The Athletic view of Gary O’Neil leaving Wolves… by
itfcjoe 21 Jun 9:42https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5995902/2024/12/16/wolves-gary-oneil-jorge-mendes-vitor-pereira/?source=user_shared_article&unlocked_article_code=1.r1A.fWXY.vOeN0yOyplic
On Sunday morning, O’Neil, who had returned to his family home in Kent for a flying visit after the Ipswich defeat, took a phone call from Hobbs to inform him of Wolves’ decision.
It would not have come as a shock given his departure has looked increasingly inevitable for much of this season. Even at the height of his Wolves success, the cracks were appearing.
In a single month — February 2024 — O’Neil’s Wolves claimed famous, emphatic Premier League victories at Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, completing the double over both ‘Big Six’ clubs, stood toe to toe with Manchester United before losing a 4-3 Molineux thriller in stoppage time, and defeated Brighton to reach the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.
They saw off Sheffield United for good measure and, as spring arrived with some fans dreaming of pushing for a spot in Europe, it felt like players, management, club and supporters were in harmony for the first time since Nuno Espirito Santo departed, drawing a line under the club’s most successful spell since the early 1980s.
Yet already the seeds of the decline had been sown.
The failures of the January transfer window, when O’Neil was confident of adding a striker to his squad, only to discover in the final days of the window that Wolves would not sanction any of the deals on the table, left the former Bournemouth boss disenchanted with life at Molineux.
Neither he nor the Wolves hierarchy could have foreseen the scale of the injury crisis that robbed him of his first-choice forward line for much of the final third of the campaign, with Pedro Neto, Hwang Hee-chan and Matheus Cunha all injured for several weeks.
But O’Neil felt his warnings that Wolves were risking their immediate future by not adding understudies had gone unheeded. The result was a quarter-final defeat to Coventry with raw teenager Nathan Fraser leading the line, combined with a slide from the outskirts of the European race to the bottom half of the Premier League table with just two wins in their final 12 league games.
In a worrying echo of the breakdown in trust between Wolves and O’Neil’s predecessor Lopetegui, O’Neil’s confidence in the owners’ ability and willingness to back him was never restored.
People familiar with the situation say O’Neil was angry for much of the transfer window due to what he saw as broken promises over his desire for a centre-back and a winger who could step straight into his first team, replacing the departed Maximilian Kilman and Pedro Neto.
Instead, striker Jorgen Strand Larsen is the only summer signing to have cemented a place in the team, while several other fairly costly signings were young players with an eye to Wolves adding value in the future.
After the closure of the window, O’Neil’s anger was said to have subsided as he resolved to make the best of the squad he had.
But a combination of tricky early fixtures — the toughest opening of any club in the league based on Opta’s Power Rankings — and squad deficiencies meant Wolves’ season spiralled out of control, not helped by O’Neil’s decision to change their playing style based on signings he expected but which never arrived.
In the end, he left Wolves with goodwill still intact. His relationship with Hobbs remained especially strong, with O’Neil considering that Hobbs had kept up his end of the bargain by lining up deals for first-team players that ultimately went unsanctioned.
Senior players also remained supportive of O’Neil, but their loss of discipline in recent weeks, from Jose Sa venturing into the crowd during the defeat to Bournemouth to Mario Lemina’s meltdown at West Ham and the ugly scenes after the weekend defeat to Ipswich involving Matheus Cunha and Rayan Ait-Nouri, suggested that while O’Neil retained support, he had lost authority.
That realisation, combined with continued dreadful results, left Wolves with no choice but to make a change. Even senior figures at Wolves accepted that O’Neil was to a large extent a victim of circumstance.
The job he did last season in taking over a squad rocked by Lopetegui’s eve-of-the-season departure and leading Wolves well clear of relegation trouble while claiming memorable wins and big-name scalps earned him widespread respect in the Molineux hierarchy.
And the club’s decision-makers were painfully aware that those key injuries at the end of last season, combined with a horrible set of fixtures at the start of this one, helped destroy the momentum he had created.
Yet there were also decisions that haunted the young, inexperienced head coach.
He was heavily involved in the summer in the appointment of Jack Wilson as Wolves’ first set-piece coach, only to go back on the decision and move Wilson out three months later, with people familiar with the matter saying O’Neil decided he had not integrated well into the backroom staff.
Both with and without Wilson, Wolves’ failure to defend set pieces has been a constant problem.
That saga raised questions about O’Neil’s judgement, as did the replacement just a few days ago of Lemina as captain following his post-match meltdown at West Ham after O’Neil had chosen the Gabon international in the summer to replace Kilman as skipper. Lemina, 31, grappled with West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen after the 2-1 defeat, then clashed with team-mates Nelson Semedo and Toti and pushed first-team coach Shaun Derry.
The change of tactics and shape, including a switch to a back four, at the start of the season was also a risk O’Neil did not need to make and invited criticism given the previous use of three central defenders and a counter-attacking style had worked well last season until injuries struck, with the gap between the club’s expected goals for and against trending in the wrong direction this season.
With O’Neil increasingly looking unable to solve the immediate defensive and man-management problems he faced, the Wolves hierarchy concluded that a figure with more experience and gravitas was needed.
Gary O’Neil - The Athletic on his time in Strasbourg by
ippy_land 22 Jun 23:50https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7240154/2026/04/30/gary-oneil-strasbourg-wolves-bournemouth-blueco-conference/
•Interesting points on how he was received vs Rosenior (appearing more down to earth, taking to the language)
• viewed Strasbourg as an opportunity to take a team who would dominate possession (layers more intrigued as to how he would tweak the current system)
“A source with knowledge of the situation, granted anonymity to protect relationships, says O’Neil was attracted by the chance to work in a different league and to coach a team with the chance to dominate possession. His plan at Wolves had always been to build a front-foot, possession-based side, but the need for instant results saw him revert in both seasons to a less intense, more counter-attacking system.
At Strasbourg, he has adopted his favoured 4-2-3-1 system and his side has averaged 55 per cent possession. That compares to 54 per cent for Strasbourg under Rosenior and just 40 per cent and 49 per cent for O’Neil’s Bournemouth and Wolves”
• All 3 of GONs jobs he has taken on with fan disgruntlement. Expect even with the divide on his appointment by fans, this will be the most steady environment he has managed in which will play a big factor in how he can be a success.
With what I have read across all his spells, I am leaning to being more optimistic in that O’Neil comes across as a bright young coach who has managed in difficult environments and has done relatively positive jobs.
Wolves 2nd season was very poor, but many factors at play to show the general trend was downward, one Lopetegui walked away the previous year, perhaps to save reputation. Had O’Neil not had that poor spell, his reputation and stock may have been above what we could attract? (Would he be looking at palace and Fulham?)
Personally I feel MA would have ran a rigorous process and he trusted his instincts on McKenna and if O’Neil amongst all the other candidates this time has come out as the best fit, I feel confident to trust the process and hope we have landed ourselves another gem.
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