Ultimately, you are not going to see Wolves’ 25/26 season as a DVD in the club shop any time soon. Firstly, because DVDs were largely killed off by streaming, and secondly, it hasn’t been a good season to be a Wolves fan, a Wolves player, a Wolves staff member, Wolf from Gladiators or indeed actual wolves, due to the negative PR of being associated with us.
But, as I stared at the smouldering wreck of my car in the small hours of last Monday morning, a policeman asked me if I was a “Wolverhampton fan”, and secondly, if I thought we’d stay up this season. First of all, what the HELL man? My car’s just burnt to a crisp due to causes unknown, and you think this is some kind of football phone in? Mate? I’m wearing fluffy crocs, a t shirt my son spat up on and smell slightly smoky, and you think we’re on the MOTD sofa? Secondly, seeing as you asked, yes, I’m actually quite bullish about our chances about staying up now.
Broadly, in my heart of hearts, I think we’ll go down. This isn’t the view of a downbeat boo boy, it’s just unfortunately the consequence of inaction and the sort of transfer business that makes me look like a Football Manager power user. But “when” has become “if”, thanks to an upswell in form that’s been coming down the pipeline for a while now. With our run in, there is an outside chance that we do the absolute impossible.
We need to win a LOT of games, nearly triple the games we’ve won all season, but although we won’t win every game, every game is winnable, if that makes sense.
However, there has been a bubbling undercurrent of disquiet underneath this purple patch. Despite the feel-good moments of beating the Villa, beating Liverpool and scrapping to a late draw with Arsenal, there is some feeling that Rob Edwards isn’t the right man for the job, with some even feeling he should be gone as a matter of priority. Some feeling he shouldn’t have been hired at all, and others feeling he should be gone at the end of the season.
Of course, whether this is right or wrong is subjective. Opinions are like noses; everyone picks their own and mine is the only correct looking one.
We’re all entitled to a voice on who should and shouldn’t be managing Wolves, but as it would seem, I am entitled to be THE voice on whether Edwards should keep his job or not. As a trusted member of the Wolves fan media, I am here to put the gaffer on trial and assess whether his position under the microscope is justified, or whether he deserves a bit of slack.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it’s Wulfrunian Crime Story: The People vs Rob Edwards!
Defence: It Is Now Undeniable That the Needle Has Moved
Edwards’ start to life at Wolves was tricky to say the least; he was taking over from Vitor Pereria and a side that was already 8 points off of safety. We’d played 12 games, won none and drawn two. We’d won two games in the Carabao, but had been dumped out by Chelsea at that point. You’d have to be criminally insane or terminally sentimental to have taken the Wolves job on at this point, so it made sense that Telford boy and former wolf Edwards would seize upon a golden opportunity to manage the Wolves.
Was he crazy for walking away from Middlesbrough to take on the Wolves job? Almost definitely, but as JLS once said, you only get one shot, so make it count, you might never get this moment again. Which he did, he might have stayed at Boro, gone up, we go down, and our paths never really cross again. Sometimes you’ve just got to do it. Say yes to that holiday, order another beer, make a grab for that police officer’s taser.
The problem was, he was now at the controls of a plane in freefall. He didn’t point the plane’s nose down, but you could now clearly see Rob Edwards in control of a plane in freefall. Which is where the grey area started to really exist; we can see him pulling on the controls to try and stabilise the plane, but we can also see him almost crashing the plane into the ground. Performances did seem to improve gradually, but it still took seven games to score one point. Vitor Pereria had scored DOUBLE that in the same amount of games. Twice as many!
However, there are a lot of gimmes in this; first, the situation was already cataclysmic, and Edwards wasn’t seen as the saviour, more as the seat filler with a view to playing Championship football. Second, we’d recruited poorly, started awfully, and even in November the season was in the toilet. I can’t speak for all of you, but very few thought that this season would bring anything by the time Vitor Pereria was shown the door. Not to do Handsome Rob down, but there weren’t any great expectations from our new manager.
Now, I’m going to do some completely junk maths here, and give Edwards a six game pre-season, similar to the six games we played in er, pre-season. That gives him time to see his tactics in the real, make adjustments, and get this group of players to gel and regel to his desires.
Is it based on anything bar my own vibes? No. Does it feel fair? Yes.
So, minus his first six games, carry the one, adjust for inflation, and we are thirteenth in the table. Thirteenth! Won three, drawn two, lost two. If we’d started the season like this, dust would be blown off of passports and statues would be toppled like the fall of Saddam to build a statue to our hometown messiah.
