General Wolves News

[Deutsch Wolf]

His mind must have been on kerb crawling

Or sending love letters to 15 year olds.

 

[Tony Towner]

Or sending love letters to 15 year olds.

Or filming an extra marital 3some. He was a classy guy

 

[Rui_CostCo]

Is that a Danny Batth shirt on the front of the BBC football section?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

It certainly is. Nice of the beeb to use an up to date photo.

 

[BillyDee]

That's fucking hilarious...

 

[Sniffer]

I’m happy that the Championship clubs are unanimous in wanting to finish the season. Sends a message to the Premier League that they will expect promotion places to be honoured.

 

[YoungWolf]

https://www.skysports.com/football/...after-joleon-lescott-and-john-hartsons-choice

Looking at their chosen team really wound me up at first then I realised we are sixth..

 

[Pompey Wolf]

:icon_biggrin: I like that!

 

[Boozad]

https://www.skysports.com/football/...after-joleon-lescott-and-john-hartsons-choice

Looking at their chosen team really wound me up at first then I realised we are sixth..

We went for Rose over Digne because... nothing. Fuck me.

 

[Pablowolf]

Our big bossman is the best big bossman.

https://twitter.com/GuangchangGuo/status/1241352289488494593

 

[Sniffer]

Another piece of Nuno.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51962924

 

[Paul]

Our big bossman is the best big bossman.

Not out there mowing lawns though is he, like some heroes ??

 

[Pablowolf]

Not out there mowing lawns though is he, like some heroes ??

He's only human.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

https://www.skysports.com/football/...antos-success-at-wolves-and-his-future-beyond

Excellent piece here by Adam Bate.

 

[Pablowolf]

Coady's passing makes Wolves tick, bitches.

https://www.premierleague.com/news/1648371?sf231883820=1

 

[lemonjelly]

https://www.skysports.com/football/...antos-success-at-wolves-and-his-future-beyond

Excellent piece here by Adam Bate.

That's a really good article, with some really interesting sections. Thanks for sharing it.

The Jimenez article that he wrote is also a very good one.

I found myself watching the highlights videos and realising how much I miss the excitement of football.

 

[Paul]

That's a really good article, with some really interesting sections. Thanks for sharing it.

The Jimenez article that he wrote is also a very good one.

I found myself watching the highlights videos and realising how much I miss the excitement of football.

You've got the excitement of gardening and watching your grass grow, just imagine you're a Bolton fan

 

[Kenny]

Timmy's latest article. The backroom team at Wolves

Unwritten: Nuno and his six backroom staff are Wolves’ band of brothers

Nuno Espirito Santo has only been at Wolves for just shy of three years but he’s instigated a few rituals that have become embedded in the club’s way of life.

In every one of the 146 games he’s managed he’s played three at the back, for example. Before every single game he has (probably) dubbed Wolves’ next opponent as a “tough team” during his formulaic press conferences. And Nuno’s infamous “game by game” mantra has been repeated ad infinitum by him, his players and his staff so often it has become imprinted on their very souls.

Another tradition is that after every Wolves goal, Nuno and his backroom team will celebrate with a tight huddle of joy. Some huddles are more frenzied than others, depending on the importance of the said goal, but either way it’s a weekly occurrence. Like penguins protecting each other during a vicious Arctic storm, they engulf Nuno in a display of brotherly love. It’s a very public show of unity between seven men who share a seemingly unbreakable bond. Linked by a shared football philosophy, chained by an unstinting will to win.

But while Nuno has become a well-known figure across the country and indeed Europe for overseeing Wolves’ rapid rise, hardly anything is known of his dependable and devoted staff. They keep themselves to themselves, they eschew the limelight. The Athletic wants to put that right…

Google the name of “Rui Silva” for instance and you’re more likely to find articles on Granada’s goalkeeper or the 2001 chart-topping house monster Touch Me.

Nuno’s trusty assistant (above picture, first on left) has been with him since the very beginning. He was there on day one at Rio Ave in 2012, then Valencia, then Porto and now Wolves (of the rest of the team only Antonio Dias has embarked on the same journey). Silva understands Nuno better than anybody, he knows what makes him tick.

The 42-year-old had previously worked at Panathinaikos under their former Portuguese boss Jesualdo Ferreira and first struck up a relationship with Nuno when he was a scout at Porto (2006-2010), at the end of Nuno’s playing days.

He is a vital cog in the Wolves wheel. While Nuno will, of course, deal directly with senior staff on important issues, Silva is very often the first port of call for the club’s players or staff who need to approach the management team for advice, any decisions that need making or any gripes they may have. He is the bridge between Nuno and the squad.

Captain Conor Coady, for example, will go to Silva about ticket arrangements. If players who live nearer Birmingham want to head directly to the airport for a European away fixture, it’s Silva who’ll make the call. He’ll liaise with admin chief Matt Wild on the team’s schedule, when to depart for matches and so on, leaving Nuno space to get on with his job.

