Total football Wolves and a memorable first double over Tottenham in six long decades

A total of 18 passes whilst keeping possession, with only one outfield player and goalkeeper not getting a touch.

All finished off with a lovely pinpoint cross and neat volleyed finish.

Prime Manchester City under Pep Guardiola?  The famed Tiki-taka of the Spanish national team? Carlos Alberto for Brazil against Italy in the 1970 World Cup final?

No. Mick McCarthy’s Wolves. At home to Tottenham 15 years ago. A dream of a team goal from David Jones which was, fittingly, enough to win the game to earn Wolves their Spurs in a season in which they completed the double over the North Londoners.  For McCarthy and company, there was far more to life than just putting a shift in.

It was Wolves’ first league double over Spurs in almost six decades, since the first league title winning side of 1953/54, and it took another 14 years for a follow-up – with a pair of dramatic 2-1, last season.

The home triumph achieved thanks to Jones’ finish which somehow wasn’t Wolves’ Goal of the Season – albeit the winning Nenad Milijas strike against Bolton was pretty special – was in stark contrast to the backs-to-the-wall success at White Hart Lane a couple of months earlier when Kevin Doyle headed home early, and the team spent the rest of the game defending.

Spurs had beaten Wigan 9-1 in their previous home game.  But they couldn’t breach the Wolves back-line. In either fixture. Even with the likes of Jermain Defoe, Gareth Bale, Peter Crouch, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Luka Modric and Niko Kranjcar at their disposal.

If that was a testament to the hard work, organisation and downright determination of any team fielded by McCarthy, the goal from Jones was also a signal that this was a Wolves team which, when opportunity arose, could also play football.

For the man himself, he scored two goals in the Premier League for Wolves, and both were pretty spectacular, completing the set with a flick and volley from Karl Henry’s free kick ‘assist’ on the opening day of the season against Stoke eight months later.

“It was a really good finish from Jonah against Spurs, from a really good ball into the box from Matt Jarvis,” recalls Henry, then the Wolves captain.

“We played some really good football with almost everyone touching the ball during the move and showing a lot of composure and patience to wait for the chance.”

“With Mick McCarthy, I always remember that he gave the midfield players plenty of licence to get into the box,” adds Jones.

“And for me, with someone like Karl in behind, I know he was always going to keep it secure in the middle of the park and deal with my ‘looseness’ that allowed me to get forward.

“We showed plenty of patience in that move, but I always felt that as soon as the ball went out to Jarvo, or to Kights (Michael Kightly), that was our main threat in terms of getting the ball in from those areas.

“I made the run, and it fell perfectly for me to get a decent connection, and I was delighted to see it finish up in the bottom corner.”

A fantastic goal and a fantastic three points and, in one way, a small microcosm to demonstrate that for all the blood, sweat and tears expended by a typically forthright McCarthy team, especially in achieving Premier League survival with relative comfort in that first season, at times there was plenty of style and panache to their play.

At the time, the gap between Premier League and Championship wasn’t quite as mammoth as has been shown over the past couple of seasons. But it was still significant.  And so for Wolves, with reasonable investment but certainly not to the levels shown more recently, to secure safety in that first year with a couple of games to spare was no mean feat.

But of course, to do that, they had to adapt.

That 2008/09 Championship-winning season contained so many glorious moments.  Not to mention two seven-game winning streaks.

Mike Bassett would have loved it.  Four-four-two.  A pair of very skilled and pacy wingers in Jarvis and Kightly.  Goalscorers supreme in Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Chris Iwelumo.  The 5-1 demolition job on Nottingham Forest in late August, including a superb goal when Henry set Jarvis away down the left to ultimately assist Iwelumo, proved one of those magical Molineux afternoons.

To go from the Championship into the Premier League necessitated a difference in approach.  And the need, even for McCarthy whose natural approach was to attack with pace and power, to be more pragmatic.

“I wouldn’t say there was an immediate and dramatic change in our approach but Mick knew we had to adapt and there was a natural progression over time,” Henry recalls.

“A lot of us hadn’t played in the Premier League before, so we didn’t have a blueprint about how we were going to set about it.