Gary Neville shares his honest feelings about Vitor Pereira’s sacking by Wolves

Wolves are set for a new era after sacking Vitor Pereira, and Gary Neville has given his verdict on the decision.

Pereira lost his job as Wolves manager on Sunday morning, following the 3-0 Premier League defeat to Fulham at Craven Cottage.

Wolves had shown a good level in the second-half against Chelsea in the Carabao Cup just days before. But unfortunately, the players turned in an awful performance against Fulham.

And Pereira did himself no favours with the starting XI he chose, with Joao Gomes and Andre both benched for Wolves.

The defeat proved the final straw for Fosun, who are now searching for a successor. Gary O’Neil was set to come in for a second spell at Wolves, which came as a huge surprise to many. But the Englishman dramatically withdrew from the process last night.

Pereira will now be assessing where things went wrong at Wolves, but he does have some sympathy from pundit Gary Neville.

Gary Neville reacts to Vitor Pereira’s sacking by Wolves

Pereira’s downfall at Wolves was quite spectacular.

The Portuguese did a superb job after he replaced O’Neil midway through last season, getting Wolves back on the straight and narrow.

But the wheels well and truly came off this season, with poor recruitment a major factor behind Wolves’ struggles.

Despite how bad things got under Pereira, Gary Neville does believe he’s a good manager and has sympathy over his removal as Wolves manager.

He said in a video for NBC Sports: “(It’s) Sad. Because I think he’s a good man. I think he’s a good manager. But you see there, the points are poor, the goal difference is shocking. They’ve not had a win this season.

“The one thing I would say is if you look at last season, you mentioned there about the new contract, they wouldn’t have wanted to have done this.

“He had a fantastic record (last season). 22 matches, 10 wins for a club like Wolves who are year in year out down near the bottom of the table. That’s a very, very good record. All of a sudden he’s had a pre-season with them and it’s completely flipped. Can’t get a point, can’t get a win and nothing’s happening.

“And now because of that £100 million that you lose now, teams, clubs, owners don’t wait – it’s a cutthroat business.

“I think the owners will be thinking, in a period of difficulty losing five matches, giving him a new contract is to try and stabilise and say to the players ‘It’ll be you that go before him’. But it’s obviously backfired and it’s not worked.”

Pereira far from blameless in Wolves’ demise

Of course, it’s always sad when a manager loses his job. But in this instance there could be no arguing for Pereira to stay any longer.

Sadly, he just couldn’t make it work. He tried multiple different systems, and also made lots of bizarre player selections and in the end, he lost most of the fans a couple of weeks ago.

The writing was on the wall when he got animated in front of the South Bank after the defeat to Burnley, later saying he felt he and his players needed support in that moment.

Fingers have been pointed at Wolves’ recruitment, but Pereira played a big part in that. Ultimately, he had the final say on players coming in.

However, there were many involved in Wolves’ summer window so it was a collective failure.