Success In The Dug-Out, Far And Wide
Vitor Pereira…back in Premier League employment.
Has there ever been a time like this for having so many former Wolves personnel in managerial and coaching positions in Great Britain and beyond?
From Glasgow in the north to California in the west, to Hungary in the east and New Zealand in the very distant south, we have counted 19 currently in situ in the dug-out, with some of them more obvious and high-profile than others.
Few Wolves fans will have missed the news that Vitor Pereira – sacked at Molineux in early November a month and a half after signing a new three-year contract – has just become the fourth man this season to take charge at Nottingham Forest.
And, starting with the home game against Liverpool this afternoon, he will dive straight into a survival scrap in which one of his Molineux and City Ground predecessors, Nuno Espirito Santo, is already an arch rival.
Nuno remains at the helm of another of the endangered clubs, West Ham, while Tottenham, a few places higher in the Premier League, were briefly linked with Robbie Keane recently before installing Igor Tudor as interim boss following the sacking of Thomas Frank.
Keane is still with Hungarian champions Ferencvaros, who are again pushing hard near the top of the table and aiming to bring him a third League championship triumph in three seasons. Wolves’ 1972 UEFA Cup semi-final opponents are also contesting a play-off tie against Lodogorets in the Europa League.
And one of the Irishman’s late 1990s Molineux contemporaries, Keith Andrews, remains on a high at Brentford in his first no 1 job, leading them into the fifth round of the FA Cup as well as into contention for a European place via the League despite yesterday’s defeat against Brighton.
We are also continuing to keep an eye on the movements of several relatively recent occupants of the head coach’s job at Wolves.
While Bruno Lage has been jobless since being sacked by Benfica in the autumn, Julen Lopetegui is coach to the Qater national team and Gary O’Neil has Strasbourg sitting in eighth place in France’s top flight following a 2-2 draw at Marseille in their latest game.
Much closer to home, Dave Edwards’s promising start as part of Shrewsbury’s new backroom team continued with yesterday’s 2-0 win at Accrington and a Wolves midfielder from a decade earlier, Alex Rae, is enjoying life as assistant head coach at title-chasing Partick, who are clear in second place in the Scottish Championship.
Neil Emblen….part of a sizeable former Wolves contingent who are employed overseas.
We have, of course, brought our readers frequent news of Keith Downing (at Derby with John Eustace), Rob Kelly (at Reading with Leam Richardson), Mike Stowell (at Plymouth with Tom Cleverly) and Paul Cook (manager at Chesterfield) and are pleased to report that all four clubs are performing promisingly.
Jamie Smith is prominent in the backroom at League One bottom club Port Vale and, in less senior roles, Kevin Foley is at Luton and Kevin McDonald at Exeter.
Much further afield, Neill Collins is in charge at Sacramento Republic and Neil Emblen is a few hours further inland at Colorado Rapids. Paul Simpson left his post with Jamaica last year to take on a coaching role in American age-group football.
But the furthest-flung of all these former Wolves players is Emblen’s close friend, Darren Bazeley, who is counting down to the World Cup finals with New Zealand this summer.