Summer 2021 transfer window

[prawnking]

Im with TT.

Parking Lage and Mendes the process/due diligence from the club should be of huge concern.

It's one thing getting the odd Silvio or player who won't do anything to do him a favour but to be so relaxed about the most critical appointment in the football club is worrisome.

Mendes might open the door and facilitate a meeting between Wolves and Lage but that should be part of a wider interview process.

Certainly from the outside Shi is just being led down the garden path by Mendes.

Like I said, the question is 'is it a step too far', and I feel it'll only really be vindicated if Lage is successful.

I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn't say I was relaxed. More that I'm prepared to give Fosun/Shi etc the benefit of the doubt, as I don't think Nuno is the only factor in our recent success

 

[PuntsWolf]

Surely for option 3 you'd like to explore the best possible candidate out there though? Who matches your ambition, who wows you with their vision.

Well we can’t get a top tier manager. You’ve already said Potter wouldn’t come. Gerrard is little more qualified than Lage (less coaching experience, maybe he’s a better man manager? Just guesswork). People like Benitez wouldn’t accept not having power over recruitment. So yeah we’ve naturally got a pretty narrow net. Maybe Lage is the best coach within all the other parameters?

 

[MARKakaJIM]

As many times as you say this, or variations of it Mark it doesn't make it true. Please stop comparing it to Nuno it's tiresome. This isn't about Nuno, he's gone, it's about the future

Same process, same connections.

Only difference is Wolves place in the league and the sense of entitlement fans get with it. Nuno was certainly more of a coup to get in the Championship than Lage is now, no doubt about it, but that has no impact on how good either of them are as a coach in absolute terms. You're just look at reputation relative to the club at the time of appointment and that's only really relevant to appeasing fans as a first impression, it has no impact on results.

In relative terms Sven going to City was probably a far greater coup for them than getting Pep considering where the club was at their respective appointments, no-one is arguing about which of those is the better manager.

The Liga Nos comparison is flaky a best, it's a tiny sample size, but it's the only real yardstick for comparing the two managers' performance on anything like an equal footing, same league and both at big clubs. In my eyes that's the closest you can get to an absolute measure between the two in purely objective terms, there's very little between them if you use Lage's second season against Nuno's Porto season.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

No-one wins then, as he will fail. It's as plain as the nose on your face.

Mark, stop being a cunt, now.

Is this meant to be some sort of threat?

 

[Jabbawolf]

Yet again, not the point.
Nuno going does not justify the Lage coronation

I don’t claim to know much about Lage but am willing to give him a chance before writing him off - naive maybe, but I reserve the right to withhold judgement.

 

[AndyWolves]

Im with TT.

Parking Lage and Mendes the process/due diligence from the club should be of huge concern.

It's one thing getting the odd Silvio or player who won't do anything to do him a favour but to be so relaxed about the most critical appointment in the football club is worrisome.

Mendes might open the door and facilitate a meeting between Wolves and Lage but that should be part of a wider interview process.

Certainly from the outside Shi is just being led down the garden path by Mendes.

I just don't see the bottom line true, why would a) Jeff just do what Mendes tells him? You don't get to that level by swerving decisions, or if you do you don't last very long b) why would Mendes chuck us a duffer and risk our relationship with him? He's onto a very good thing here, chucking us knobbers risks that.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

If Fosun want to get back to 7th maybe it would make sense to stick with a manager that has achieved that twice? If they want top six with a squad that has cost a fraction of the competitors for top six maybe going with a proven manager would make sense, not a half season wonder? Lage looks like a long shot gamble and any fool knows that long shots rarely win.

Why would a manager with a proven record of qualifying for Europe come to a team that just finished below Bruce's Newcastle?

You either have to throw big money at it to break the glass ceiling like Chelsea or City, which seems unlikely, or you have to take a gamble on something different. Playing it as a straight fight when you're completely outgunned isn't going to give you much chance of pushing above the competition.

 

[prawnking]

So yeah we’ve naturally got a pretty narrow net. Maybe Lage is the best coach within all the other parameters?

Our parameters on signing players have hardly been wide since we've been in the PL either, and not many you'd say were out of our reach in the way you could about Neves and Jota in the championship.

We've taken a punt on a host of Portuguese players over the past couple of years, is it that surprising we're doing the same with a manager? I doubt we did much due diligence on whether there were better non-Portuguese/Mendes wingers when we signed Neto or Podence either

 

[big mean bunny]

I think the difference is since his sacking Nuno has been linked with Spurs, Lazio, Everton, Palace.

