many years we had an absolutely dismal record against them. So this one - although we’d won intermittently since the mid 90s - was a great one. To draw a line under all the above, and above all else, mark us out as the best team in the Championship in 2017/18.

Going into this game, we’d started brilliantly and were on a run of four straight wins, indeed coming right off the back of beating Dirty, Dirty Leeds 4-1 at home on the Tuesday preceding this. But it’s Bolton. We’re top, we’re great, they’re 23rd, they’re crap. The inner Wolves fan in you dreads this scenario.

Steve Bruce “doing it better” at Villa there.

But in reality this was never in doubt. And it’s absolutely classic early Nuno Wolves.

A Barry Douglas set piece leading to a goal. What proved to be Leo Bonatini’s final ever goal at Molineux (this actually put him on 11 goals from 19 games, which is pretty wild for an unheralded forward who literally stepped off a plane from Saudi Arabia and started our opening game all inside 48 hours in August). Nuno not taking any crap off the opposition manager (Welcome to Wrexham’s Phil Parkinson, as it happened) and getting sent to the stands. Ivan Cavaleiro with what we’d later come to recognise as Jason Koumas-style “way too good for the Championship, not quite good enough for the Premier League” energy. And perhaps most gloriously of all, a trademark Diogo Jota finish…but assisted by one John Thomas Gordon Ruddy. Playmaker, that boy.

We even got a classic Nuno quote to end it all.

"We have to work the same every day. We don't look where we are in the table. It doesn't mean anything at this moment."

I did warn Forest fans that literally every press conference he does is the same.

We’d beaten teams at the top, teams at the middle, teams at the bottom, teams with a historic hoodoo over us. Yep, this was happening, for real.

Drink it in, it’s still fun to watch.

And fuck Bolton Wanderers Football Club.

Teams:

Wolves: Ruddy; Bennett, Coady, Boly; Doherty, Saiss, Neves, Douglas (Vinagre 89); Cavaleiro (N’Diaye 85), Bonatini (Costa 72), Jota.

Unused subs: Norris, Batth, Price, Enobakhare.

Bolton: Alnwick; Little, Wheater, Beevers, Robinson; Henry, Pratley (Le Fondre 78), Vela; Ameobi (Noone 63), Madine, Armstrong (Buckley 63).

Unused subs: Howard, Burke, Darby, Cullen.

Attendance: 27,894