The needle has unquestionably moved, and has moved in the right direction. We’re playing good football, we’re winning football games, and the feeling is starting to come back to Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Prosecution: But Did the Needle Move Quick Enough?
Hold on, let me stop you there: yes, he did lose his first seven games in charge. We sacked Pereria for losing just five in seven, but we gave Edwards a freebie for losing seven in seven? Come on now, we’re known as Charity FC up and down the land, but should charity really be starting at home here?
The pickings for our next manager in a post-Pereria-points-pints world were slim to say the least, with Fosun’s first idea being Gary O’Neil.
Look, I like Gary O’Neil, I think Gary O’Neil will do great things and has infinite potential to do so, but your first suggestion is to bring back the guy you sacked less than a year ago, for not doing a very good job? Hardly shouts “let’s turn this around”, does it?
Outside of former conquests, the candidates weren’t incredible. Ten Hag. Solskjaer. Rodgers. Hardly Fantasy FC, but all with solid Premier League experience, and experience of winning trophies to boot. Their stock wasn’t exactly through the roof, but all three represented a safe pair of hands that could get us back to winning ways. Maybe they’d be the Julen Lopetegui of Vitor Pererias; relegation firefighters who would leave us at the first sniff of another fire, but they would at least have fought the initial fire.
Of course, “what if” is completely meaningless currency in football. What if that goal had been scored. What if that ball had been saved. What if the world was made of pudding. It’s very easy to say “what if we’d hired someone more experienced”, but also, what if we’d hired someone more experienced? Would they have gotten the boot down quicker, and we’d be on course to stay up? Was taking on a less experienced manager in Edwards a lack of ambition from Fosun, and a silent signal that they weren’t really that interested in owning a football club any more?
His managerial CV is fine; did alright at Telford, did alright at Forest Green, got sacked by Watford (but who hasn’t?) won the playoffs with Luton, got relegated with Luton, effectively got Luton relegated again, did alright at Middlesbrough before coming to Wolves. There’s high potential there, but should we have gone for someone with experience of the here and now, rather than an eye on the future?
Tactically, I won’t comment. Some suggest he doesn’t have a plan, but I’m also willing to see what his plan looks like on the first day of next season with ample opportunity to get in front of the tactics board and the training pitch without the irritating business of league football getting in the way. But, if it doesn’t look like he has a plan after having time to get a plan, he’ll be back in the dock.
No doubt he’s turned “when” we go down to “if” we go down, but “if” we go down, scrutiny will be on both himself and the board for whether we should have levelled the plane quicker in those initial games.
Defence: What Were You Expecting, Exactly?
Now, going back to an earlier point of everybody’s entitled to an opinion, you are. But also, don’t be surprised if people demand some prequalification for your opinions. Your prequalification for your “Edwards out” shout needs to be: what were you expecting, exactly?
Who, exactly, do you think was going to come to Wolverhampton? For Jose to swap the shores of Lisbon for Linden Lea? Klopp to decide he’s got one more in him, and that one more is Wolves? Don Carlo to create a Wulfrunian legacy? Let’s be real here. Whoever you thought was coming, or wanted to come was pretending to be out, otherwise engaged or dead when the call came through.
I should have prequalified my opinions in this by saying that I’m an Edwards In guy. Well, I’m an Edwards In guy in the sense that he’s here now so we might as well let him stay. By the point Pereria was shown the door, I’d already written the season off and my hot picks for our next gaffer were overly chipper ChatGPT responses and the drinking bird Homer used to cover for him in the classic Simpsons episode, King Size Homer.
That’s not a slight against Edwards at all, but it wasn’t a great situation at the time. Even Jesus Christ himself probably would have struggled to turn us around.
Although, that Wolves fan met the Pope, the Pope prayed for us, and ever since then we’ve been okay? So it’s hard to say whether Jesus would’ve steadied the ship. The January transfer budget would’ve been bigger due to the savings he made on catering too.
Ultimately, Edwards was brought in as a bit of a filler. Not brought in for his PL experience, but brought in for his Championship experience. A quiet flag that we were going down. If he kept us up, great, but the season was effectively a big pre-season for him to try some stuff out and see who would be great to build the team around next season. It’s worked to an end, as Mateus Mane has been a breakout star under Edwards, and some players have started to put in improved performances as the season has unfolded.
