Bruno Lage has been speaking about his time in charge at Wolves – and shared one of the biggest mistakes he believes he made.
The Portuguese tactician spent just over one season in charge at Molineux, overseeing a 10th-placed finish in his first full term.
Bruno Lage was pushing for Europe at one point, but ultimately fell away much to the disappointment of supporters at the time.
After his first season, Lage then lasted until October of 2022/23, before getting the sack from Fosun for poor results. Wolves would then appoint Julen Lopetegui, after a brief caretaker stint from Steve Davis.
Lage’s time at Wolves has been viewed by many as fairly uninspiring. But his new interview with The Coaches Voice may well change some people’s perception of him. And he made some interesting remarks to suggest what prompted his downfall…
Former Wolves manager Bruno Lage suggests he wasn’t forceful enough with his squad concerns
Lage struggled at Wolves initially, losing his first three Premier League games after being appointed. But despite those three 1-0 defeats, Wanderers actually looked very impressive.
The signs were there that Wolves could perhaps go places under Lage and sure enough, the results started to come.
By February, Lage had Wolves in contention for European football. But Wolves won just three of their final 14 Premier League games, losing nine and drawing two.
Wolves ended up finishing 10th, and now Lage has spoken about why his side badly struggled after that. He puts it down to having a poorly prepared squad, and admits his regret about not making a bigger deal about that to his superiors.
He told The Coaches Voice: “Some players were coming to the end of their contracts, though, and we lost important players like Fernando Marçal, Romain Saïss and, early in the new season, Willy Boly, Conor Coady and Leander Dendoncker. Unfortunately, the club had failed to bring in enough replacements during pre-season. We only brought in a centre-back, Nathan Collins, from Burnley.
“And that was the big mistake we made. I was very vocal, warning of the potential problems and insisting on having the new players for the pre-season, but I still hold myself responsible. Maybe I wasn’t persuasive enough about the importance of having the squad ready as soon as possible.”
Lage also said about going into 2023/24, ‘my idea of what the squad should look like was very far from the reality’.
Lage made mistakes, but he had it tough
Many Wolves fans were adamant that Lage had to be sacked when he was and, on balance, it was probably the right decision at the time.
But this interview he has done with The Coaches Voice is very revealing, and does suggest that it was a difficult environment for him in which to work.
Ultimately, he encountered the same problems as both Lopetegui and Gary O’Neil.
A manager cannot work to the best of their ability if they are not suitably backed by their superiors, and the implication here is that Fosun just did not help Lage to prepare the squad.
Sure, Lage did some odd things towards the end of his tenure, such as playing Ruben Neves – who was apparently consulted over the decision to sack Lage – as a centre-back one time.
But he wasn’t as bad as a lot of people made out, and he might well have done a better job had he been appropriately backed.