Silva will also communicate the match-day squad, via Wild and first-team administrator Alison Matthews, with a PDF shared in the squad’s WhatsApp group, and decide when training can be filmed or open training sessions held.

On all of the above, Silva, said to be amiable and approachable and whose son has just moved to England to be part of the Wolves academy setup, will occasionally discuss and check with Nuno first, or make a direct call on some of the more straightforward and regular decisions.

In terms of training, while at many clubs the assistant manager/head coach will run sessions, at Wolves it’s Nuno who is on the grass for almost every minute, often stood in the centre circle observing or barking instructions.

That means Silva and Ian Cathro take a supporting role. Cathro (far right, above) is by far the most high-profile member of the backroom team, having ventured into management with Hearts and been assistant to Rafa Benitez and Steve McClaren at Newcastle.

He first met Nuno on a Scottish FA coaching course in 2009 and the pair struck up an unlikely bond, entwined by their shared football philosophy.

Everyone on the course took a 15-minute session and Nuno was instantly impressed by Cathro’s approach. The Scot, who at the time was only 23, later said of their first meeting: “He was just a big Portuguese guy; I knew nothing about his career.

“He gave me one massive piece of praise and one massive piece of constructive criticism and that made him interesting to me. He was humble, open and direct with me to the point where I immediately realised that he was someone who could help me grow, both as a coach and a man.”

When Nuno was given his big break in management at Rio Ave, who he would lead to European competition for the first time in their history, he had no hesitation in asking Cathro to join him. Cathro started out running his own coaching course called ‘Master the Ball, Master the Game’ in Dundee (which he launched as a teenager and yielded talents such as Ryan Gauld) and the technical ability of the players he was developing was deemed to be superior to that at Dundee United, who promptly hired him.

Highly regarded at Valencia, where he mastered the language and impressed senior players, as well as at Newcastle where Benitez kept him on after McClaren was sacked, Cathro was burned by a chastening spell at Hearts. He lasted only seven months and felt he was unfairly portrayed by vocal critics who coined him as a “laptop manager”.

At Wolves, nothing could be further from the truth. Cathro, a training pitch coach at heart, takes an obsessive approach to his work and to improving his players.

A self-assured deep-thinker, Cathro is said to be confident yet quiet, with an intense drive and determination. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he craved a future return to management one day to put right what went wrong at Hearts. For now, he is settled in Wolverhampton, as are the whole backroom team, all living near to the training ground in Compton or Tettenhall.

And what is unquestionable is his and Nuno’s respect for each other. Nuno once called Cathro a “genius”.

“We’re linked by the way that we see football,” Cathro said in a rare interview in 2018. “Not just how it’s played but the way it’s played based on that being what makes us most likely to win.

“It’s not a materialistic or superficial thing because it looks nice — it’s because we believe that’s the best way of getting the team the most probability of being in control of the game and winning.

“In the vast majority of cases it transcends countries and leagues, although there are always small adjustments that need to be made.

“You have to go with what you believe in. That’s the only way you can convince people to come with you.”

Silva and Cathro are Nuno’s most senior lieutenants, with Silva his assistant and Cathro his first-team coach. Also listed as a first-team coach is Julio Figueroa, perhaps the least known of Nuno’s team of seven.

Figueroa (fourth from left, above) is out on the pitch for every training session but his role has little to do with tactics, or coaching, or fitness; Figueroa is a coach of the mind.

The oldest of the group at 56, Figueroa was born in Argentina and previously worked as a sports psychologist with Barcelona’s youth academy, as well as professor in sports psychology at the University of Vic in Catalonia.

An expert in implementing approaches to improve high-level sport performance, Figueroa was hired by Nuno at Valencia, giving talks to players and taking individual sessions.

This work has continued at Wolves, where he is said to have been instrumental in helping Adama Traore through last year’s difficult spell when the Spaniard was in and out of the side. Traore’s potential has been unleashed this season, in no small part thanks to Figueroa’s guidance and positive thinking.

A calm and perennially smiling figure, Figueroa’s role during training sessions is one of incessant encouragement, but it’s away from the grass where he comes into his own. After last year’s crushing semi-final defeat to Watford, he was overheard to say: “This setback is not a defeat; this is something that will make you hungrier to do better.”

Figueroa has also instigated “reset” sessions during particularly congested periods of the fixture calendar. The players will assemble together at Compton and be encouraged to sleep, listening to Figueroa’s soothing and softly-spoken words during relax-therapy and stretching sessions.

Personal situations, problems at home, issues with match-day performances; Figueroa is the go-to man if anyone is struggling. Again, he’s amiable, friendly and always free for a warm handshake, and though his English is admittedly still slightly limited, it is improving and he has the respect and in some cases adoration of the players.

