Finally a player speaks

[Polish Wolf]

According to the Liam Keen article on Bruno, he was an incredible hard worker, often stayed into the evening, when previous unnamed managers left by 3. Ruddy in his interview said that Bruno was a very good coach, but hinted that he was not a great man manager.

Now suddenly it's being suggested that training was a complete doss and players had stopped bothering.

Doesn't sound right to me.

I have been managing teams, of course in a different area, for a longer while now. From my experience I believe all teams, not only in sport, have two areas that need to be addressed.

One is so-called above the water, which is the visible commitment to their work, the tasks that they have to do and ultimately the results they get. The other one, below the water, is all about relationships, conflict solving, communication etc.

In a longer run, if the things below the water are not sorted, they will impact all the areas above the water.

In other words, my opinion is that one can be the best football coach in the world, but if he's not a good man manager, his teams will disengage from his training methods.

 

[WickedWolfie]

Wolves happen to be in the premier league due to the Portuguese social club.
Brentford have got a Danish one going. Maybe the baggies could try one? Latvia about their level?

I was thinking more like Malta for the Boggies... Cue irate @Guzeppi chewing me out.....

 

[sillytuna]

Evidence points to a good coach but poor man management and general tactical issues.

Afaik he was well respected at youth level and the skills required there are probably a little different. Moving to a higher, older level isn't something everyone can do.

Personnel management in particular is going to be very different.

What players have basically been saying is something is wrong with the training and set up. Not exactly a surprise given the numerous leaks.

So yes, it's good they take some blame too because of course they should, but between the lines they're blaming bruno and his team. No two ways about it.

As others have pointed out, what they haven't done/said screams that they knew he had to go and he wasn't hugely liked (which is different from actively disliked, but some certainly did not get on well with his methods/personality, put it that way - hence certain transfers).

 

[tonto]

I was thinking more like Malta for the Boggies... Cue irate @Guzeppi chewing me out.....

Scilla isles without the c

 

[tonto]

Scilla isles without the c

Scilly

 

[NewOrder306]

Scilly

Silly

 

[DasWolf]

Evidence points to a good coach [...] What players have basically been saying is something is wrong with the training and set up.

I think those contradict each other.

I don't see any real evidence of a good coach to be honest. People saying the words doesn't make it so. Since part of coaching is to understand the manager tactics, as well as stuff like attacking set pieces, it's looked like stuff wasn't coached at all.

 

[Contrarian]

Neto in goal says it all, too much joking about

I fully supported Bruno until quite recently. The moment that changed my mind was the penalty taking incident against Preston. Followed by an awful second half of course. The whole thing looked wrong - joking around, not taking the game seriously. There were plenty of other incidents, in hindsight, but that was the final straw where you could see the players had lost respect for the manager and had lost that edge needed to win.

In hindsight, there were plenty other red flags that by themselves mean nothing, but stack them up , indicated big problems. Clearly injured players hobbling around for 10 minutes or more before being taken off. Can happen once, but was a repeated pattern for us. And it shows how unadaptable Bruno was, similar with his awful substitutions even at best of times. How many times did we see one of our players sat down, clearly in distress, having to stop the game? Far more often than usual, it was happening every 2 or 3 games, it seemed.

One incident that seemed funny at the time, though when reminded of it, may say something. When Neves scored the winner in the 3-2 at Villa. Our players and fans are all going totally wild, celebrating, but Bruno seemed distracted, looking elsewhere, not celebrating or anything. That strange moment summed him up. It was all too much for him and he was out of his depth. If he wants to continue managing, I think he needs to go back to basics and build up his experience at a club with a lesser profile, in a lower league.

 

[Zico]

I think those contradict each other.

I don't see any real evidence of a good coach to be honest. People saying the words doesn't make it so. Since part of coaching is to understand the manager tactics, as well as stuff like attacking set pieces, it's looked like stuff wasn't coached at all.

Agree. Remember how Terry Connor was "the best coach we've ever worked with"?

 

[blakenhall wolf]

Was Nuno really in the pub with the players? Doesn’t seem a very Portuguese thing to do to me; 1970/80s British players perhaps, but not Portuguese who come across invariably as being more professional than their U.K. counterparts.
Nuno also had a big back room team including analysts so presumably he delegated some of the work, but in the early days, in particular, was known (istr) to drill and drill and drill again the team in the various shapes he wanted at various passages of play. No doubt he was more charismatic.
Maybe Bruno took on more himself? But seemingly the training ground drills were replaced by long team meetings/ presentation sessions. He also attended more U23 matches etc. but seems to have been distant and a poor man-manager.
Hopefully there is a happy medium between the two and that is Lopetegui?
I still think that losing people like Coady and Ruddy from the dressing room was a mistake, and not using Toti, Cundle and Ronan much at all, and shoehorning people in to unfamiliar positions when the squad was clearly thin on the ground, we’re mistakes.

