The continuity candidate has become the unlikely revolutionary. Bruno Lage shaped up as the new Nuno Espirito Santo in his first season at Wolves: Portuguese and with marked connections to Jorge Mendes, overseeing a relatively low-scoring side who were hard to break down and who built on the solid foundations their back three provided.
He is starting his sophomore season by taking an axe to a rearguard who, for swathes of his debut campaign, had one of the best defensive records in Europe’s five major leagues.
The system is gone and its emblematic figure has followed: with Conor Coady an Everton player for the season, the greatest beneficiary of the back three and the biggest reason for playing it has been exiled. Disposing of Coady, the converted midfielder who prospered in between two specialist central defenders, means the temptation to revert to a back three will be lesser.
Lage has camouflaged his ruthlessness with compliments. He described Coady as “a lovely guy” and “one of the best people I know”. He insisted he would be guided by the Merseysider in the question of a transfer and has referenced his desire to play in the World Cup.
All of which downplays the seismic change he has made. When Coady was a substitute at Leeds on Saturday, it was the first time he began a Premier League game on the bench since the final match of Jamie Carragher’s career, Liverpool 1-0 QPR in 2013.
He had played 151 of Wolves’ 152 top-flight games since promotion, missing the other due to Covid. He was coming off the back of arguably the best season of his career. He was Wolves’ face and voice, echoing around deserted grounds in lockdown, ever-present in post-match interviews which, it seemed, he did regardless of whether he was actually asked to. He ranks as Wolves’ best captain in the last four decades; few have been as prominent in the six since Billy Wright retired.
But Coady has usually had a bespoke role as sweeper, passer and talker, more than actual stopper. He won far fewer tackles than Max Kilman and Romain Saiss last season. He won less than half the number of headers, compared to either of his sidekicks. They made far more interceptions. In short, they did much more defending, while he was the spare man.
Now the preference for Kilman and summer signing Nathan Collins shows a need for centre-backs who can defend in one-on-one situations and the implication that Lage is not convinced Coady can.
He became the third wheel. And if part of the significance is that arguably Nuno’s finest defence now languish outside Wolves’ first team, with Coady exiting on loan, Willy Boly a back-up and Saiss – who, in a rare moment of quotability, Lage branded the “Moroccan Maldini” – having gone in the summer, the captain was arguably the former manager’s flagship success, a jobbing Championship midfielder whose reinvention was so successful he became an England international.
Coady was integral as Wolves were propelled to heights they had not reached since the1980s; perhaps, though, there was a theory he held them back. In a bid to add more potency, Nuno tried playing a back four for some of 2020-21 and, to summarise a season in a sentence, Wolves were less successful, no more prolific, often boring and he was sacked.
Lage arrived with a reputation for being more attacking and as an advocate of a back four. Pragmatically, however, he settled with the system he inherited and which Wolves had used when they secured successive seventh-place finishes. Wolves spent much of last season in eighth, but ended with the third-fewest shots, an average of a goal a game at the right end and having only outscored the relegated trio.
Taking out Coady has allowed him to bring in another attack-minded player, with 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 exchanged for 4-2-3-1. Wolves had 15 shots at Elland Road on Saturday, a total they only bettered in five of their 38 league games last season. They had six on target, a number they bettered just twice last year, even if one of those was also away against Leeds. And they lost.
It is a very small sample size, rather than a prediction Wolves are bound to become doomed entertainers, but it does suggest their games could contain more goalmouth action. If the formation change allows them to incorporate another potential scorer or creator, whether a fit-again Pedro Neto, the prospective signing Goncalo Guedes or Morgan Gibbs-White, if he is belatedly afforded a run in the team, that willingness to move Coady on removed the safety blanket of an immediate recourse to the back three if results are not forthcoming. And it marks a sudden shift as Coady has gone from defining Wolves to departing Molineux.
