Wolves have sacked head coach Gary O'Neil following Saturday's defeat at home to Ipswich, Sky Sports News understands.
The dramatic 2-1 defeat at Molineux, which was followed by a scuffle that saw Rayan Ait-Nouri withdraw from the field, left Wolves in 19th place in the Premier League.
The club, which has yet to confirm the news, has only taken nine points from sixteen games and is four points behind seventeenth-place Crystal Palace.
O'Neil guided Wolves to fourteenth place last season, but saw star players Pedro Neto and Max Kilman leave for Chelsea and West Ham this summer.
After the Ipswich defeat, the former Bournemouth boss said his players “needed him” but acknowledged a run of four successive defeats had put his position in jeopardy.
“That group needs me to get them to a place where they are ready to go and I will continue to fight for them,” he told Sky Sports in his final interview as head coach. “And that doesn't mean I won't get fired. Each outcome will increase the likelihood of me losing my job, that's nothing new – it's none of my business.
“When I'm with Matt [Hobbs, sporting director] and Jeff [Shi, chairman]they will tell me to do more or they will replace me. That's the same message for the players: you have to do more to compete at this level or you will be replaced. That's how the company works.
“I am not interested in my own position. I know the work I do every day and I know the situation we are in. To get this group to perform the way they did, it took a lot of work today.
“People can point the finger at me, but some of the responsibility should fall to the players at such moments. If we get into good positions and scoop the ball off the field, I can't help them with that.”
Another scuffle marks the final straw at Molineux
Just days after Mario Lemina was stripped of the Wolves captaincy for his response to a post-match altercation with Jarrod Bowen against West Ham, an incident in which he pressured his own teammates as they tried to calm him down before facing Wolves came assistant coach Shaun Derry, more ugly scenes marred the end of Saturday's defeat to Ipswich.
O'Neil had vowed the incident would not be repeated but Rayan Ait-Nouri, who was shown a second yellow card after the whistle, had to be dragged through the tunnel by team-mate Craig Dawson after colliding with Ipswich's Wes Burns. Boos rang out from the stands.
“We take things like that very, very seriously, as you saw last week,” O'Neil said after the game. “It's annoying because at the moment we have enough to do, we have enough to fix without me having to spend time on things that happen off the field.
“So the players have to take some responsibility. But I will help them with everything so that we can get back to work on Monday morning.”
'Wolves managers operate with one hand behind their backs'
Daily Mirror Assistant Editor Darren Lewis on Sunday Supplement:
“I have a lot of sympathy for O'Neil. At Wolves you do a good job and they sell your best players.
“Julen Lopetegui said he couldn't do the job if he didn't have the players who were sold under him. O'Neil came in and not only kept them up, but he did it quite comfortably.
“So what do they do? Sell two more of his best players, Pedro Neto and Max Kilman.
“Wolves sack him, but if I'm a Wolves fan I look at the club and ask why they bring in managers and ask them to do a job with one hand tied behind their back.
“It's 11 defeats in 16 games and rightly you can't expect to keep your job as a manager. But there's no manager in the Premier League who would say he can work in conditions where the chairman, the owners, the people who make the decisions will systematically remove your leaders at the back and your goalscorers and stay in the top division.”
Analysis: O'Neil's downfall is both simple and complicated
Sky Sports features writer Adam Bate:
“The story of how things played out for O'Neil, a coach who could have dreamed that his next job could have been like the England manager if the final stages of last season had gone differently, is both simple and complicated. There were certainly mitigating factors.
“The trajectory at Wolves has changed in recent seasons, a club seemingly in decline. Major investment has stopped and there will be some sympathy as a result. 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 string of prospects they haven't given up yet.” .
“But it's 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 this helps explain why the excuse of Wolves' difficult fixtures never really caught on. Fans had become accustomed to heckling the best teams, but the first eight games yielded one point. Those same games yielded 11 for O'Neil yourself.” last season.
“It is that comparison – between last season, in which Neto started less than half the games, and this one – that ultimately cursed O'Neil. Performances and results should not have deteriorated so dramatically. After all the praise, he lost his way .”
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