One of worst things about Lennie Lawrence's City sides for me was that they were such slow starters, but, for a while at least, Dave Jones' team proved to be the complete opposite and there were just three minutes played when the front pair combined to give City a surprising lead when Lee nodded across goal for Jerome to apply the finishing touch with his head from close range.
Whether Wolves would have been quite as positive in their approach if they hadn't conceded so early is a moot point, but they had no option but to do so now and they soon started causing City lots of problems with some fine build up play. However, despite a huge number of goal attempts, a combination of good defending and goalkeeping, poor finishing and sheer luck kept the visitors score sheet blank at the interval - in fact, with City also looking dangerous when they could get forward, they would have felt disappointed to have only scored the once.
Early in the second half, City took what looked to be a decisive grip on the game when Koumas played in Jerome who scored from the edge of the box with the aid of a slight deflection off a defender. After that the game continued along the same path of Wolves generally dominating but City breaking dangerously - it was if the traditional approaches of home and away teams were reversed. City continued to have some real hairy moments at the back, but they survived and it began to look increasingly as if they were going to hang on for a great victory against opponents whose defeat in their previous match was their first in twenty one league games.
However, with just over a quarter of an hour left, Neil Alexander let a ball he seemed to have in his grasp squirm loose to allow substitute Leon Clarke to score. If it had been desperate at the back at times before for City, now their goalmouth resembled the Alamo on occasions as Wolves poured forward, but, City's lead survived until the eighty ninth minute when a great intervention by Glenn Loovens prevented what looked a certain goal. Loovens was injured in the process and when play eventually started with a Wolves throw in, the fourth official's board showed that there was four minutes added time left. Whether the team's concentration had been broken by the injury delay or not I don't know, but the defence failed to clear the long throw and the ball dropped to centre back Lescott who hammered past Alexander from close range. To their credit, City tried to win the game after that, but with Ferretti on for a first league appearance in place of Lee, they couldn't manage it and a very entertaining match finished 2-2.
Of course it was disappointing for City to have let a two goal lead slip so late on, but that didn't stop it being a performance that offered encouragement for the future - at least it showed that this new side lacked nothing in terms of commitment - as for Wolves, I remember Glenn Hoddle being bemused as to why his team didn't win and, up to a point, you could see where he was coming from but I would guess that the game summarised his teams season as they had shown a distinct lack of a killer instinct throughout.
Thoughts now turned to the closing of the transfer window in four days time and one other position where City appeared dangerously short of cover was left back. This had been proved against Wolves when Chris Barker cried off with an injury and Joe Ledley had been pitched in for his first game of the season in a position he hadn't occupied for years. Ledley, who had missed the first few games and pre season training as he recovered from a broken metatarsal bone in his foot sustained at the back end of the previous season (did these bones exist in the last century as nobody ever seemed to break then back then!), did a decent job at left back after a difficult start but, I don‘t think anyone thought it was anything more than a one off situation a the time. However, no new left back arrived at the club and Ledley was to finish the season in that position prompting a feeling that Dave Jones may see the players long term future in that position.
So if no left back arrived before the transfer window closed, surely a striker would and so he did when, with about seven hours to go before the deadline, City signed Leeds‘ Micheal Ricketts on a four month loan deal. If this had happened in 2002, it could only have done so because City were amongst the elite teams in Britain - at that time Ricketts was a free scoring Premiership striker with Bolton who had just made his debut for England, but since then it had been downhill all the way for him. A big money move to Middlesbrough did nothing for Ricketts' career and the previous summer had seen him sign for relegated Leeds. In thirty two league appearances in 2004/05 for a combination of Leeds and Stoke (where he had a spell on loan), Ricketts' goal return was a big fat zero, so you could see why most supporters seemed to be somewhat underwhelmed by his arrival!
Deadline day also saw a couple of high earners leave the club - Richard Langley, who had certainly had his critics at Ninian Park in a stay where he only showed flashes of his earlier promise, had been training with Crystal Palace for a while, but eventually returned to QPR as his old club bought up the remainder of this contract and Andy Campbell was off loaded to Oxford United for a predictably fruitless four month loan period.
