Sacked by Bournemouth, the former West Ham midfielder joined a club widely expected to struggle – but he’s instead guided Wolves to mid-table
Some managers, fairly or otherwise, get labelled as being specialists in particular things. For Sam Allardyce it was drinking pints of wine and avoiding relegation from the top flight, for Neil Warnock it was often achieving promotion, for Arsene Wenger [puts on extreme Jose Mourinho voice] “eet was failure”.
But for Gary O’Neil, his speciality might well be thankless tasks – he’s a man who, in the last 12 months alone, has not only rescued Bournemouth from relegation and then been rewarded by being unceremoniously sacked for a more trendy appointment, but then taken the Wolves job after boss Julen Lopetegui walked out. No fewer than five of the club’s highest profile players were sold in the very same summer… and he still has them comfortably in mid-table.
By early March, Wolves were much closer to the European places than they were to the relegation zone, boasting victories over Chelsea, Spurs, Brighton and Manchester City. Not bad for a team some had tipped for the drop when predictions were made at the start of the season.
While a lot of the praise will rightfully be directed at the players, it’s impossible not to acknowledge the job that O’Neil has done both in bringing them together and setting them up on the pitch. Under his guidance, and in very difficult circumstances off the field, Wolves have been a team transformed during the 2023-24 campaign.
01THE NUMBERS
Before we get into the ‘how’ and the ‘why’, the ‘what’ of Wolves’ season is frankly extraordinary. Last term, Wanderers were the division’s lowest scorers by quite a mile, finishing with a paltry 31 goals. For context, the relegated threesome of Leicester, Leeds and Southampton notched 51, 48 and 36.
While the current campaign still has some distance to run, they’ve already comfortably outscored that total – at the start of March, they’d moved to nearly 1.5 goals a game, compared to last season’s average of 0.8.
Crucially, that hasn’t come at a significant cost in terms of defensive solidity, with last season’s 1.52 per game (or 58 goals, as they’re better known) rising only to 1.59 as of early March. Logic tends to follow that when teams open up to be more attacking, it’s a double-edged sword, but they have limited the negative impact on their defence.
Under Lopetegui, they had
