General Wolves News

[Lycan]

Thank fuck we went with Terry Connor.

 

[Kenny]

So at the time, if we knew what was ahead when Mick was binned, do you choose

Connor - Relegation - Stale - Saunders - Relegation and L1 here we come

or

Warnock - Relegation (we were going down regardless of who took over) - Championship for another year (a manager with a 1/4 of a brain would have put us midtable without much of an effort)

Do we take the Warnock option or the one where Saunders screws us over?

 

[victhegreek]

So at the time, if we knew what was ahead when Mick was binned, do you choose

Connor - Relegation - Stale - Saunders - Relegation and L1 here we come

or

Warnock - Relegation (we were going down regardless of who took over) - Championship for another year (a manager with a 1/4 of a brain would have put us midtable without much of an effort)

Do we take the Warnock option or the one where Saunders screws us over?

That question surely doesn't need an answer. Even if by some miracle we had stayed up. The Warnock option was a non starter. Ok I swallowed the bait :surrender:

 

[Johnny75]

So at the time, if we knew what was ahead when Mick was binned, do you choose

Connor - Relegation - Stale - Saunders - Relegation and L1 here we come

or

Warnock - Relegation (we were going down regardless of who took over) - Championship for another year (a manager with a 1/4 of a brain would have put us midtable without much of an effort)

Do we take the Warnock option or the one where Saunders screws us over?

Definitely the Warnock option purely for selfish reasons.

 

[Johnny75]

Maybe playing devils advocate a bit here, but is Steve Morgan owed some credit for holding out for a genuine top class investment to buy the club from him?

We'd have surely had plenty of interest from investors who would have met his asking price. When he announced the club was for sale, I'd never have imagined we'd get owners as prestigious as Fosun and certainly didn't expect this kind of transformation within 2 years.

Was the Fosun interest the catalyst for the Fosun sale? Did Morgan hold out knowing we were a good acquisition?

Maybe worth a new thread?

I'm going to hate typing this but I think all of that credit is down to Jez Moxey. Whatever I think of him he really does care for the club and I think it is him who would have wanted a good buyer for Wolves. He wouldn't want another failure as he did at Stoke and he would probably secure a very good job following the takeover.

I think Morgan is a chancer. A lucky builder who has very good teams around him. I think he's razor sharp in business but think he really struggles with people and first and foremost football is a people industry.

 

[The Bear]

I agree with Johnny. Forbthe amount of stick Moxey got, and he did make mistakes, he knew how to run the club properly and not get us into any financial trouble. Yet he and the owners still always backed the manager, within the budget they had.

 

[Kenny]

Yeah but the last thing they did was sign Andy Lonergan..........probably evens out the good stuff

 

[Law's Bus]

So at the time, if we knew what was ahead when Mick was binned, do you choose

Connor - Relegation - Stale - Saunders - Relegation and L1 here we come

or

Warnock - Relegation (we were going down regardless of who took over) - Championship for another year (a manager with a 1/4 of a brain would have put us midtable without much of an effort)

Do we take the Warnock option or the one where Saunders screws us over?

I choose what happened, given that we would also know that this season was coming if we had some patience...

 

[Keef]

Willing to get shot down over this but'i think stale could have worked with a bit more time to achieve his aims,unfortunately it didn't happen,Morgan panicked,and his golfing mates said Saunders will do a good job for you,and that Buffon screwed it all up big time

 

[Quirkafleeg]

Willing to get shot down over this but'i think stale could have worked with a bit more time to achieve his aims,unfortunately it didn't happen,Morgan panicked,and his golfing mates said Saunders will do a good job for you,and that Buffon screwed it all up big time

Not forgetting the rats in the kitchen at the time, Henry and Hennessey to name a couple of cunts.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

It's a very old debate but Solbakken had zero pragmatism. Look at how Nuno has done things - arrived, this is the shape I want to play, I will buy players to fit this, anyone here who doesn't fit what we want to do will either not play or be binned off. Stale expected everyone here to just do as he asked and be good at it. It's not going to work that way. His manner also alienates some people.

