100 Owners: The Bhatti Brothers at Wolverhampton Wanderers

In July 1986, the official receiver was called into Molineux for the second time in four years. Wolverhampton Wanderers, a founder member of the Football League and a club that had lifted the League Cup just six years earlier, had debts of almost £2 million and were on their way into the Fourth Division. Three of the four stands at their stadium were closed on safety grounds. For a club that entered the decade with grand ambitions, the situation was catastrophic.

Wolves supporters watching their team slide into the third tier this month have been vocal in their anger towards owner Steve Morgan and chief executive Jez Moxey. It is a painful time. Yet for older fans, this precipitous fall will evoke chilling memories of an era when the club came within thirty minutes of extinction, not once, but twice.

The roots of the 1980s crisis lay in the 1970s. Molineux was crumbling, and the Safety of Sports Grounds Act forced the club’s hand. In 1978, plans were drawn up to replace the Molineux Road Stand. The result, opened in August 1979, was the impressive John Ireland Stand, boasting 9,500 seats and forty-two executive boxes. It was also ruinously expensive, costing a reported £3 million, more than double the British transfer record of the time. While its first season coincided with a League Cup triumph, this success was a false dawn. By the summer of 1982, Wolves were relegated and facing bankruptcy with debts of £2.6 million.

A False Dawn

With the club on the brink, a consortium fronted by former Molineux legend Derek Dougan stepped in to save it. Dougan was installed as chief executive, but the money came from two Saudi financiers, Mahmud and Mohammad Bhatti of Allied Properties. The immediate future looked bright. In their first season, 1982-83, Wolves won promotion back to the First Division.

The revival was short-lived. The following season was a disaster, with the team failing to win any of its first fourteen matches. A shocking victory away to eventual champions Liverpool in January 1984 was a rare highlight in a season that ended with Wolves finishing bottom of the table. It was the first of three consecutive relegations.

Off the pitch, the situation was just as bleak. The Bhatti brothers’ interest seemed to lie not in the football club but in a grand redevelopment of the Molineux site. Their plans, which included a supermarket on land designated for “leisure purposes only,” were rejected by the local council. It was later suggested that even if permission had been granted, they lacked the capital to see the project through. With their primary objective thwarted, the Bhattis appeared to lose interest. Derek Dougan left the club in January 1985, and the freefall accelerated.

The Killing of a Club

Wolves finished bottom of the Second Division in 1985 with just eight wins. The 1985-86 season in the Third Division was even worse. Investment in the team was cut to the bone, and with the debt on the John Ireland Stand proving difficult to service, the club unravelled. Under manager Sammy Chapman, the team shipped seventeen goals in five matches during September 1985 alone. Crowds dwindled to an average of just over 4,000.

The stadium itself became a symbol of the decay. In the wake of the Bradford City fire in May 1985, safety inspections led to the condemnation of two stands at Molineux. With only two sides of the ground open, the vast John Ireland Stand sat thirty yards from the pitch, separated by a blank expanse of grass. The club was relegated again, finishing twenty-third in the Third Division.

Discontent among supporters had boiled over. Former manager Bill McGarry, who had returned in September 1985, quit after just two months.

I am not going to be party to the killing of one of the finest clubs in the world.

Fans protested in the town centre, and a meeting of seven hundred people at the Wolverhampton Civic Centre concluded that forcing the club’s owners into a winding-up order was the only way forward. George Howells, the Mayor, captured the mood: “If the Bhattis could see Wolves off and develop that sacred piece of turf at Molineux for their own interests, they would do it.” By July 1986, with the club facing another receivership, the enormous South Bank terrace was also closed on safety grounds.

Saved by the Council

It was the local authority that ultimately rode to the rescue. Wolverhampton Council, led by Councillor John Bird, purchased Molineux and the surrounding land. A deal was struck with Gallagher Estates and the Asda supermarket chain, who agreed to pay off the club’s debts in return for planning permission for a superstore. The club's derelict Molineux Hotel and Castlecroft training ground were sold to the council for £1.1 million.

The Bhatti brothers were gone. Wolves had been saved, but they were a Fourth Division club. They lost in the play-offs in their first season at that level, but the shoots of recovery were there. A young striker named Steve Bull, signed for £50,000 from West Bromwich Albion in November 1986, began a prolific scoring run. Back-to-back promotions in 1988 and 1989 returned the club to the second tier, and the arrival of Sir Jack Hayward as benefactor saw Molineux rebuilt into a modern stadium.

The Bhattis’ ownership was a parable for the grim state of English football in the mid-1980s. They were property speculators who appeared to see a football club as little more than a vehicle for a development deal. When that failed, their neglect, coupled with the wider malaise in the game, almost destroyed one of the Football League’s great names. As the club prepares for life in League One, older supporters know better than anyone that when a club is in a downward spiral, things can always get worse before they get better.