Nuno on our approach

[Bill McCai]

Nuno Espirito Santo interview: Wolves boss on Fabio Silva and faith in youth

In an exclusive interview with Sky Sports, Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo explains the thinking behind the commitment to young players such as Fabio Silva. Watch Wolves vs Everton live on Sky Sports Premier League from 8pm on Tuesday; kick-off 8.15pm

www.skysports.com

 

[SuperGran]

It’s a really good article

 

[John de Wolf's hairdryer]

It’s a really good article

It is. We should, as fans, be really proud that we have a club that believes in developing youth to the extent that we do. It doesn't always feel that way on the Mix though, sadly!

 

[Stoichkov]

Very good by Adam Bate, who is a Wolves fan. Very heartening.

Pleased to see namechecks by Nuno for Corbeanu and Shabani.... slightly surprised the latter hasn't been on bench in recent games. Is he injured?

 

[woop woop barmy army]

Just goes to show it’s more of a transitional season in many aspects.

 

[Leominster_Wolf]

Anyone else think he’s been reading some of the comments on here

But such are expectations after back-to-back seventh-place finishes that the chatter from those on the outside at least is of a plateau being reached, even a sense of drift.


The £35m fee adds expectation that bears little relation to his experience. He is, by six months, the youngest player to start a Premier League game this season, and he is being asked to lead the line for Wolves. His best asset appears to be his intelligent off-the-ball movement rather than any searing pace or unusual trickery.

Hasty assessments are inevitable, even if it is worth remembering that the man he is replacing did not even make his professional debut in Mexico until he was 20.

 

[Tezthewolvesfan]

So proud to have him.

 

[Deleted member 5276]

Just proves Nuno and the club know what they are doing. We may have to go backwards a bit to go forwards but hell, isn't it exciting to see the quality of some of these players coming through and know they will get better?

 

[Golden_Wolf]

Good article and insight.

 

[Burford T Justice]

Anyone else think he’s been reading some of the comments on here

But such are expectations after back-to-back seventh-place finishes that the chatter from those on the outside at least is of a plateau being reached, even a sense of drift.


The £35m fee adds expectation that bears little relation to his experience. He is, by six months, the youngest player to start a Premier League game this season, and he is being asked to lead the line for Wolves. His best asset appears to be his intelligent off-the-ball movement rather than any searing pace or unusual trickery.

Hasty assessments are inevitable, even if it is worth remembering that the man he is replacing did not even make his professional debut in Mexico until he was 20.

Clearly Mr Bate has been reading my coaching assessment on Mr Silva lol

 

[SteveBullsKnee]

It just sums up what the sensible and non-reactive of us already know. That there IS a plan and we arent just some dumping ground/money laundering proposition by Mendes and Fosun.

Will it bare fruit this year? Possibly not. However the future is brighter especially as the football landscape is changing both financially with covid and also the changes in work permit requirements.

Nuno (rightly) gets a lot of the plaudits but the senior management team at the club deserve some as well. For me, the only way we ever break into the cartel is by doing it this way. We simply dont have the resources, or more specifically FFP wont allow us, to do it any other way.

 

[Werewolf of Wombourne]

It's really heartening to hear that all these exciting young players are here to grow into a team together, not just to be groomed and flogged for a profit. Although it's inevitable that some will the main thrust seems to be to push on when they have all got a season or two's experience behind them

 

[De Wolfs Mullet]

Thanks for sharing that article @Bill McCai I enjoyed reading it. It's certainly informative about how we develop our squad and young players. The stats about us having played more youngsters under 21 than any other team in the division was good, particularly when we had four against man yoo.

The reference to older players was interesting though. I can see another experienced head coming in to replace Moutinho at some stage

 

[TheTwoPigeons]

It's a great article, but I do wonder if this 'strategy' we've adopted is down to our poor transfer window, Nuno preferring a smaller squad and an injury crisis instead of meticulous long term planning.

I think if we had all of our players fit, the majority of the young players wouldn't get near the squad and we haven't had the best track record of bringing young players through into the first team to become regulars

If we really planned on emphasising on youth, why did we ship out Gibbs-White, Jordao and Burr this season instead of giving them a chance in the team? You could argue it's because they're not good enough, but if they're some of our best prospects and they're not good enough why do we think youth is the answer?

There's been so many players heralded as future stars that have faded into obscurity and done nothing for the first team over the last 5/6 years (Ennis, Graham, Ronan and Ismail to name a few) and I do wonder if there's something wrong with our youth set up in general. The only player I can even think of recently who's broken through is Danny Batth who unfortunately was not good enough for the top level.

