- Wolves drew 2-2 against Crystal Palace in the Premier League on Saturday
- Gary O’Neil’s team has failed to win any of its first ten games
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A win over Southampton on Saturday could be enough to keep Gary O’Neil in business, but it will require extensive surgery to resolve the issues that threaten to send Wolves into the Championship.
Blame it on a brutal fixture list, blame it on rough VAR calls or blame it on the loss of Pedro Neto and Max Kilman, last season’s best players, in the summer.
The reality is that very few managers can survive a run of one win in twenty, especially when the cost of leaving the Premier League is so high.
Yet O’Neil is not the only guilty party. In addition to their under-pressure manager, the spotlight should also be focused on chairman Jeff Shi and sporting director Matt Hobbs.
Since sacking Nuno Espirito Santo at the end of the 2020/21 season, Shi’s approach to hiring and managing managers has been haphazard at best.
Gary O’Neil’s Wolves drew 2-2 with Crystal Palace in the Premier League on Saturday
Shi replaced Nuno with Bruno Lage but did not support him in January 2022 when things were going well for Wolves. Wolves then spent £120m on some of the players Lage wanted in the summer of 2022, only to sack him in October.
Julen Lopetegui came and went for nine months and hinted that he had been left in the dark about the club’s financial position. If you’re paying a manager £8m a year it’s probably worth giving him an idea of what the books look like.
Now, just two months after signing a new four-year contract, O’Neil is fighting to save his job after Saturday’s chaotic 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace. For a coach who prides himself on attention to detail, the fundamental defensive mistakes his team makes reflect poorly on him, especially against a depleted Palace team missing key figures such as Eberechi Eze, Adam Wharton and Jefferson Lerma.
Yet O’Neil is not the only one to blame. Hobbs became sporting director in November 2022 and has had some success in the market, most notably the £15.7m signing for Brazilian midfielder Joao Gomes, who was excellent on Saturday. Jorgen Strand Larsen, on loan from Celta Vigo, scored four goals in ten games in a struggling side. Mario Lemina and Craig Dawson were fantastic.
However, his failure to sign a centre-back to compensate for the loss of Kilman was bizarre and the jury is out on some of his other signings. As O’Neil acknowledged, Wolves do not have the financial power to sign proven Premier League players. Instead, they try to bring in young players from abroad with potential resale value.
Wolves are bottom of the table and have failed to win their first ten matches
Brighton and Brentford are leading the way in this market. It’s hard to imagine any of these clubs signing Jean-Ricner Bellegarde, Boubacar Traore or Enso Gonzalez. And O’Neil doesn’t seem to trust Andre, Pedro Lima or Rodrigo Gomes, who arrived last summer.
O’Neil knows the game. If Wolves don’t beat Southampton, he might not survive the international break. However, if the hierarchy think they can put everything right by sacking the manager, Wolves are in an even bigger mess than we thought.
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