John Riordan

IT’S easy to sneer at Kevin Doyle’s switch from Reading to Wolves. Last summer he thought he was on the verge of joining Martin O’Neill at Aston Villa. Barely six months into his first Premier League season in 2006/07, a year that yielded 13 top flight goals, Alex Ferguson’s head was turned.

But then relegation followed by a promotion bid that fell away to zilch put the brakes on what had been a stratospheric rise for the former Cork City player. And the sum total of all that effort: a transfer to a potential yo-yo club?

So has the Irish international climbed a small ladder only to place himself a couple of dice throws away from slipping back down another snake? Or does he in fact know what he’s doing?

The Wexford man has a couple of valuable and underrated traits so sadly lacking in 99% of footballers around these parts: intelligence and an intimidating down-to-earthness.

When I was attempting to confirm this story last night, one source close to the player chased away any doubts that Mick McCarthy may have spiked his drink. “Kevin made no bones about returning to the top flight but he had his choice of clubs simply because he is so easy to work with and these days, that’s a rare commodity that managers value.”

But of course footballing ability is paramount and Doyle has not become a bad player despite just scoring twice since December. The fact is that he was playing in a Reading side that wasn’t even a shadow of the one he thrived in. Injuries didn’t help either. Now he is just relieved to be back in the relatively composed Premier League (compared to the aggressive dog-eat-dog of the Championship).

"We finished a point or maybe even a goal away from Europe when we went up with Reading," he said this morning. "I don't know why we did so well but we all went in there wide eyed and excited and fresh to play and that got us through.

"It was a bit like it is with Wolves now in that none of us had played in the Premier League before. When you're in there and you realise that while it's difficult it's not a completely different world I think you realise you can do well there.”

It’s day one of the transfer window and McCarthy has landed an impressive catch. Add in the millions of chairman Steve Morgan and the club’s bona fide status as a sleeping giant, then his capture will be a great selling point to potential targets.

In the anarchy of the Premier League’s bottom 16, nothing is guaranteed. But maybe Kevin Doyle knows what he’s doing.