- Wolves drew 2-2 with Crystal Palace in the Premier League on Saturday
- Gary O’Neil’s side have failed to win any of their opening 10 matches
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A win over Southampton on Saturday might be enough to keep Gary O’Neil in a job but it will take extensive surgery to correct the problems that threaten to send Wolves into the Championship.
Blame it on a ferocious fixture list, blame it on rough VAR calls or blame it on losing Pedro Neto and Max Kilman, last season’s best players, in the summer.
The reality is that very few managers survive a run of one win in 20, especially when the cost of dropping out of the Premier League is so great.
Yet O’Neil is not the only guilty party. As well as their under-pressure manager, the spotlight should also be trained on chairman Jeff Shi and sporting director Matt Hobbs.
Since he sacked Nuno Espirito Santo at the end of the 2020-21 season, Shi’s approach to hiring and handling managers has been haphazard at best.
Shi replaced Nuno with Bruno Lage but did not back him in January 2022 when Wolves were going well. Wolves then spent £120million on some of the players Lage wanted in summer 2022, only to sack him in October.
Julen Lopetegui came and went inside nine months hinting he had been left in the dark about the club’s financial position. If you’re paying a manager £8million a year, it is probably worth letting him have an idea of what the books look like.
Now barely two months after signing a new four-year deal, O’Neil is fighting to save his job after the chaotic 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace on Saturday.
For a coach who prides himself on attention to detail, the basic defensive errors his team make reflect badly on him, especially against a depleted Palace side missing key men like 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, notably the £15.7million signing of Brazilian midfielder Joao Gomes, who was excellent on Saturday.
Jorgen Strand Larsen, on loan from Celta Vigo, has four goals in 10 matches in a struggling side. Mario Lemina and Craig Dawson gave been superb.
His failure to sign a centre-back to compensate for the loss of Kilman was bizarre, though, 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 overseas with possible resale value.
Brighton and Brentford lead the way in this market. It is hard to imagine either of those clubs signing Jean-Ricner Bellegarde, Boubacar Traore or Enso Gonzalez. And O’Neil does yet not appear to trust Andre, Pedro Lima or Rodrigo Gomes, who arrived last summer.
O’Neil knows the game. If Wolves do not beat Southampton, he may not survive the international break. If the hierarchy think they can put everything right by sacking the manager, though, Wolves are in an even bigger mess than we thought.