We are on the verge of appointing a manager who needed a tribunal to get a WP, it's feels a tad like Ashley hiring John Carver.

P. S Edit - who I had to look up as was like "who was that bloody random manager Newcastle hired that time"

 

[MARKakaJIM]

I think the difference is since his sacking Nuno has been linked with Spurs, Lazio, Everton, Palace.

We are on the verge of appointing a manager who needed a tribunal to get a WP, it's feels a tad like Ashley hiring John Carver.

How genuine are those links though? Feels to be like it's just lazy journalism, manager of reasonable profile recently become available without any disgrace and a lot of decent clubs with a vacancy. Easy to join those dots.

If he ends up at any of those clubs then it make a mockery of all the claims this season that Nuno was devastated being away from his family and it affecting his performance.

 

[big mean bunny]

Yeah that's fair, but I mean more in terms of profile. I get there is a region bias here as I only see media and links from certain places, but no one was linking Lage with jobs on the Euro show, Tifo etc. Its just very odd, I asked a few Wednesday fans about him and one of them was like "why are you asking us about him?" - completely unaware he was their assistant, which I get means rod all I just found it amusing in a worrying sense.

 

[prawnking]

You either have to throw big money at it to break the glass ceiling like Chelsea or City, which seems unlikely, or you have to take a gamble on something different. Playing it as a straight fight when you're completely outgunned isn't going to give you much chance of pushing above the competition.

This is a good point, Fosun have done things differently since they took us over, which is why they put quite a few noses out of joint. We were generally all for it two or three years ago, and even defending or downplaying the Mendes influence.

Shi obviously trusts him and has had success by relying on him. Getting squeamish when this way of 'getting ahead' reaches a predictable conclusion with a manager obviously from the Mendes stable rather than through a conventional process is fine, but maybe misunderstands how the club has been run?

Why would Shi suddenly start running manager recruitment in the idealistic, diligent way TT or Lincs describes when nothing at the club has been run like that previously, with managers or players?

(I'm not necessarily defending this approach btw, but it seems fairly consistent)

 

[The Bear]

During transfer windows people pooh pooh others who say they want such and such type of player, by telling them to name who we could realistically attract and who are as good as they want.

So now those determined to sack Lage and relegate the club before he's even been appointed, tell us exactly which top 6 level managers we could realistically attract to a club who've just finished 13th, who are available without paying huge compensation, and would be willing to work with our smaller squad and reported reduced transfer budget?

 

[YoungWolf]

How about don’t sack our best manager since Cullis if he’s the best we can bring in?

I’m not at the stage of writing Lage off and I don’t think his appointment = relegation as his stint at Benfica isn’t enough to go by (I also rate our current squad better than most seem to) but either way right now there’s little to be pleased about IMO.

 

[The Bear]

We're clearly trying for a different style of football.

If we look half decent going forward but are still capable of conceding in first halves and losing games, do we pin that on the manager or our usual back four defence?

 

[YoungWolf]

We're clearly trying for a different style of football.

If we look half decent going forward but are still capable of bceding in first halves and losing games, do we pin that on the manager or our usual back four defence?

So the thing that most blamed Nuno on for his approach won’t be Lage’s fault in this weird hypothetical situation?

I don’t know where you are going with this anyway because you are arguing something that wasn’t being argued against

 

[The Bear]

So the thing that most blamed Nuno on for his approach won’t be Lage’s fault in this weird hypothetical situation?

I'm saying we can organise the back four all we like but if they keep making mistakes that lead to conceding then it's individual rather than systemic.

 

[YoungWolf]

I'm saying we can organise the back four all we like but if they keep making mistakes that lead to conceding then it's individual rather than systemic.

So it wasn’t the manager that needed changing, you are saying?

 

[prawnking]

How about don’t sack our best manager since Cullis if he’s the best we can bring in?

I’m not at the stage of writing Lage off and I don’t think his appointment = relegation as his stint at Benfica isn’t enough to go by (I also rate our current squad better than most seem to) but either way right now there’s little to be pleased about IMO.

I don't think you always worry about who you bring in when you part ways with a manager (mutual consent ).

Either Nuno was capable of taking us forward and wanted to, or he wasn't. He isn't here now, so that answers that.

Maybe few managers will work with Mendes in the background (Nuno obviously has history with him personally), so you're looking at either a shallow pool to choose from, or Jeff sacks off Nuno and Jorge. I'd say doing that is more a recipe for relegation than what we have now

 

[YoungWolf]

I don't think you always worry about who you bring in when you part ways with a manager (mutual consent ).

Any well run club absolutely should.