Edwards' Wolves Exit Looms if He Trots Out Same Tired Excuses

Three weeks ago, Rob Edwards spoke earnestly about unity and carrying momentum into a fresh campaign. The intervening period has rather spectacularly undermined that sentiment.

The Wolves manager has since been branded far worse than merely unpopular by sections of the Molineux faithful, before pivoting to blame his own players while absolving himself of any responsibility. Peculiar strategy for fostering togetherness, that.

Following what Edwards himself described as a "horrible," "embarrassing," and "atrocious" capitulation to Brighton—a result that confirmed Wolves as only the second Premier League team ever to lose to all 19 rivals in a single season—the manager offered his diagnosis. The players, he suggested, weren't mentally prepared; some of them, he added with theatrical gravitas, "have got to go."

It's the sort of line that might carry weight at most clubs. At Wolves, however, it will land with barely a ripple. The supporters have watched this film before, and they know exactly who the real director is.

The fundamental issue plaguing Wolves stems from years of strategic selling followed by speculative recruitment. Summer after summer, the club's best assets get flogged off. That cycle continues even now—Joao Gomes is in talks with Champions League semi-finalists Atletico Madrid—yet Edwards frames this as somehow part of the solution rather than the very foundation of the problem.

When Edwards arrived in November, he inherited a sinking vessel. The damage was already catastrophic, the trajectory already set. Suggesting he could reverse it was fantasy, and now he's weaponising that impossibility as cover. Nobody else would have been daft enough to walk into this mess believing it could be salvaged as a long-term project. He did.

The question now is whether he survives the final fortnight. His team selection against Fulham and Burnley will speak volumes—those he deems culpable will be indirectly identified by their absence from the lineup.

Yet even those final two matches can't simply be dismissed. After Brighton, Edwards noted that the opposition were "light years ahead," suggesting it's unrealistic to attack recklessly with nothing to lose. Fair point, perhaps, except he's somehow managed to make an already bleak relegation even more depressing.

There's a nagging contradiction too. This same Wolves side beat Liverpool and Aston Villa in March, drew with Brentford and Arsenal around the same period. Yet now Edwards insists "everyone needs to realise we're bottom of the league and every other team is better than us."

If that particular excuse gets wheeled out again—whether at home to a woefully out-of-form Fulham this weekend or at Burnley on the final day—Edwards may discover he's not the only one facing an exit door.