It was as recently as March that Gary O'Neil was winning plaudits at Wolverhampton and beyond, providing two routes to Europe with Wolves in eighth place in the Premier League and with only Coventry City between them and a trip to Wembley.
Nine months later, O'Neil has won just three Premier League games since then. They were beaten in dramatic circumstances by Coventry in the FA Cup, conceding twice in stoppage time, but find themselves in the relegation zone. Fourteen points from the last 27 games.
Fans turned away and the bosses eventually lost confidence after a 2-1 defeat to Ipswich, making it four defeats in a row. Four points away from safety: change was needed.
The story of how things played out for O'Neil, a coach who could have imagined his next job could have been like the England manager had the final stages of last season gone differently, is both simple and complicated. There were certainly mitigating factors.
The trajectory has changed at Wolves in recent seasons, a club seemingly set to close a deal. The major investments have stopped and there will be some sympathy. O'Neil only inherited the job because his predecessor was so frustrated with the situation.
That trend continued in the summer when captain Max Kilman and star winger Pedro Neto were sold. The club will claim they have committed £28 million to sign a new striker in Jorgen Strand Larsen and a raft of potential players they are far from giving up on.
But it is a far cry from the days of Ruben Neves and Joao Moutinho, Diogo Jota and Raul Jimenez, top-seven finishes and European nights at Molineux under Nuno Espirito Santo. Wolves cut ties with him at the end of a season in which they finished 13th.
That was a team that knocked Liverpool and Manchester United out of the FA Cup in the same season and, as a newly promoted side, won the Premier League against Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal before winning the double against Manchester City the following year. All of this helps explain why the excuse of Wolves' difficult fixture list never really caught on. Fans had become accustomed to harassing the best teams, but the first eight games yielded one point. Those same matches yielded eleven goals for O'Neil himself last season.
It's that comparison – between last season, in which Neto started less than half the games, and this one – that ultimately killed O'Neil. Performance and results should not have deteriorated so dramatically. After all the praise, he lost his way.
Of course, the players were also guilty. This season has seen a series of inexplicable errors, with some of the most high-profile mistakes made by the most experienced players in the squad, including Jose Sa, Craig Dawson and Mario Lemina.
The sight of Lemina wrestling with his own teammates and taking on assistant manager Shaun Derry as he leaves the pitch at the London Stadium can generously be described as someone showing that he cares. But he was the captain before he was subsequently replaced.
Some of Wolves' displays were comically chaotic. There was the 5-3 opposition at Brentford and the hat-trick of penalties on home field against Bournemouth. All four goals they conceded at Everton came from set-piece situations. A recipe for relegation.
Wolves' record in defending set-piece situations was particularly poor. They have conceded a total of sixteen goals this season. That's seven more than any other team. In fact, no Premier League team has ever conceded more at this stage of the season.
Perhaps O'Neil will feel let down, given the mistakes made by players he trusted. Perhaps they will feel let down by the club's lack of ambition and the coach's tactics. It's that sense that O'Neil made a tactical mistake, presumably his strength, that undermined him.
Wolves looked far too open from the very first game at Arsenal. They scored forty goals in sixteen games, their worst start to a top season in sixty years and more than anyone else.
This reflects a lack of quality, but also a misjudgment of requirements by O'Neil. This was his first preparation as a head coach, a chance to shape his vision on the grass over the summer and hone his ideas rather than just make amends and fix things.
This was exactly how he spoke before a ball was kicked. He spoke about European ambitions. “The top six will be the top six and we will be in the group below that,” he told Sky Sports. “We want to fight as hard as possible to get to the six.”
If that seems fanciful now, the problem was that this mindset played a role in his tactics and team selection. This was his Wolves 2.0 and with the pressure off, he wanted to demonstrate his progressive coaching skills. That always seemed like a gamble.
At Arsenal he chose a foursome with the relatively inexperienced Yerson Mosquera and Toti Gomes as the core. Against Chelsea, Rayan Ait-Nouri was again deployed at left-back, but seemed to approach him as a number 10, repeatedly out of position in a 6–2 defeat.
Ait-Nouri is a talent for whom even full-back sometimes feels too limiting. Julen Lopetegui had recognized his ability but did not trust him to defend. But with Hugo Bueno allowed to leave on loan, Toti was the only left-footed alternative in that position.
And yet Toti was often needed as a centre-back, one of only three natural options after Mosquera's injury. O'Neil even pushed Lemina into that role. It was all a symptom of somewhat muddled thinking, a squad-building that just seemed a little off.
There was optimism that Wolves could find value in the market, and sporting director Matt Hobbs saw his position strengthened by some smart signings in 2023. The theory was that the club could become smarter by being less tied to Jorge Mendes.
Lemina and Dawson were steals. Joao Gomes was considered a brilliant investment. But perhaps Wolves took too many risks in the summer. Pedro Lima was one for the future. Rodrigo Gomes might be too. Neither of them seem willing to help much at this point.
The same could be said of the decision to sign Sam Johnstone for £10 million, ostensibly to replace Sa so that the Portuguese could regain his place despite erratic performances – only to lose it again. Given the gaps elsewhere, such expenditures were a bit strange.
The disconnect was best summed up by the signing of another Brazilian midfielder Andre, late in the period, for up to £21 million. For the club it was an irresistible opportunity to sign a quality young player with a great chance of making money from the deal.
But O'Neil was already struggling to meet Tommy Doyle's demand for playing time in the center of the pitch and still wanted a centre-back with some experience to help things out at the back. Dara O'Shea was enthusiastic, but Wolves did not want to pay what Ipswich paid.
That decision was defensible from a financial perspective, even if it left O'Neil with a lopsided squad in terms of talent – as long as Wolves could stay in the Premier League. But O'Neil's subsequent struggles make those recruiting calls seem misplaced.
When the sporting director's strategy is questioned, when the supporters call for owner Fosun to leave, it usually follows that the head coach pays the price. What happens next will likely determine where the debt is ultimately distributed.
That is the talent at Wolves, Matheus Cunha the most obvious example. There is every reason to believe that if they can get just a few basic skills at the back, they will still have the firepower in attack to avoid their relegation rivals. Be able to.
If that's not the case, and the next man in charge can't correct the mistakes either, the Wolves are doomed. Either way, the excitement among supporters at their return to the Premier League, sparked by Nuno and briefly revived by O'Neil, now feels like a century ago.
Comments