Completing the football side of the backroom team is Rui Barbosa, Wolves’ goalkeeping coach (second left, above). It’s perhaps an unenviable position given the fact Nuno used to be a keeper himself but Barbosa has the respect of the head coach and the club’s keepers, working particularly closely with Rui Patricio and John Ruddy.

He may be an imposing figure but Barbosa — previously with Nuno at Rio Ave and Porto — is a warm and jovial character around the training ground, a practical joker who needs little encouragement to trip people and generally lighten the mood.

His expertise has been crucial in helping Patricio iron out some of the flaws he showed in 2018-19, such as a tendency to struggle against aerial bombardments (a weakness that saw Ruddy brought in specifically to face Cardiff this time last year). Patricio has been a model of consistency this season and his distribution has improved markedly.

While the combined football and psychological expertise of Silva, Cathro, Figueroa and Barbosa has seen Wolves excel off the pitch, it has been crucially underpinned by the incredible fitness and injury prevention work overseen by Antonio Dias and Joao Lapa (third from left and fifth from left, above, respectively).

Fitness coach Dias, who like Silva has been with Nuno for the past eight years, is regarded as one of the brightest and best in his field in the football world. Wolves’ injury record since 2017 when Dias joined the club has been nothing short of phenomenal — and a big part of their success, given Nuno’s preference for a small senior squad.

Last season the amount of injuries the squad suffered could be counted on one hand. Despite playing nine months of intense high-level football, including 38 Premier League games and a run to the FA Cup semi-finals (46 matches in total), Wolves picked up just five injuries. Five. During the same period Manchester United suffered 61.

This season there have been a few more but muscle injuries are still extremely rare. Wolves used 19 players last season, the fewest in the league, and have fielded only 20 so far in 2019-20, the joint lowest with Burnley. The previous low in the past 10 years had been Bournemouth, with 22 in 2017-18.

That’s despite playing 15 Europa League games on top of their demanding domestic schedule. And Wolves have still found the reserves to come from behind more than any team, earning a mammoth 21 points from losing positions (five more than any other side).

Key to all this is not only having a magnificent injury record but also recovering well after matches, which as The Athletic reported last October is a complex and extremely detailed process.

Workaholic Dias is the brainchild behind much of Wolves’ revolutionary thinking and is thought to be well ahead of his time in terms of injury prevention. Dias, another positive and encouraging presence around the training ground, is a great communicator and, like Cathro, a deep thinker.

Wolves’ gym work, in particular, has been revolutionised under him. Gone are the old days of lifting gigantic weights; Wolves’ work is centred around equipment and machines that replicate match-day situations. There is little linear work done in the gym; tailored squat machines aid the players’ ability to quickly change direction, or their reaction times. The philosophy of their gym work is centred around improving football ability, not enlarging muscles.

Rehabilitation coach Lapa is the baby of the group in that Wolves is the first club where he’s worked under Nuno, having previously been with UAE side Baniyas and before that Al Taawon in Saudi Arabia following stints at several Portuguese clubs. He’s also one of the best known back home in Portugal, as he’s married to traditional Portuguese singer Cuca Roseta (218,000 Instagram followers).

Like Dias, Lapa is hands-on with the players and oversees their warm-down sessions after matches. He can been seen clapping and encouraging the players throughout their routines and drills.

As a group, their attention to detail is what sets them apart for the players, who have said publicly that they are the best backroom team they’ve ever worked with. Matt Doherty called them “world-class” just last month.

They socialise together, they eat together in the Compton Park canteen, they spend their days with each other, often at a round table in their office, with Nuno mostly choosing to sit with them rather than in his own office.

As a group, they have fun, too, but the aura of Nuno as a tough disciplinarian whose mood can sometimes range from grumpy to angry extends to them too; they would acknowledge he can be a tricky customer to deal with. They can be on the receiving end of his moods, but equally they all have his ear and his respect.

Phil Hayward has seen first-hand how effectively the group works together in his role as the club’s medical chief. Hayward recently left Wolves after 11 years to move to LA Galaxy (as director of performance and sport science) and told The Athletic of the strong bonds between Nuno’s team.

“They’ve been through a lot together,” he says. “They’ve developed a strong trust between one another, helped by them having very similar philosophies about football.

“That’s driven by Nuno and he really values what they suggest to him. They have deep discussions and debates about certain things — there are probably times when there’s friction between them — but there’s that level of trust in each other so they can always decide the way forward.

“They do a lot together away from the training ground, watching videos of games, discussing various things outside the team as well, which only strengthens that link.

“They’ve got a siege mentality, us against the rest of the world, which helps you during the bad times.”

Behind them is a huge team of analysts, rehabilitators, nutritionists, doctors and chefs, but it in this core group of seven that the magic happens; where philosophies and ideas are conceived and grown.

They are Wolves’ magnificent seven. Their band of brothers.

 

[Tredman]

Take out the hyperbole at the start and that is a fantastic article.

 

[Paul]

Very interesting