14th league game without a win: Wolves’s future looks bleak

And after what you can only assume was a detailed half-time briefing and three substitutions, Wolves’s first meaningful action of the second half was Bellegarde launching a ­ballistic thwack from the edge of his own ­penalty area towards no one.

Wolves have not won a league match since beating already ­relegated Leicester 3-0 last April, 14 league games without a win and already eight points from safety. This is the second season in which they have not won one of their first 10 Premier League games, but this run includes all three promoted clubs, two at home.

Eight of their next nine league games are against teams currently in the top 12, including Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Manchester United twice. It does not even feel as though there is some as-yet-unrealised potential within this squad just waiting to be released under a new manager. Pinpointing when the drag towards the Championship began is not an exact science, but the long winter has undoubtedly set in.

Vítor Pereira signed a three-year contract six weeks ago, which always felt more wishful than a serious offer. He has left six of his last eight jobs before this one within a year, four of those lasting less than six months. He has spent more than 14 months at a club only once in the past ­decade – his three years with Shanghai SIPG. He is not a stability guy, not a projects or systems guy. He might know how to get you out of the fire, but there is little evidence he knows how to rebuild your house. Even then, the only previous relegation battle of his managerial career was with 1860 Munich, ending with their relegation and his departure. His mantra of “first the points, then the pints” only works if you get the points in the first place.

After Everton fans protested against his rumoured appointment (before eventually being treated to Frank Lampard), Pereira went on Sky Sports to say “my CV speaks for itself”. He’s right – it says: “I am eminently sackable.” Fenerbahce “unilaterally cancelled” his contract mid-season and then somehow rehired him five years later, only to fire him again in less than six months.

And so when the collapse begins, it is understandable that he has nothing to fall back on, so opts for constant change, desperately flicking through possibilities in the vain hope he might alight on something that works by chance as much as planning. This was the sixth different formation he has used this season alone. Six players have worn the captain’s armband at some point in 2025-26. Yet nothing in the endless troves of underlying statistics or to the eye suggests any semblance of recovery or ­revolution is impending.

But then club owner Fosun has overseen Wolves’ managed decline for some time now, leaving the squad slightly poorer every year, underpinned by a recruitment system which simply is not reliably enough to sustain a reputation as a selling club in 2025.

The instant relegation of all three promoted sides in the past two ­seasons has seemingly made clubs such as Wolves and West Ham complacent and arrogant. Fosun’s aim has been to make the club self-sustainable while remaining in the Premier League, an unrealistic ambition without elite data and recruitment.

Being relegated from such a relative position of strength, after years of massively inflated revenue and global interest and opportunity, feels like more of a waste than it ever has before, binning your golden ticket. Last summer the prevailing sentiment was that the Premier League was becoming a closed shop, the real Super League, that promoted clubs were fighting for one potential semi-permanent spot, attempting to break through an almost imperceptible spot that was reality just a trick of the light.

This was never true, but the Wolves ownership clearly bought into it to enough of an extent to believe selling Matheus Cunha to Manchester United and Rayan Aït-Nouri to Manchester City, worth 32 goals and assists between them last season, and replacing them with pale imitations lacking Premier League experience or quality, was sufficient.

Of course, part of the blame must be shared here. After a painful attempted separation, Jorge Mendes is back at Wolves in a big way, looming over everything at the club like a garden gnome of Luis Figo. His No 2 Valdir Cardoso regularly attends home matches once more, and they hired Mendes client and Pereira ally, Domenico Teti, as director of football, before spending £19m on Fer López from Celta Vigo, yet to start a Premier League game this season. No prizes for guessing who represents him. Fosun deciding it could not live without its ­favourite superagent is as damning an indictment as anything of its lack of coherent vision or plan.

Yet its great offence is not incompetence or a lack of spending, but gradually extracting every element of joy and excitement from the club, one beloved superstar at a time, until there is nothing left for fans to grab on to or believe in, numbed by comfortable mediocrity until apathy consumes everything, frogs in the boiling water of middling misery. The first cry of “Jeff Shi is a wanker” rang out after 10 minutes, fans just waiting for the first excuse to do what they really came for.

This is also a squad thoroughly unprepared for relegation, almost exclusively staffed by players without any great reason to stick around for wage cuts and Tuesday nights in Portsmouth. Sam Johnstone is the only English player to play a Premier League minute for Wolves this season, while there was no academy product in the matchday squad against Fulham. Winter is already here. But will it ever end?

Photograph by Wolverhampton Wanderers FC/Wolves via Getty Images