How Important Is Sunday?

The Hawthorns. Sunday 19th December. 12 noon. The first top flight black country derby since before I was born. What a big game.

But, a thought, constantly there at the back of my mind; is this Derby all it’s cracked up to be? Maybe this isn’t the biggest game of the season, hell maybe this isn’t the biggest game of the week. How many of you would take a loss on Sunday to guarantee a win against Wigan on Boxing Day? Probably not many of you, if any at all. What if I changed the question? How many of you would take dropping two points against Wigan if it meant we’d avoided Hawthorns defeat? Two draws, one point less, but crucially the Baggies don’t have one over on us.

A quick glance at the League table tells us why Wigan could be deemed a bigger game than West Brom. They are just a point ahead of us. West Brom are seven. Are West Brom going to go down? Maybe, but I’d hazard a guess that there’s far more chance that Wigan will be relegated than them. We lost to Wigan, and they are stealing a march on us; six points dropped against a Wigan side with only three wins all season is not good enough, whatever the circumstances of the first defeat. It’s difficult enough to find three teams to finish below us without losing at home to one of the strong possibilities.

And it’s not just the Wigan match. Can we effectively rule out the trip to Anfield? Woy Hodgson transferred his shocking away record with Fulham up the M6 with him this summer, but their home record is very different. As is Fernando Torres; at Anfield he’s arguably the best striker in the world. Following this, we have a New Year’s trip to the Boleyn Ground. That’s West Ham United, bottom of the Premier League. Managed by Avram Grant, who aside from the odd week in August has spent the entire calendar year bottom of the League. Last year’s win at Upton Park was one the biggest results of the season – no-one who was there will ever forget Zubar’s barnstorming finish.

Following the West Ham game, we are back into a horrible run of fixtures – I’m far too depressed to write them down here, if you want to ruin your Christmas, go and have a look. It doesn’t read well. Sunday’s game won’t define our season one way or the other, but the Wigan and West Ham matches may do. Would I take derby defeat to guarantee victories against those two, my head says yes but my heart is pulling in completely the opposite direction. It keeps reminding me of Bothroyd ’07, Roberts ’96 and Ndah ’01 and how good those moments felt.  It keeps telling me that the best Christmas present any Wolves fan could hope for would be three points. I’m also 100% sure that come kick-off on Sunday, when I’m stood in the Hawthorns with 2699 other baying fans, all that I will care about is winning that match.

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