He was 100% in the pub with the players. Pint and a fag.

 

[so-called fan]

Wolves happen to be in the premier league due to the Portuguese social club.
Brentford have got a Danish one going. Maybe the baggies could try one? Latvia about their level?

It's the investment that finally got Wolves back up there, and Nuno could have done it with less investment if he'd had to. The change he made in Doherty and Coady was remarkable. Many Wolves fans would have expected those two players to be straight out the door, instead they became huge successes. The players brought in by the money did not have to all be Portuguese, and it was a mistake to concentrate so much on the one nationality imo.

 

[arctic rime]

It's the investment that finally got Wolves back up there, and Nuno could have done it with less investment if he'd had to. The change he made in Doherty and Coady was remarkable. Many Wolves fans would have expected those two players to be straight out the door, instead they became huge successes. The players brought in by the money did not have to all be Portuguese, and it was a mistake to concentrate so much on the one nationality imo.

Jonny
Adama
Donk
Raul

plus others

 

[so-called fan]

Jonny
Adama
Donk
Raul

plus others

Well, yes okay, I shouldn't have said 'all'.

 

[Supadavewolf]

The greatest ever Wolves team in the 50s had very limited diversity. In general though l agree with you that diversity is a good thing.

It still included a cat called Bert Williams plus a terrier named Eddie Clamp, not to mention a magician by the name of Broadbent

 

[Flea]

The greatest ever Wolves team in the 50s had very limited diversity. In general though l agree with you that diversity is a good thing.

Yep,but it was a whole different time.
Our opponents at the time lacked the diversity as well..so it is very hard indeed to find useful correlations to the situation in 2022.

 

[Stratman Wolves]

We have overdone it IMO.
Diversity in a football team is always a good thing.

It's the investment that finally got Wolves back up there, and Nuno could have done it with less investment if he'd had to. The change he made in Doherty and Coady was remarkable. Many Wolves fans would have expected those two players to be straight out the door, instead they became huge successes. The players brought in by the money did not have to all be Portuguese, and it was a mistake to concentrate so much on the one nationality imo.

But the next manager is likely to be Spanish, not Portuguese?

 

[Norwegian Wolf]

I fully supported Bruno until quite recently. The moment that changed my mind was the penalty taking incident against Preston. Followed by an awful second half of course. The whole thing looked wrong - joking around, not taking the game seriously. There were plenty of other incidents, in hindsight, but that was the final straw where you could see the players had lost respect for the manager and had lost that edge needed to win.

In hindsight, there were plenty other red flags that by themselves mean nothing, but stack them up , indicated big problems. Clearly injured players hobbling around for 10 minutes or more before being taken off. Can happen once, but was a repeated pattern for us. And it shows how unadaptable Bruno was, similar with his awful substitutions even at best of times. How many times did we see one of our players sat down, clearly in distress, having to stop the game? Far more often than usual, it was happening every 2 or 3 games, it seemed.

One incident that seemed funny at the time, though when reminded of it, may say something. When Neves scored the winner in the 3-2 at Villa. Our players and fans are all going totally wild, celebrating, but Bruno seemed distracted, looking elsewhere, not celebrating or anything. That strange moment summed him up. It was all too much for him and he was out of his depth. If he wants to continue managing, I think he needs to go back to basics and build up his experience at a club with a lesser profile, in a lower league.

The red flags were waving months before the Preston game. Remember that Lage's great victory away at Villa was the game where he started Dendoncker up front on the right, had Hwang as a lone striker and had Raul glaring at him for 45 minutes on the touchline until he finally got on in the 88th minute. Meanwhile, Adama was started on the left, was dropped back to right back for some daft reason and then changed the game in the last 15 minutes when he played further forward. Another Bruno coaching master class.

 

[WickedWolfie]

Yep,but it was a whole different time.
Our opponents at the time lacked the diversity as well..so it is very hard indeed to find useful correlations to the situation in 2022.

Oh, l absolutely agree. I have to say though that Athletic Bilbao do pretty well given their self-imposed restricted pool of players.