Simon Jordan has not held back with his feelings on Rob Edwards for leaving Middlesbrough to take the Wolves job - and is now hoping they’re relegated from the Premier League as a result.
Many Boro fans had been excited to hear the outspoken former Crystal Palace owner’s thoughts on Edwards’ decision to leave Boro after just four months in charge at the Riverside. It follows last week’s rant in which he told Edwards to show some loyalty to Boro, telling him the Wolves job was a bad job to take anyway.
Despite that, Edwards made clear to Boro he wished to discuss the move and disappointed Boro chiefs granted Wolves permission to speak to him as a result. Unsurprisingly, the latest developments drew strong feelings from Jordan, with Edwards’ unveiling at Molineux imminent.
Jordan told talkSport: “You would like to think that someone who had been given an opportunity would have a little bit more integrity. But he doesn’t, so he’s gone to Wolves. I hope he gets what he deserves. I hope Wolves get relegated and he goes down with them and suffers the consequences.
“I think he did remarkably well to get Luton promoted. I watched a documentary that he was part of, and I came away with a completely different impression of him than I had originally. I thought he was a bit of a flake. But then last year, Luton’s team dropped into the relegation zone and got relegated.
“So, he’s lucky to get a great job like Middlesbrough, working for a great chairman like Steve Gibson, who has been unequivocal in his support of Middlesbrough for 30 years. Of course he owes Middlesbrough something. They gave him a three-year contract.
“Now, he’s going to go to a club that I think is a crap job, quite frankly. I think they’re in freefall. I don’t think they have a squad of players that are going to keep them in the Premier League, I don’t think they have a culture motivated to be able to give managers the support they need on the field, because all their best players are being sold left, right and centre.”
This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more
Sky Sports deal
As a previous club owner, Jordan admits he had it himself, as Birmingham City approached and took Steve Bruce from Selhurst Park. He was able to offer insight into how he expects such events went down behind the scenes at Boro - with Jordan known to respect Gibson highly.
“I would imagine the circumstances for Middlesbrough were one of disbelief, initially,” he said. “It’s similar to my situation all those years ago with Steve Bruce and Birmingham. Middlesbrough have got some built-in protections that ultimately mean that Wolves can’t just come along and take him without paying anything, which is what Birmingham tried to do, but they got stopped doing. But they would have been disappointed.
“They would not have been surprised at Wolves making overtures to their manager, what they would have looked for is for their manager to have done precisely what he did in his press conference, which was to distance himself from that particular opportunity and remind himself in the full glaze of the public domain that he was actually in a good job.
“Of course, then what he’s done is the typical thing that most managers do, which is say, ‘Oh, but I’d like to go and have a chat with them’. Once he says that to Middlesbrough, once he says, ‘Actually, I’d like to go and have a chat with them’, then where do you go from there?”