After a weeks break for International matches, Ricketts rather surprisingly replaced Lee for the trip to Turf Moor who were struggling at the bottom of the table a the time. However it took the hosts all of forty five seconds to score as Wade Elliott found the net. City's response was impressive though and within seven minutes they were level when Jerome burst past Sinclair in pursuit of a Ricketts header to equalise with a fine angled drive. With Jason Koumas now beginning to show what he was capable of on a more regular basis, City were getting on top when Elliott again put the home side in front with a lovely volley after twenty three minutes only for Glenn Loovens to level it up again with his first City goal just before half time when he nodded in a Koumas corner.
Things got a bit quieter after such a breathless first half, but what didn't change was the danger the impressive Jerome was causing every time he had the chance to run at the Burnley defence and, after seventy two minutes, City got the reward their second half superiority deserved when Sinclair brought the City striker down in the box for a penalty which Darren Purse easily knocked past Welsh International keeper Danny Coyne. City were now on course for a first away league win of the campaign, but they reckoned without James O'Connor who had caused them such heartbreak in the Play Off Semi Final against Stoke three years earlier and the Irishmen rescued a point for his current team when he headed past Alexander with two minutes to go.
A second successive high scoring draw in which City squandered a lead late on tested whether you belonged in the drink half full or half empty category of City supporter, but the next few matches were to show that those who chose to point to seven goals scored in their last three matches rather than four points dropped in two games were closer to the truth on this occasion.
City now faced a spell of three home matches in eight days and, by the end of them, their supporters were scouring the record books to find out the last time they finished such a sequence with a 100% winning record - I didn't know the precise answer to that question, but I'm sure my response of “bloody years ago” wasn't far wrong!
The first of these games turned out to be a nondescript affair against Leicester in which the decisive moment came as early as the eighth minute when Ricketts headed in Koumas' corner. After that City didn't threaten much, but they still were edging out a very ordinary Leicester team until the closing quarter of the match when manager Craig Levein made a series of substitutions that changed the balance of the game. After that Leicester were dominant and City had to ride their luck at times (sub Hume had a goal disallowed by a marginal offside decision and striker DeVries missed an absolute sitter in the dying moments) before claiming their victory courtesy of a first league clean sheet of the season.
Although City played better four days later (I thought our first half display was the best of the season so far) against a Crystal Palace side widely tipped to make an Immediate return to the Premiership, the match followed a very similar pattern as the previous one. Just as against Leicester, City finished up 1-0 winners thanks to a first half goal, after twenty six minutes, from Ricketts (this time he tapped in Cooper's pass after visiting keeper Kiraly made a mess of Jerome's cross). The similarities between the matches continued after the break as well, although if Whitley's excellent volley had gone in instead of rebounding off the post things might have been very different, with Palace getting increasingly on top after Jobi McAnuff replaced Riihilahti around the hour mark. For the third successive home match City found themselves being overrun in midfield for spells, but, once again, the side showed their spirit and character to grind out a good win - Palace manager Ian Dowie claimed a point was the least his team deserved, but, he seemed to base that opinion solely on what happened in the last thirty minutes, for the hour before that, City had been dominant.
Next up was a League Cup match with Macclesfield. On paper this looked a simple task for a confident City team against lower division visitors with a 100% losing away record in the league at the time, but, with squad players like Margetson and Fleetwood getting a run out, their first half performance wreaked of a side who thought they only had to turn up to win. After only five minutes, Martin Bullock the visitor's impressive winger burst past Purse to score easily, but a labouring City team offered very little in response for the rest of a first half dominated by Macclesfield. Things improved slightly after the break and Joe Ledley (who had been used in central midfield since the Wolves game) levelled things up after fifty minutes with a neat finish from the edge of the box. Ferretti was given another run out in place of Fleetwood but to no avail and it looked for all the world like the game would go into extra time, before City's other substitute Jason Koumas curled in a delightful twenty five yard free kick with nine minutes to go to clinch a very hard fought 2-1 win.