He's not an authentically terrible manager but he made plenty of mistakes of his own, wasted a lot of money too.

 

[Penk Wolf]

For me, if Morgan hadn't built the infrastructure around the club then I'm not sure we would have been an attractive proposition to Fosun.

 

[pr0sl0]

Another thing I've wondered RE: Fosun's interest is whether we'd have been worse, in the medium-term at least, if we'd scored a few more goals (or conceded a few less) and made the playoffs in Jackett's first season back in the Championship. If we'd gone up - and we had a load of momentum behind us at that point, I think we'd have had a really good chance of going all the way - then perhaps Fosun might not have been interested. Shi said that they looked into a number of different clubs, and Wolves fit the bill not just in terms of being financially secure already but in terms of underperformance and potential to grow relative to the amount required to take ownership. That calculation would have been different if we'd been a team trying to avoid relegation a division higher. That's even assuming Morgan would still have decided to sell at that point, of course.

Could easily see it being a team like Forest or Birmingham that Fosun eventually settled on instead, with things different by just a small margin on the pitch over the last few seasons.

 

[SSB]

The Nashter spoke to Warnock after the Forest v Cardiff game yesterday.

Tim II has Ctrl & C'd it.

https://www.expressandstar.com/spor...boss-neil-warnock-doubtful-well-catch-wolves/

 

[MARKakaJIM]

I think a lot of the difference is down to the wider setup at the club to be honest, Solbakken got to bring in a couple of coaches and players but I don't think he had a lot else on his side. The recruitment was erratic and I wouldn't think that was all on his head given his previous experience, the squad was bereft of any real footballing ability and morale would've been shit following relegation. Nuno on the other hand has come into a much better situation, club reinvigorated by Fosun, already a year of investment and last year's positive signings for him to build on with his input.

I dare say Solbakken could've faired a lot better if there wasn't so much turbulence preceding him and was afforded the same backing that is available to Nuno now.

 

[nimrod]

Another thing I've wondered RE: Fosun's interest is whether we'd have been worse, in the medium-term at least, if we'd scored a few more goals (or conceded a few less) and made the playoffs in Jackett's first season back in the Championship. If we'd gone up - and we had a load of momentum behind us at that point, I think we'd have had a really good chance of going all the way - then perhaps Fosun might not have been interested. Shi said that they looked into a number of different clubs, and Wolves fit the bill not just in terms of being financially secure already but in terms of underperformance and potential to grow relative to the amount required to take ownership. That calculation would have been different if we'd been a team trying to avoid relegation a division higher. That's even assuming Morgan would still have decided to sell at that point, of course.

Could easily see it being a team like Forest or Birmingham that Fosun eventually settled on instead, with things different by just a small margin on the pitch over the last few seasons.

yeah agree. had we gone up a sale may still have happened but at a different price and that could have made a significant difference to fosun. and going up may have resparked interest from morgan, who knows. i'm sure the improved infrastructure also made a difference as penk says. but for me it was the underperformance and at the right time for fosun's interest. you could say that about other clubs as well, being in the right place for the right owner. so i think luck more than design, but we've been long overdue some. I don't think there was any particular plan from morgan/moxey so don't see why there's a need for crediting them with what fosun are achieving.

agree with dan on stale too. I was totally behind what stale said and wanted him to succeed, but I can't criticise hoddle for playing cort right wing and then let stale off for doing the same sort of things with the squad we had. i'm not sure how he'd have turned the corner without a radical rethink of what he was doing.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I think a lot of the difference is down to the wider setup at the club to be honest, Solbakken got to bring in a couple of coaches and players but I don't think he had a lot else on his side. The recruitment was erratic and I wouldn't think that was all on his head given his previous experience, the squad was bereft of any real footballing ability and morale would've been shit following relegation. Nuno on the other hand has come into a much better situation, club reinvigorated by Fosun, already a year of investment and last year's positive signings for him to build on with his input.

