Wolves Sack Rob Edwards as Peixoto Nears Appointment

Wolverhampton Wanderers have plunged themselves back into turmoil, sacking head coach Rob Edwards just weeks before the new season and moving to appoint Portuguese coach Cesar Peixoto as his replacement.

Edwards was informed of the decision by the Wolves hierarchy despite having been central to the club’s most eye-catching summer business, including the arrivals of Kieran Trippier and Raúl Jiménez. Both players cited his influence. Both now find themselves walking into a dressing room without the manager who helped sell them the project.

The timing is brutal. Wolves finished bottom of the Premier League last season, burned through Vitor Pereira by November and turned to Edwards with the understanding that relegation was almost inevitable and that the real work would start in the Championship. He was supposed to be the man to lead the rebuild, not a short-term stopgap.

Wolves paid a heavy price to get him. Middlesbrough, then top of the Championship, received £4 million in compensation to release Edwards for the move to Molineux. It was framed as a statement of intent, a decisive investment in a young British coach to reshape a fractured squad and culture.

In a matter of months, that vision has been ripped up.

Inside the club, Edwards had forged a strong partnership with technical director Matt Jackson. Together they had set about targeting British players to strengthen the home-grown core and rebalance a squad long shaped by overseas recruitment. Those efforts produced the headline signings of Trippier and Jiménez, and a sense that Wolves were finally moving with clarity after relegation.

The club pushed that message hard. Edwards appeared in Jiménez’s “Welcome Home” video on social media just two days ago, front and centre in the club’s attempt to project unity and optimism. Trippier, in his first official interview released on Wednesday, spoke openly about how Edwards’ presence had been a major factor in his decision to join, with insiders at the club describing a clear cultural shift since the manager’s arrival.

Now that carefully built positivity is in danger of collapsing.

While Edwards and Jackson worked on a British-led recruitment drive, a different power axis was moving in the background. Jorge Mendes’ Gestifute agency, which represents Peixoto, has long held deep ties with Wolves’ owners, Fosun, dating back to their takeover in 2016. Mendes and his associate Valdir Cardoso have remained influential figures around major football decisions at Molineux.

As Edwards fronted the club’s new signings and spoke of long-term plans, Mendes and Cardoso were assembling a deal to bring in Peixoto before the new campaign kicked off.

Peixoto, previously head coach of Gil Vicente, has only managed in Portugal so far. His appointment would mark another return to a familiar model for Wolves: a Portuguese coach with Gestifute connections, plugged into the same network that once powered the club’s surge into the Premier League and European football, but which has also drawn criticism when results have soured.

For the players who bought into Edwards’ project, the shift is stark. For the supporters, already bruised by relegation and managerial churn, it raises a familiar question: who is really steering Wolves’ future now?