So if we're not developing youth players to come into the first team, then our strategy must be to buy them, but to me it doesn't make sense when you pay the same amount as you would for experienced players and they're not immediately good enough for the first team.

2018/2019 season:

Joao Moutinho - £5m
Raul Jiminez - £34m future fee
Dendoncker - £12m future fee
Jonny - £18.9m

Total = £69.9m

Current season:

Silva = £36m
Hoever = £8.82m
Vitinha = £18m future fee
Ait Nouri =£13.5m future fee

Total = £76.32m

I know the young players we've brought in this year have all got loads of potential, but I don't think anyone in their right mind could suggest they'll have more impact on the first team over the next few seasons than the signings we made in 2018/2019 for a lower amount.

And let's be honest, even if Silva does become the next Ronaldo is he really going to want to stick around playing for Wolves? Absolutely not, so we'll most likely at best get one great season out of him compared to 2/3 from Jiminez (injury forgiving) for virtually the same money.

There have been a couple of exceptions where it has worked; Neves, Neto and Jota being prime examples. Neves has stuck around and has overall been a brilliant signing for us, same as Neto so far, but we've sold Jota which has left a massive goal scoring hole in our team that we've yet to fill. Of course we made a lot of money from his sale, but it's hard to argue that we're better off without him.

It may be that in the long term shifting to focus on youth is the goal and it's been accelerated by the injuries this season, but I find it hard to see any evidence for why we're doing it. Our youth development is poor (at least in terms of developing first team players) and we've had more misses than hits when buying young players. The only way it seems to have worked is that we've made quite a bit of money on selling our players (Costa, Cav, Jota) and for me the Silva transfer I think will fall into this camp as well, which to me is a worrying sign.

 

[reanswolf]

It is. We should, as fans, be really proud that we have a club that believes in developing youth to the extent that we do. It doesn't always feel that way on the Mix though, sadly!

I honestly think everyone likes the notion of developing our own youth. its just the cost of it people are understandably questioning, but not Fabio's fault any way.

 

[wolfgar]

Very good by Adam Bate, who is a Wolves fan. Very heartening.

Pleased to see namechecks by Nuno for Corbeanu and Shabani.... slightly surprised the latter hasn't been on bench in recent games. Is he injured?

Top bloke is Adam. Used to be in my five aside team

 

[John de Wolf's hairdryer]

I honestly think everyone likes the notion of developing our own youth. its just the cost of it people are understandably questioning, but not Fabio's fault any way.

Buying 'fully-formed' talent would cost far more (both in terms of transfer fee AND wages). We don't have a Sky Six budget that enables us to do that, however much the 'I want' faction may prefer it to our approach of developing youth talent.

 

[SteveBullsKnee]

It's a great article, but I do wonder if this 'strategy' we've adopted is down to our poor transfer window, Nuno preferring a smaller squad and an injury crisis instead of meticulous long term planning.

I think if we had all of our players fit, the majority of the young players wouldn't get near the squad and we haven't had the best track record of bringing young players through into the first team to become regulars

If we really planned on emphasising on youth, why did we ship out Gibbs-White, Jordao and Burr this season instead of giving them a chance in the team? You could argue it's because they're not good enough, but if they're some of our best prospects and they're not good enough why do we think youth is the answer?

There's been so many players heralded as future stars that have faded into obscurity and done nothing for the first team over the last 5/6 years (Ennis, Graham, Ronan and Ismail to name a few) and I do wonder if there's something wrong with our youth set up in general. The only player I can even think of recently who's broken through is Danny Batth who unfortunately was not good enough for the top level.

So if we're not developing youth players to come into the first team, then our strategy must be to buy them, but to me it doesn't make sense when you pay the same amount as you would for experienced players and they're not immediately good enough for the first team.

2018/2019 season:

Joao Moutinho - £5m
Raul Jiminez - £34m future fee
Dendoncker - £12m future fee
Jonny - £18.9m

Total = £69.9m

Current season:

Silva = £36m
Hoever = £8.82m
Vitinha = £18m future fee
Ait Nouri =£13.5m future fee

Total = £76.32m

I know the young players we've brought in this year have all got loads of potential, but I don't think anyone in their right mind could suggest they'll have more impact on the first team over the next few seasons than the signings we made in 2018/2019 for a lower amount.

