Influences Galore On Doc’s Long-Playing Record
Matt Doherty…..loyal servant.
With his 33rd birthday less than a month away, Matt Doherty has too little time left to contemplate overtaking Geoff Palmer’s massive Wolves appearance tally of 496.
But he has already made another imprint on the club’s landscape following the latest mass upheaval in the dug-out.
By our reckoning, Vitor Pereira’s arrival means that no other player in history has worked under more Wolves managers/head coaches than Doherty.
The former Porto and Olympiakos man is his tenth boss while on the Molineux staff, not counting caretakers, with Palmer one of the few men close to his double-figure total.
Doherty, whose excellent recent goal at West Ham underlined another renaissance in his remarkable Wolves career, is unsurprisingly one of the senior members of the dressing room Pereira is inheriting.
He was signed in 2011 by Mick McCarthy – what a thrill to be wanted by the man who had taken his country to one World Cup last 16 and led them to the quarter-final of another as skipper! – and has also since served under Stale Solbakken, Dean Saunders, Kenny Jackett, Walter Zenga, Paul Lambert, Nuno Espirito Santo, Julen Lopetegui, Gary O’Neil and now Pereira.
We are excluding from that list Terry Connor – on q&a duty with Paul Berry at the Wolves v Ipswich game last weekend – on the grounds that his unhappy four-month spell in charge overlapped totally with the Irish wing-back being on loan at Scottish Cup finalists Hibernian.
Doherty didn’t play a League or cup game under Solbakken either before being borrowed by Bury but had around four months of working with him in pre-season and then at the training ground in the season’s opening weeks.
By way of emphasising the player’s experience, wisdom and football intelligence, we should also bear in mind all those he has worked under at Bohemians, Bury, Hibs, Tottenham, Athletic Madrid and at international level.
Had he not had his three-year break from Molineux while reuniting with Nuno at Spurs and then going to Spain, he would have had only one more Wolves boss on his record, Bruno Lage.
Geoff Palmer – no stranger to manager change.
Palmer first worked at Wolves under Bill McGarry, who we will count twice for this purpose as he also returned briefly in 1985-86, and was also managed by Sammy Chung, John Barnwell, Ian Greaves, Graham Hawkins, Tommy Docherty, Sammy Chapman and Graham Turner.
One of Chapman’s two spells in charge was on a temporary basis only and Brian Little was also a caretaker rather than a permanent appointment.
Doherty’s preferred more advanced role in the side, rather than as an out-and-out full-back, is reflected in his scoring output. His goal at West Ham was the 32nd of his first-team Molineux career – more than double the tally managed by Palmer, who also had a stint as penalty-taker.
To make this piece even more topical, the excellent www.soccerbase.com website – one we use regularly for statistical research – shows the 32-year-old to have played 299 League games for Wolves and 350 in all competitions.