Bom Dia! Welcome back to Noni Madueke’s favourite place on earth, Wolverhampton, where Nick, with the help of super agent Jorge Mendes, has started to overhaul Wolves’ squad with Portuguese talent. They’ve made a great start to the season, but can they keep it up?…

Here’s a reminder of how things are looking. Maximum points from our first six league games and through to the second round of the League Cup, I couldn’t really ask for more.

We’ll jump straight into the action then, starting with a short trip to St. Andrews for a local derby with Birmingham. We Ride our luck throughout, and can’t finish for sh*t. Segers does his best to keep us in it, but he’s eventually beaten with 11 minutes remaining.

It’s a similar story against Man City and our sloppiness is once again punished, as Brad buries his effort midway through the second half. But on his return, Dougie salvages a point with the last kick of the game. Not a bad point, but we’re dethroned and slip to 3rd place.

What do you do after a couple of goal-shy performances? Sign another striker of course! Priced at £500k, his record of 3 in 3 was reason enough for me to ignore his shooting stat of 6.

A chance to bounce back now at 16th-placed Oxford. Coelho rediscovers his shooting boots to give us a slender lead, which we manage to hold on to until the final whistle. New boy Manarte puts himself about after coming off the bench, and gets an encouraging rating of 9.

Signing number fifteen arrives for £400k. He’s in the twilight years of his career, but has scored 5 goals in 4 games back home. The squad is now full, which means no more incomings until someone leaves, so Jorge can take a well-earned break, for now…

League Cup time, and I name an entirely-Portuguese matchday squad against Coventry, which backfires tremendously. I can’t help but wonder if things might have been different if it wasn’t for one of my centre backs getting sent off, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing…

We take our anger out on Charlton. The three subs thing is a right pain in the arse. Valente gets injured and with no defenders on the bench, Cavaco has to play the last 20 minutes at left back, but seems to do ok, and we don’t manage to concede any more goals…

The extent of Valente’s injury is not good…

Next to leave is Steve Sedgley, who joins Lierse of all clubs…

We deliver four bags of Coel to sorry Pompey, and the Frog is also on the score sheet. It helps that we injure their main goal threat on the hour, but even if he was on the pitch, they would have struggled to live with us on this form, and the win takes us up to 2nd place.

We start well against Reading, but go behind as Bowen arrows one straight at the target. We try and try to claw our way back in the second half and all looks lost until Dougie rescues us again. The board say poor result, but are very pleased with me in the end of month report.

Some more defensive cover… A few clubs were after him so hopefully that’s a good sign.

With our chances of progressing slim at best, I go all-Portuguese again for the second leg with Coventry. We fair slightly better than last time, and are not without our chances, but in the end we’re dead and Burrowed…

The Frog gets us off and hopping at Stockport, and Cavaco thinks he’s doubled our lead over his old club but it’s disallowed. Dougie makes it two, and we then throw away our lead in 3 minutes. But Dougie’s not done, and saves us yet again. Where would we be without him?

A table top clash with Sunderland now. We take our eye off the Ball and go behind, but a Dougie double turns it around. We face a Black Cat backlash in the second half and are staring defeat firmly in the face until you know who completes his hat trick to save the day…

Dougie’s a man on a mission at the moment, and he grabs a quick fire brace to get us off and running against Huddersfield before Coelho, who has been a bit quiet lately, scores his first goal in five games late on to seal an emphatic win which consolidates 2nd spot.

It’s a terrible start at 19th-placed Tranmere, where we can’t keep up with the Jones, and go behind. An inspired Steve Simonsen in the home goal isn’t helping our cause, and John Aldridge hammers the final nail into the coffin at the end of a day to forget on Merseyside…

This really is not good news. He’s been solid…

I act immediately, releasing Robbie Keane to make way for this guy, who I nickname “Vu”. Hopefully I can get a tune out of him…

Our worst performance of the season comes at Carrow Road, where The Canaries give us a good pecking. We give away several cheep goals (ok, enough of the bird puns now), and the only plus on a dismal day in Norfolk is that Manarte gets his first goal of the season. Next.

Bonus fun fact about Keith O’Neill… I once saw him at a Ronnie O’Sullivan exhibition, where he was the winning bidder of the opportunity to play a frame against the Rocket, which he obviously lost…

After such a terrible display, surely a home game with the 13th-placed team in the league is just what you need to get back on track, right?… Wrong! I could of course be wrong, and Port Vale could just be a Bogie team, but we’ve now conceded 15 goals in 6 games…

The last thing you need after three defeats on the spin is a game against a team two places above you in the table, but here we are. I can handle Dean Saunders putting them ahead on the stroke of half time, but you know things are bad when a defender scores twice…

Those last four games haven’t gone unnoticed by the board…

So here’s where that leaves us. The optimist in me says that it looks worse than it is. We’re only a point off the play off spots, and there’s a 10-point gap between us and 9th-placed Port Vale, so it could be worse…

A disappointing end to the week, but we were riding on the crest of a wave and had to come crashing down at some point. We must also remember that conceding lots of goals is a risk you take when playing the 2-3-1-2-2 formation.

Join me next week, as games against Stoke, fierce rivals West Brom, Swindon and Forest will take us to the halfway point of the season. See you then. Adeus!