2025/6 Sack Race
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Oscar Wilde described foxhunting as "the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable". There's something similar about that fixture today.
Didn’t he just sign a new contract?
Did he? Well, Wolves are known for sacking managers.
Yep 3 years this week.
Interesting article in Athletic this week about the potential reasons:
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Wolverhampton Wanderers are set to give Vitor Pereira a new contract to remain as head coach until 2028, and there is no escaping the fact the optics are… challenging.
The club that are bottom of the Premier League table with four defeats from four games this season, and who are winless in eight league games dating back to the last campaign, are expected to reward the Portuguese with a new three-year deal on improved terms.
The associated risks are clear, especially to Wolves supporters after the events of 2024.
That summer, the club rewarded Gary O’Neil, Pereira’s predecessor, with a four-year deal after his impressive first season in charge.
By December, a dismal start to last season — which followed an underwhelming end to the previous one — led to O’Neil and his backroom team being sacked at considerable cost to pay the severance clauses in their deals.
After the tough start to the new season there will be understandable fears that history could repeat itself. From a PR point of view, the timing for Wolves could hardly have been more difficult.
Yet there are sound reasons why the club are set to give Pereira his deal. Most obvious is the risk of not acting, which is potentially as damaging as the risk of agreeing to it.
There is a cliche and a truism oft-repeated by veteran coaches, which states that footballers with an excuse to underperform will invariably do so.
And a club whose head coach’s contract is entering its final months, as Pereira’s existing deal soon would be, would provide players with such an excuse — if they fail to perform, the coach would carry the can and they would get a fresh start under someone else.
By rewarding Pereira and securing his future, Wolves will remove a layer of uncertainty from the squad — a move they hope will add extra stability and provide clarity to the players and staff.
Delaying the award of a contract that has been in the works for several months would have sent the opposite message and risked spreading a sense of panic through a squad for whom a drain of confidence is already a potential issue.
That timing is also a key consideration. While the talks have reached their conclusion at an inopportune moment, they began at the end of last season in much happier times for Wolves supporters, who will be urged by the club to view the decision through the lens of Pereira’s whole reign, rather than the past few weeks.
He took over a team 19th in the table with nine points from 16 games and kept them in the top flight with five games to spare, thanks mainly to a run of six successive wins in March and April.
He ended last season with the highest win percentage of any Wolves manager in the Premier League — this season’s poor start has dropped him below Julen Lopetegui into second place (38.5 per cent compared to Lopetegui’s 39.1).
And his success in guiding a team that looked ill-disciplined and confused by the end of O’Neil’s reign to safety with relative ease convinced chairman Jeff Shi that Pereira is the man to provide stability.
Since Nuno Espirito Santo left in June 2021, Wolves have been managed by five different people, including an extended interim stint for Steve Davis.
There is a desire at Molineux to end the churn and Pereira is seen as the man to lead them, based on the way he united the club, raised morale and formed strong relationships behind the scenes last season.
It feels like a bold move, given his CV for the past decade has, by his own admission, been that of a ‘globetrotter’.
But that decision was essentially made at the beginning of the summer, when Wolves dispensed with sporting director Matt Hobbs as part of a reshuffle that led to Pereira being given greater power, bringing in extra coaches, appointing ally Domenico Teti to take over some of Hobbs’ responsibilities and being given a significant say in transfer policy.
To that extent, Wolves have gone all-in on Pereira. Backing away now would represent a major change of direction, while delaying the contract decision based on short-term results would smack of panic at a time when calm is needed.
There is an obvious risk in making such a financial and reputation investment when form has nosedived and the jury is out on the summer transfer window.
But in the view of Shi, it is far outweighed by the value of stability.
