Michael Jacobs recalls Wolves title winning season and his Brentford 'cracker'

“It’s a goal for Wolves, and it’s come from Michael Jacobs,” he would begin.

“Doubtless it was a cracker.”

And Jacobs loved it.

“I was only talking about this with my Mum the other day,” he reveals.

“I think he carried on doing it most games when I scored.

“It probably helped that I only scored every few games and wasn’t like a striker scoring every week – that could have got a bit tiresome!”

It’s nearly ten years since a couple of Jacobs’ crackers popped up to win a pivotal game for Wolves.

And it prompted an upsurge in something of a rivalry which has developed with Friday’s FA Cup opponents, due more to familiarity than either geography or any particular sense of needle.

That all stems from the time the two clubs were promoted from League One a decade ago, after which the Bees then later followed the Molineux Men from Championship to Premier League.

Looking back further, never the twain had the two met for 38 years between 1947 and the opening day of 1985/86, when Neil Edwards scored on his Wolves debut in a 2-1 defeat at Griffin Park before Dean Edwards notched in the Molineux return when Brentford won 4-1.

That season saw Wolves complete their miserably unstoppable plummet from top division to bottom, but, inspired by Steve Bull, they redressed the balance somewhat in the following years.

And that included against Brentford, with Bull notching six goals in the following five fixtures between the two, of which Wolves won three, including in the Sherpa Van Trophy enroute to Wembley success in 1988.

Since the Bees completed the league double in 2015/16, Wolves have been the more dominant, winning six and drawing two of the most recent nine fixtures.

That sequence has included several memorable away trips, notably two late goals from Matt Doherty and Helder Costa when Wolves really needed three points under Paul Lambert, a Ruben Neves winner under Bruno Lage, and, of course, the club’s biggest ever Premier League away win achieved at the Gtech Community Stadium just last week! You’re only as good as your last (away) game!

But back to Jacobs’ crackers, and rewinding a decade, when there was a particularly lively and memorable encounter – certainly from a Wolves point of view – during that season when both deservedly surged to automatic promotion from League One.

It would later prove to be a very unhappy stomping ground for Kenny Jackett as Wolves were beaten 4-0 and 3-0 on their next two trips to Brentford. Painful.

But on this day, back in February of 2014, things were different. Memorably different.

“It felt like a really big game,” Jacobs, now with Chesterfield, recalled this week. He wasn’t wrong.

Going into it, Brentford topped League One, their haul of 66 points from 30 games putting them two ahead of both Leyton Orient in second and Wolves in third.

The Bees were flying, 19 league games unbeaten, but Wolves were waking from their Gillingham slumber, responding to a disappointing defeat in the first week of January to win five in succession, scoring 12 and conceding just one.

The atmosphere was properly crackling in West London that afternoon amongst the 11,309 packed into Griffin Park.

A tight and tense first half was ended when James Henry flicked Kevin McDonald’s cross into the top left corner of Brentford’s net, and a tight and tense second half reached its finale when Jacobs first ran onto Bakary Sako’s exquisite pass to beat the keeper and then fired home with precision from the edge of the box after good work from Sako and Scott Golbourne on the left.

Throw in some added spice when the Brentford fans were unhappy about the celebrations of the Wolves bench, not to mention the chinos at the station after the game – if you know, you know – and it was certainly one of those awayday afternoons to remember.

“We were going toe-to-toe with Brentford at the top of the division and it was set up for a really good game,” says Jacobs.