Every football fan up and down the country is probably expecting better from their manager, from Arteta to Zidane, and Edwards shouldn’t be free from criticism or demanded better from, but there should also be the moment to take pause and say “what were we expecting, really?”. Getting irrationally angry on the computer doesn’t really serve any purpose. Take a breath, go for a walk, perhaps get into basketball.
Prosecution: But, Were We Expecting Better?
I guess I’m repeating the other prosecution point, but I also don’t want to do two fors and one against and have the United Front of Wolves Dads climbing into my mentions on X, The Everything App, accusing me of being paid off by Fosun. Friend, they had to be bullied into buying some bollard paint. What chance do you think they’re stuffing the mouth of (with the greatest amount of respect to myself) some no-mark keyboard jockey full of gold?
I can say, hand on heart, that nobody on the TW staff is being comped by Fosun, and if I catch wind of on our all-inclusive Club Med getaway, I will not be attending the Cirque du Soleil with them that evening, let me tell you!
I digress. But were we, and should we, be expecting better? There’s the salient argument that this season was a gimme, we weren’t bringing Edwards on for his PL experience, rather more locking him in for the inevitable, but is all of that just an excuse for masking poor performance, when really, we should be asking for better? Feels a bit out of step with “better never stops” if we just go “better stop” in November.
The form tables since Christmas/New Year put us in the lower mid table. Are we benefiting from poor form below us? Well yes, but you also win the league because the other 19 teams weren’t as good as you. The form tables create a picture of what could have, and might have been. The form tables, are broadly meaningless.
Sure, we’re playing better football now, but why weren’t we playing this football before? If the expectation had been set that we’re looking to avoid relegation, maybe the fire would’ve been a little hotter underneath Edwards, rather than seeing this as the world’s best paid internship. Maybe the training drills would’ve been a little bit more intensive, maybe the touchline shouts a bit louder, maybe players would have been dropped a little quicker.
Whilst it’s the sensible view now to see this season as a complete write off from top to bottom, we also maybe shouldn’t have been so pessimistic to write our season off in November, after just over a quarter of our season. Or at least, to be wildly optimistic to the point of trying to save our season. Of course, it’s hard to view this through the lens of anything but the now, however, should the direction from the top been a bit more forthright in maintaining Premier League status?
Verdict: Don’t Swing That Axe… Just Yet.
Ultimately, sacking Edwards would’ve been foolish in 2025 without giving him ample chance to get acquainted with the role, and we’d be back in the spiral of being managerless and rudderless. Sacking Edwards now, when we’re on the precipice of a mircale would be existential bordering on insane. Would sacking him actually solve anything, or are we just wanting a bit of a dopamine hit? He’s responsible for every performance we put in, both good and bad, but also should be exonerated of some responsibility for the overall state of things.
We’re still feeling the after effects of poor summer recruitment, where we let Pereria and Teti buy whoever they wanted, which it turned out, were a bunch of guys they didn’t like but bought anyway, who subsequently had more off-kilter gimmicks than golden era WWF. More jobbers, too. We were definitely feeling the chill of starting the season on a winless streak, with Edwards having to warm us into stopping that slide.
You can argue a more experienced jobber handler would’ve stopped the slide quicker, or alternatively, decided it’s not worth the money and immediately turned tail or took his foot off the gas. The simple truth of the matter is, we’re comparing apples to imaginary oranges in any scenario.
Maybe we’d be home and hosed if they’d sacked Pereria earlier, maybe we’d be challenging for Europe if we let him go in the summer and brought Nuno back, maybe we’d be on fewer points if we’d brought Ten Hag or Rodgers in, maybe we were a sliding doors moment away from another global pandemic and having the 2025/26 season voided, rendering this season a massive learning moment. We just don’t know. What we do know is that Rob Edwards is our manager, and he currently has a better chance than most of keeping us up.
However, that isn’t to say that we should forever have our arms around the prodigal son. If, IF he keeps us up, he should get all the credit in the world for that. However, whether we’re up or down this season, next season is the real test, and if it looks like he’s not up to the task in the first four, five, six games? Show him the door. Get him gone.
By that point, you’re either not up to the task of managing in the Premier League, or worse still, you could drag us back into League One. Neither of which he should be allowed to hang around to bring to life.
However, there is one big obstacle still to tackle, and that will require the full backing of the gaffer and the lads. Save the post mortems for when the body’s actually cold.
