The temptation when Bruno Lage was appointed by Wolves was to assume it would just be more of the same: another Portuguese manager, another Jorge Mendes client, at a club with a strong Portuguese core. If managers from the German school of hard-pressing are the most modish appointment for an aspirational modern club, Portugal’s disciples of Vítor Frade and periodisation are not far behind.
While Lage is very much of that school – to the extent that in 2012, despite being a youth coach at Benfica at the time, he co-authored a report with the former Sheffield Wednesday and Swansea coach Carlos Carvalhal on the latter’s implementation of periodisation at Besiktas – this has been a season of change at Wolves.
