Welcome to the annual dice roll, only this time it feels more redundant than ever
We are told that family reasons are one cause for Rob Edwards’ decision to leave Middlesbrough for Wolverhampton Wanderers. Which is just as well, so the dark joke goes amongst Wolves supporters: there aren’t many other sensible justifications.
Rarely has a managerial appointment caused less of a stir. The brutal negativity of the Gary O’Neil rumours have abated but been replaced by an apathy that is just as damning as supporters wave their arms at the mess. This is like buying a new barbecue for the back garden when the roof is leaking and all the windows are cracked.
Five years ago, Wolves finished seventh in the Premier League and played a single-tie Europa League quarter-final against Sevilla. This is relevant not just as hindsight nor bleak nostalgia.
Wolves were something, once. They have been through the full Premier League experience and don’t feel much better for it.
The owners once talked of taking Wolves to the Champions League and turning them into one of the world’s biggest clubs. The accusation is that they oversaw highs and then allowed the falls to become the new norm. Leaders make their reputation by their response to adversity.
File photo dated 04-10-2025 of Rob Edwards. Wolves are set to announce Rob Edwards as their new manager on a three-and-a-half year contract, the PA news agency understands. Issue date: Sunday November 9, 2025. PA Photo. Photo credit should read Steven Paston/PA Wire.
Rob Edwards is answering Wolves’ SOS call (Photo: PA)
Three years ago, 13 points from 18 games and a managerial change. A year ago, 16 points from 23 games and a managerial change. Both times Wolves escaped with a mid-season managerial appointment, but you don’t get to keep rolling a die and banking upon a guaranteed number.
Each time, Wolves have depended upon calamity clubs (Leeds United, Leicester City) or promoted club underperformance. Each time, frankly, they got lucky. Each time, eventually, the manager left with serious reservations about the ambition above them.
Edwards has longer to get it right – he may only need 1.4 points per game to land a third Wolves escape. They possess two of Brazil’s central midfield and a striker who scored 14 league goals last season.
They are also being over-punished according to the numbers and underperforming their own attacking metrics. There’s one obvious explanation for that: they’re playing very badly near both goals.
On the pitch, Wolves are a maelstrom of half-solutions and established problems. Vitor Pereira had a full pre-season and yet, in 11 games, Wolves have picked eight different midfield combinations, five captains, four different starting strikers, four different starting left wingers and three formations. At least it’s the season for two turtle doves to play at centre-half.
Let’s continue the tenuous avian analogies, because chickens have come home to roost. For a while when you visited Molineux during the bad times, anger was potent but shared out: at referees, at the Premier League, at a PSR system that Wolves adhered to but other clubs didn’t or found creative ways to avoid.
Now that is all replaced by vitriol towards internal incompetence. They have given up blaming anyone else.
“It’s inevitable when you see the thing you love so much being decimated after grand promises and a visual taste of European football,” says Dan, a host of Wolves Fancast. “It has become sickening. All the time we hope that things can’t get worse, but we know that they can.”
Since June 2023, Wolves have sold (or seen leave on a free) Matheus Cunha, Nelson Semedo, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Pablo Sarabia, Ruben Neves, Matheus Nunes, Nathan Collins, Raul Jimenez, Max Kilman and Pedro Neto, effectively a 4-2-3-1 of relatively high-class players. Those sales generated £320m.
Let’s be blunt: their replacements have been far less effective and that is where the bulk of the supporter unrest stems from: Jackson Tchatchoua (for Semedo), David Moller Wolfe (for Ait-Nouri), Fer Lopez (for Sarabia), Tolu Arokodare (for Cunha), Marshall Munetsi (for Neto), Emmanuel Agbadou (for Kilman) and Jean-Ricner Bellegarde for Neves.
The great scandal here is not that Wolves have sold so many players, but that they have spent a net loss on transfer fees since 2022 and this is the end result. They have sold players below peak value and reinvested in potential that hasn’t yet paid off. And that’s being generous.
What grates most is that Wolves appear to be ignoring this reality in favour of unwarranted optimism. Executive chairman Jeff Shi conducted a post transfer window interview (after Wolves had lost their first three league games of the season), in which he claimed: “All the signings we made should be OK to play in the Premier League, otherwise if you need one year to play in the Premier League, why are we signing you?”
Cut to 11 league games into the season and Wolves’ six summer signings have started a combined 24 league matches. Bar the seemingly dependable Ladislav Krejci, every other signing represents a significant downgrade.
In that same interview, Shi insisted that Wolves’ aim was still to compete in the league, play in Europe and win a trophy. But in what world is that realistic with this squad? He namechecked Crystal Palace last season, but where is the Eberechi Eze, Jean-Philippe Mateta, Marc Guehi or Daniel Munoz here?
Where unrequited love, absent ambition and a blindness to the serious issues of recruitment meet, anger forms and is only ever replaced by forlornness when nothing improves.
Were this the first time Wolves supporters had seen this show, they might be inclined to forgive or keep faith. But negative experiences leave only watermarks and long memories.
“An evident air of apathy that has now set in within the fanbase,” says Dan. “There is a severe disconnect with the owners, the chairman, and the game-by-game squad that they have provided the supporters.”
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Edwards’ best hope might be the miserably low expectations that have engulfed Molineux’s stands on matchday because even one quick win could shift the mood. That nobody really sees it as a possibility is indicative of the abject decline of a club who once had a grasp on their own future.
When you do these pieces, you set yourself a broad spectrum to fully gauge the breadth of fan opinion. Here, the negativity is so genuinely emphatic – it is only November – that it slaps you in the face. I get it: the only good news stories end in tears and then only the tears are left.
And so the last – and bleakest – word goes to them: “As daunting as it may sound, our fears aren’t relegation,” Dan says. “It’s beating Derby’s unwanted league points record and then the nightmare of what may come post-relegation. We could easily be a Reading.”