Bruno Lage once slammed a player at Wolves very publicly – but said player could now be in line for an unlikely chance at Molineux.
Bruno Lage manages Benfica these days, but had a stint at Wolves after Nuno Espirito Santo left the club at the end of the 2020/21 season.
Nuno called time on his spell at Molineux after a difficult season that was played behind closed doors due to Covid. There was also that horrendous head injury for Raul Jimenez.
In came Lage, and after a tricky start, the Portuguese really started to make waves and by around February 2022, Wolves were daring to think about European football.
But a poor end to that season saw Wolves finish 10th, and then awful results followed at the start of the 2022/23 season. Lage was sacked by early October.
After his sacking, it came out that all wasn’t really well behind the scenes even at the end of the 2021/22 season – and there was one situation that really shocked fans.
Bruno Lage was fuming with Ki-Jana Hoever after he got injured for Wolves against Crystal Palace
There was potential with Lage.
He did show himself to be tactically decent at times, and recorded some impressive results.
But it was known that Lage wasn’t the warmest of individuals, and his methods also reportedly didn’t engage the players. In fact, it was claimed some Wolves players did not like Lage’s team meetings, which could go on for a long time and be counter-productive.
Lage could also be quite ruthless, and one player who felt the full force of that ruthlessness back in March 2022 was Ki-Jana Hoever.
Wolves lost a Premier League game to Crystal Palace at Molineux, and Hoever had to go off injured after just 25 minutes.
Making an example of Hoever, Lage blasted in his press conference afterwards: “Ki is a good example of the young kids, they want everything to happen [now].
“When you are out and your teammate is playing, and you are not training at the intensity, you are not preparing yourself and after, when you have a chance, these kinds of things happen.
“I have too many kids in my team that sometimes don’t work the way they should work. They do not prepare the way they should prepare and after, when they come inside [the team], these kinds of things happen.
“When they are in training they are thinking a lot, ‘Oh I’m not playing’, and I said to them in the first day when I started, ‘We are here, you need to continue to work. The first target is to work and improve.
“Injuries can happen, but this one happened because he was not prepared because Ki sometimes doesn’t work in the same intensity. This warning is not only for Ki, it’s for all the kids we have in our team.
“They need to understand that I don’t waste time with guys who don’t work hard every day to improve. I can see guys who are 35 years old and they don’t play, like Joao (Moutinho) didn’t (at West Ham), and they are trying to win balls in the air, ‘Hey, look at me, I’m here’.”
At the time, many people felt this public bashing of a player was the beginning of the end for Lage at Wolves.
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Hoever could now finally get a proper chance at Wolves
Hoever joined Wolves back in 2020, and unfortunately, the very public dressing down he got from Lage is probably the thing most fans think about when it comes to the Dutchman.
That’s because he’s barely played, having had a few loan spells away from the club.
The presence of Nelson Semedo at Wolves made life difficult for him.
But Semedo just announced his exit from Wolves, and the door is potentially now open for Hoever to make his mark at Wolves, at long last.
He had a good spell on loan at Auxerre last season, and Hoever has said he is ‘ready’ to play for Wolves.
Molineux News understands Hoever is likely to be kept around by Wolves now, but it’s on him to make himself a regular at right wing-back, with Wolves still in the market for a new player.