Rob Edwards has agreed a three-and-a-half-year contract to become the Wolves head coach and could be formally appointed as early as Monday. Middlesbrough rejected Wolves’s initial approach for Edwards but following talks on Friday they grew resigned to losing him.
Wolves will pay around £3m in compensation to Boro to remove Edwards from the three-year contract he signed on arrival at the Riverside Stadium in June.
Wolves are longstanding admirers of Edwards, a former player and coach at the Molineux club. He also had a brief spell in caretaker charge in 2016, shortly after Fosun, Wolves’s Chinese owner, bought the club.
Edwards is expected at Wolves on Monday, when the deal could be announced by the Premier League club. Edwards will succeed Vítor Pereira, who was sacked after claiming only two points from the opening 10 matches of the season. Wolves held advanced talks with their former head coach Gary O’Neil but he pulled out of discussions last Monday amid a supporter backlash and reservations over the internal structure.
Wolves lost 3-0 at Chelsea on Saturday evening, when the under-21s head coach, James Collins, and under-18s head coach, Richard Walker, led the team. Wolves hope Edwards’s arrival can help galvanise the club in their fight against relegation.
Edwards did not take Middlesbrough training on Friday morning, at the request of the club, and his pre-match press conference was also pulled amid ongoing uncertainty over his future.
Boro’s longstanding owner, Steve Gibson, held discussions with Edwards to resolve his future in which the 42-year-old made it plain he wished to return to his former club. Boro then re-entered talks with Wolves over pursuing compensation for their head coach.
Edwards was interviewed for the job in 2022, before Julen Lopetegui took charge, and felt it was an opportunity he could not turn down. Edwards’s family are based in Telford, about half an hour from Wolverhampton.