And let's be honest, even if Silva does become the next Ronaldo is he really going to want to stick around playing for Wolves? Absolutely not, so we'll most likely at best get one great season out of him compared to 2/3 from Jiminez (injury forgiving) for virtually the same money.

There have been a couple of exceptions where it has worked; Neves, Neto and Jota being prime examples. Neves has stuck around and has overall been a brilliant signing for us, same as Neto so far, but we've sold Jota which has left a massive goal scoring hole in our team that we've yet to fill. Of course we made a lot of money from his sale, but it's hard to argue that we're better off without him.

It may be that in the long term shifting to focus on youth is the goal and it's been accelerated by the injuries this season, but I find it hard to see any evidence for why we're doing it. Our youth development is poor (at least in terms of developing first team players) and we've had more misses than hits when buying young players. The only way it seems to have worked is that we've made quite a bit of money on selling our players (Costa, Cav, Jota) and for me the Silva transfer I think will fall into this camp as well, which to me is a worrying sign.

Theres a few things there.

There is the investment in young players (Jota, Neves, Neto, Podence, Silva etc) that is completely different to producing our own which is much more difficult. Even the best set ups in the world produce maybe 1 or 2 young players a year for their first team and the rest drift off.

You say about the cost of Silva v the cost of Jiminez. If all things work out as we want Silva has a good couple of seasons and we triple our investment on Silva, regardless of what Raul did after signing that wasnt going to happen. For all the talk of him leaving, I think if United had offered £60 million for him, hed have been gone. Its just where we are fishing currently, to break into that next level we need to be savvy and thats buying young players and developing them, along the way their will be ones who wont make it to the level we hoped (Silva could be that player) but there will be ones who exceed it and im sure they will be sold on.

You say our youth development has been poor, id say our youth development previously had poor recruitment. It was locally based and traditional so you get your Danny Batths, Jack Price's etc but not real talent. Look at the nationalities now in the age groups, our recruitment net is bigger and wider, so we will produce better players. Just look at the fringe ones now Ottasowie is American, Corbeanu Canadian, Shabani is German and Sondergaard is Danish.

 

[Fifty Niner]

Excellent article. On Silva, 'The £35m fee adds expectation that bears little relation to his experience. He is, by six months, the youngest player to start a Premier League game this season, and he is being asked to lead the line for Wolves. His best asset appears to be his intelligent off-the-ball movement rather than any searing pace or unusual trickery'.

Not sure intelligent off-the-ball movement is worth £35m in itself nor going to return many goals per season. I'm sure he has more than that in his locker.

 

[SteveBullsKnee]

I'll add that as a early 40's supporter Ive seen my fair share of (realitvely speaking for where we were) of big names, players for "now" wear our famous shirt who were absolute dross.

Yet some of the good times were with younger players making a name for themselves first group the Bull, Dennison, Thommo group. Then Mick's young and hungry brigade who did something spending millions in the golden tit years couldnt do and give us continous premier league football and then Kenny Jackett blooding some then Nuno coming in with his cubs. You need a mix of course but Id much rather we plan our future with a heavy mix of young players on the "up" than players tossing it about waiting to retire.

 

[Chris H]

- "This club is not a farm to develop players. The players come here because we believe they can make an immediate impact."

- "If you start preparing earlier there will be more of a benefit for you in the future."

"- ...having young players in the squad can ensure that this club has a better future, for sure."

So Nuno is saying there is a plan and we aren't just buying young players to make a profit on them? Weird, some seem fairly adamant that player trading is the sole aim. I guess Nuno must be wrong then!

 

[Bogota Wolf]

I'll add that as a early 40's supporter Ive seen my fair share of (realitvely speaking for where we were) of big names, players for "now" wear our famous shirt who were absolute dross.

Yet some of the good times were with younger players making a name for themselves first group the Bull, Dennison, Thommo group. Then Mick's young and hungry brigade who did something spending millions in the golden tit years couldnt do and give us continous premier league football and then Kenny Jackett blooding some then Nuno coming in with his cubs. You need a mix of course but Id much rather we plan our future with a heavy mix of young players on the "up" than players tossing it about waiting to retire.

'Early 40's supporter' then. Wow. Didn´t we win the War Cup or something like that in about 1942? ;-)

 

[SteveBullsKnee]

'Early 40's supporter' then. Wow. Didn´t we win the War Cup or something like that in about 1942? ;-)

Ok, as a child of the 70s' lol.