page_title: Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C.
section_title: FA Cup success and world war years (1893–1950)
hierarchical_section_title: Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C. / History / FA Cup success and world war years (1893–1950)
caption_attribution_description: English: The Wolverhampton Wanderers team that won the FA Cup. The team poses with the trophy (left).
context_page_description: Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, commonly known as Wolves, is a professional association football club based in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England. Formed as St. Luke's F.C. in 1877, the club has played at Molineux Stadium since 1889 and competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football, after winning the 2017–18 EFL Championship. Having finished in seventh place in both the 2018–19 Premier League, their first season in the top tier in seven years, and the 2019–20 season, Wolves competed in the 2019–20 UEFA Europa League, reaching the quarter-finals, the first time the club had qualified for a European tournament for 39 years.
  Wolves was one of the founding members of the Football League in 1888. The club in 2019–20 enjoyed its 65th season of top flight football; Wolves's longest continuous period in the top tier was 26 consecutive seasons in the 33 years between 1932 and 1965. In the 1950s, Wolves were English League champions three times, under the management of Stan Cullis. Wolves have also finished League runners-up on five occasions, most recently in 1959–60.
context_section_description: Wolves lifted the FA Cup for the first time in 1893 when they beat Everton 1–0, and made a third FA Cup Final appearance in 1896. The club added a second FA Cup Final triumph (a 3–1 win against Newcastle United) to their 1893 success in 1908, two years after having dropped into the Second Division for the first time. After struggling during the years either side of the First World War to regain their place in the top division (a period that was punctuated by another FA Cup Final appearance in 1921), the club suffered a further relegation in 1923, entering the Third Division (North), which they won at the first attempt. Eight years after returning to the Second Division, Wolves regained their top-flight status as Second Division Champions under Major Frank Buckley after twenty-six years away. With Buckley at the helm the team became established as one of the leading club sides in England in the years leading up to the Second World War, as they finished runners-up in the league twice in succession (1937–38 & 1938–39), as well as reaching the last pre-war FA Cup Final, in which they suffered a shock defeat to Portsmouth. In 1937–38 Wolves came within a whisker of winning the club's first English league title: a win in the side's last game away to Sunderland would have clinched things, but in the event Wolves lost 0–1 and thus ended the campaign one point behind the eventual champions, Arsenal. One of the things Major Buckley and his Wolves side attracted a lot of attention for in the last two full seasons prior to the outbreak of the Second World War was Buckley's insistence that his players be injected with monkey gland extract to enhance their stamina and performance, a practice that the Football League disapproved of but did not prohibit.
  When league football resumed after the Second World War, Wolves suffered yet another final day failure in the First Division. Just as in 1938, victory in their last match would have won the title but a 2–1 loss to title rivals Liverpool gave the championship to the Merseysiders instead. This game had been the last in a Wolves shirt for Stan Cullis, and a year later he became manager of the club. In Cullis's first season in charge, he led Wolves to a first major honour in 41 years as they beat Leicester City to lift the FA Cup, and a year later, only goal average prevented Wolves winning the league title.
caption: Wolves' 1893 FA Cup-winning team
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