Just over one year ago today, Wolves sacked Bruno Lage as head coach.
A lot has happened since then, but Lage received his marching orders from the Wolves hierarchy at the start of October 2022 following a 2-0 loss to West Ham United.
He had won just one of his previous 15 games in charge.
Ultimately, he just couldn’t remain in his position.
Despite showing some impressive tactics at times in the 2021/22 season, Lage ended up losing the dressing room.
It was reported that his team meetings became frustrating, long and drawn out and a number of players are believed to have disengaged.
Lage was sacked, and sporting director Matt Hobbs has given his honest thoughts about Wolves in those final weeks of his reign…
Matt Hobbs says Wolves stopped representing the fans under Bruno Lage
Hobbs appeared on the Wolves Weekly podcast with Mikey Burrows to chat about Wolves’ journey over the last year or so.
At one point there is talk of the Lage sacking, which happened just before Hobbs succeeded Scott Sellars.
In Hobbs’ eyes, the reason for the struggles were clear.
He said (via The Athletic): “I want us to have a team that represents the people in the stands. I felt like under Bruno we stopped representing the fans — hard-working area, people who love their football, passionate, and people who will get behind you if they see you putting the effort in.
“They will forgive you a missed pass or missing a chance if you keep going and we saw that under Julen. It was interesting, under Bruno we hadn’t outrun a single team in the Premier League. Under Julen, only one team outran us.”
Hobbs claim is damning
Things were pretty bad in those final weeks before Lage got fired.
It was clear that a lot of the players had checked out, and were almost waiting for him to get the chop.
Lage did get some tactical scalps over some big clubs during his time at Molineux.
But there was such a disconnect between Lage, the players and the fans.
It was a mess, but Wolves are hopefully in a much better position now. O’Neil certainly seems to have the respect of the dressing room.