I dare say Solbakken could've faired a lot better if there wasn't so much turbulence preceding him and was afforded the same backing that is available to Nuno now.

Depends, if you're saying the recruitment was erratic are you putting it wholesale down to him or the setup as a whole? Because if we're picking and choosing which of the signings were "his", then you could probably only go with Sigurdarson and Margreitter. Both flops. He also wanted us to sign Demidov whose post-2012 career does not inspire confidence that he'd have worked out. I suppose his other target Geromel looks a little bit better. Somen Tchoyi would have been a bloody awful signing.

It wasn't an easy situation for him and doubtless not everything was as it said in the brochure. But he made too many of his own mistakes and didn't change things either personnel or system wise when it was apparent that we just couldn't make his ideas work with what he had.

I'll give him credit for ditching Zubar inside the first month of the season but we're talking about a man who thought it was a good idea to pair Roger Johnson and Christophe Berra then play a defensive line around 10 yards shy of the halfway line (and for the first month of the season, Zubey Zubes daydreaming 20 yards behind the rest of the back four and playing everyone onside)

 

[MARKakaJIM]

Depends, if you're saying the recruitment was erratic are you putting it wholesale down to him or the setup as a whole? Because if we're picking and choosing which of the signings were "his", then you could probably only go with Sigurdarson and Margreitter. Both flops. He also wanted us to sign Demidov whose post-2012 career does not inspire confidence that he'd have worked out. I suppose his other target Geromel looks a little bit better. Somen Tchoyi would have been a bloody awful signing.

It wasn't an easy situation for him and doubtless not everything was as it said in the brochure. But he made too many of his own mistakes and didn't change things either personnel or system wise when it was apparent that we just couldn't make his ideas work with what he had.

I'll give him credit for ditching Zubar inside the first month of the season but we're talking about a man who thought it was a good idea to pair Roger Johnson and Christophe Berra then play a defensive line around 10 yards shy of the halfway line (and for the first month of the season, Zubey Zubes daydreaming 20 yards behind the rest of the back four and playing everyone onside)

I just think it's a whole club issue rather than a straight Nuno v Solbakken.

Solbakken took over a shit demoralised squad with some bold ideas, nothing else at the club really seemed geared for the kind of change he was trying to implement on the pitch. He got a few signings that looked like they were down to him personally and yes they flopped but they were hardly on the same league as what's been possible this season. More money was spent on the likes of Sako and Boukari than his choices wasn't it? And whilst the former at least turned out well in the end that doesn't mean he was anything like the sort of player Solbakken would've really wanted.

Nuno came in two a much more focused environment, there's a lot more joined up thinking now from Fosun, through Mendes to Nuno. He's been able to work with a good chunk of what was already there and had the luxury to sign some players well above the level the club should've been able to this summer.

Obviously Nuno has had a lot more success than Solbakken with Wolves but he's been dealt a significantly better hand to start with, I can't imagine we'd have this football if Nuno had come in after PL relegation with the same resources Solbakken had.

 

[Tom Hark]

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/5004789/wolves-nuno-santo-espirito-ruben-neves-championship/

Finally, a report that doen't expect to breach FFP. Shame it had to be in the Sun, but ...

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Obviously Nuno has had a lot more success than Solbakken with Wolves but he's been dealt a significantly better hand to start with, I can't imagine we'd have this football if Nuno had come in after PL relegation with the same resources Solbakken had.

By the same token we were picking Solbakken up after he'd been a disaster at Köln. Nuno has nothing like that on his CV. He just wouldn't have come into that environment.

You can't give Stale a free pass I'm afraid. The whole club had an element of dysfunction about it (and that only got progressively worse over the next 9-10 months) but he is as much to blame as any factors that he couldn't influence.

For a kick off why did we always look absolutely shattered after 60 minutes? Not as if we were playing a really high tempo, hard pressing game either. Quite the opposite.