Steve Bull identifies where Wolves should strengthen, makes huge Kalajdzic claim and talks Wayne Rooney

In the final part of a Ladbrokes Fanzone exclusive, Steve Bull talks about where Wolves need to strengthen, their season so far and Wayne Rooney’s move to Birmingham.

Click on the links for part one in which he chatted about his love for the Black Country, part two for his thoughts on Pedro Neto and his shock prediction to win the Premier League, part three for his take on the Gary Lineker fight rumour, Italia 90 and his England debut, and part four about the four clubs he could have joined.

Where should Wolves strengthen?

I always say you’ve got to have a strong backbone in a side. A tough central midfielder, two centre-backs, a solid goalkeeper and a goalscorer. The rest of the team can just flake off that. We’re starting to build that backbone now. Jose Sa is great, but I’d like someone else to push him for his position.

We’ve got Max Kilman and Craig Dawson at the back, who is an absolute rock, by the way. He can pull out trees out, he can – he’s a proper rock-hard defender. I want to see another midfielder come in too. We’ve got Mario Lemina and Joao Gomes but I want another player to come and add some depth. And then, the area it seems every team is trying to build on, no matter what division…a striker that scores goals!

Whatever you do, don’t say “put your boots back on!” I get that a lot. if I had a pound for every time someone said that to me, I wouldn’t be doing interviews like this!

🗣️ Steve Bull has made his predictions for this week's 1-2-Free game!📷

Can you do better?

— Ladbrokes (@Ladbrokes) October 13, 2023

Hwang Hee-chan has been brilliant so far this season, when you think he’s had to come in and fill Raul Jimenez’s boots. The way we play at the moment, we’ve got Pedro Neto on one side, Hwang on the left and Matheus Cunha through the middle. But Hwang, in particular, has really come into his own this season. Him and Neto are building a real understanding. It didn’t feel like they were on the same hymn sheet before this season, but things look like they’ve improved now and I’m really happy with him.

We still need that natural striker, though. To be fair to him, when Sasa Kalajdzic came on against Villa, he really put himself about, and I actually thought he could be the one who might do the job for us.

Draw with Villa was fair result

I think, at the end of the day, it was a fair result. I could say that when we went 1-0 up, we should have got at least another, because we had two really good chances but didn’t put them away. That would have settled the game down and we could have been looking at a different outcome, but Villa settled into the game in the end. In the first 15 minutes, they took the game to us, but after that we dominated things before the break. They came out and equalised just after we got the opener, and then late on we’re down to 10 men and all of a sudden we’re holding on for a point. It was a backs-to-the-wall job, but if we’d have lost, I’d have been a bit gutted. They left with a point, we took a point, on the whole I’d say it was probably a fair result.

I want to see Albion, Villa, Blues and Wolves in the Premier League!

I keep an eye on all the Midlands clubs. Personally, I’d like to see them all in the Premier League, because you’d just have so may local derbies to look out for throughout the season. But it’s not going to be the case for many years, I don’t think.

We used to be down there where Blues and Albion are now, but we’ve turned the table. With Blues, I think they’re doing alright at the moment. I’ve watched a few of their games and they’ve looked really sharp. John Eustace had really got them going and then he got the sack – it’s a tragedy.

I know he was patting the badge after the third goal went in against Albion on Friday night. I’ve never been a fan of that, to be honest. As a player or a manager, I don’t like seeing it. I don’t think it’s right, because you’ve got people kissing the badge and showing their love for your club one minute and then the next they’re off for more money. I’ve never done it in my life. I never kissed the Wolves badge at all. You repay the supporters by giving them everything on the pitch.

There’s going to be a lot of pressure on Wayne Rooney especially with everything going on behind the scenes. He might not have been brilliant in America, but he didn’t do too bad a job at Derby. You wonder how much he wanted to be out in America, how homesick he might have been.

He’s trying his hardest, Rooney, to get his finger in the right pie. If he does well, his goal might eventually be Man United. He might be looking towards that as a possibility, but you’re looking at another five years at least, before you’d say he’s ready for that position. Good luck to him, though.

It was a good game to watch against Albion on Friday, but I’ve got to say, putting everything to one side, that should not have been a penalty. It was never a penalty. It turned the whole game on its head, and it should never have been given, so I totally get Albion’s frustrations there.

Wolves’ season so far? I’ll take it

It’s not been too bad a start to the season, when you think of everything the club has had to deal with this summer: losing a lot of players, the financial situation, the manager leaving. But I think we can safely say it’s going to be a dogfight this season. We still need extra personnel in there. We still need some experience in that team. But there are seven or eight sides in a similar position in the table right now. It’s key that Wolves are at the top of that pile come the end of the season.

If we’d have got the win against Aston Villa last weekend, it would have given us a bigger gap, but at the moment it’s still so close down there. You want to be a good eight or so points clear of the relegation zone, so that you can afford to then drop a few points here and there against some of the bigger teams.

I’ll take with the start that we’ve had, and the new manager who has come in, along with his new staff. He’s still learning about us, just as much as we are about him. All we’ve got to do is roll our sleeves up, get behind the manager, get behind the team and survive this season. And then we’ll kick on next season when we’ve got more money to spend.