Gary O’Neil’s Job: Immediate Steps for Survival

First and foremost, I’ll start incredibly bluntly: Lose the loser’s mentality, stop making excuses, motivate, galvanise, and inspire the lads. Be a leader, put some fight and belief in them. Since coming out after the Newcastle game and saying, “If you look at the odds,” we have been given an insight into the mindset of our manager, and quite frankly it doesn’t exactly look optimal—it doesn’t look like that of a winner.

Just imagine the shockwaves that would be sent through the football world if Pep Guardiola came out and said such a thing after a poor result for Manchester City. It simply wouldn’t happen. Football is about accountability and rising to the occasion, going toe-to-toe with anyone, and truly believing you can get a result in every game you play. This is what is meant by mindset and mentality, and it’s beginning to become a really bad look for O’Neil.

This wasn’t something he was guilty of last season. When results were going well, he did not deem it necessary to point out how well we did to do the double over Chelsea and Spurs—because undoubtedly we’d have been second favourites in all of those games too. It is largely irrelevant, and it’s amateurish to keep making such references. O’Neil needs to create a shift in mindset, especially from the mindset he himself has created. Regardless of whether he has been backed enough in the market, he is responsible for the spirit and belief among the camp. Besides, the majority of fans were happy enough with our business, though some felt missing out on a centre-back replacement for Max Kilman would cost us.

If he doesn’t start to do this, and soon, I fear he will lose the players. No one wants to play for a manager who doesn’t truly believe in them. There is so much debate about the fundamental quality of our squad, but in reality, it’s a roster that probably sits somewhere between 12th-16th when compared to other sides in the Premier League. This is representative of the ambitions of the board, but there is no reason why the manager should not be pushing them towards the top end of their capacities—that being a 12th place side. He was close to doing that last season, and but for the injuries that ravaged us from March onwards, probably would’ve achieved it. Last season, as I’ve already mentioned, included some fine results, and that’s what it takes to finish even mid-table in this unforgiving league.

Gary O’Neil should know better, quite frankly. No game can be written off; every point is vital. Wolves have shown, even in our most recent history, that we are more than capable of competing with anyone in this league. The underdog label doesn’t suit us, and it’s rubbing a lot of fans up the wrong way. O’Neil seems to be falling back on a crutch that he leaned heavily on during his breakout season at Bournemouth.

Captain and manager seem somewhat at odds. On the back of O’Neil’s comments about being second favourites in every game so far, Lemina has likewise come out and said we need to get past this “loser’s mentality.” It is not too much of a leap to conclude there’s a bit of frustration going on there. Couple this with images that have emerged from the Liverpool game, suggesting Lemina rolls his eyes when given instruction by his manager. The pictures aren’t conclusive, but Lemina is cutting a frustrated figure, almost aghast, epitomised by his tears at full-time last weekend. If a manager loses his captain, even in spirit, the rest will fall like dominoes, and with that, so too will O’Neil’s stint at Wolves.

It’s an incredibly delicate balance—a balance between man management and tactical instruction, inspiration versus instruction. It appears, from the outside looking in, that Gary might be too heavily focused on the technical side of the game, then left mystified when his grand plan doesn’t come together. His players, meanwhile, often cut dispirited figures, especially during what is becoming their characteristic second-half capitulations. It’s man management he needs to get right, and soon, if he wants to keep his job—make no mistake about it. 

Tactics, tactics, tactics—we’ve spoken about and analysed to death every little tactic Wolves have adopted or tried or tweaked since pre-season, and still, we wait for a solitary win. Gary needs to do the basics and inspire his players, nothing more, nothing less. I believe they are good enough to comfortably stay in this division, no excuses necessary. Does he?

Protection of his own legacy with seeds of doubt is bound to backfire. Top teams want managers who make zero excuses, who take accountability and work with what they’ve got, and get the best out of any group. It’s a results-based business.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is indeed a little bit of legacy protection going on at the moment. Should things go pear-shaped, I see Gary as a person who would prefer to come out of the situation smelling of roses. He works hard on the PR side of the role and has forged good relationships with the media to aid this. But whether this is helpful or of benefit to Wolves as a club is dubious. How did revealing our game plan for defeating Manchester City last season benefit us? I can see how it might elevate O’Neil’s reputation, but for the club, I see no benefit—only drawbacks.

There are many managers in the Premier League who would draw the line at doing what he did on MNF, dissecting how he outwitted Pep Guardiola. There is an argument that it was, at best, brazen and somewhat overconfident, at worst, arrogant and disrespectful. Whatever it was, or whatever motivated it, for me, it was undoubtedly a misstep. O’Neil put himself on a pedestal that day, and that adds pressure to himself and the job he carries out at Wolves every day, and maybe it’s a needless one. I, like many, see Gary O’Neil as an up-and-coming manager, yet to really cut his teeth, and I think there is a self-consciousness there that you perhaps don’t see in the likes of a Thomas Frank, who has done his time in the lower divisions and truly believes in what he’s doing. 

The issue Wolves have with this is that the foundations laid are nowhere near as strong. A mild bluster might be all it takes to blow down a house built on sand. He needs to truly ask himself: “What am I building here? What do I believe in? And how do I combine these two things?” Then a culture is set. I don’t think he knows the answer to either of those questions at present, which is a concern.

The biggest noise seems to be around the fact that Gary has now only won one of his last 16 Premier League games, but the bigger issue is surely no clean sheet in 18 PL games. The first sign of a team on the slide—and often the hardest to rectify—is a team that can’t stop conceding goals. We’ve had times in recent seasons when our goalscoring was appalling, but we’ve always been able to keep it tight enough at the back to compete. If that goes, it’s an almost insurmountable challenge, every single game.

Yet there’s no obvious reason for this to be the case, especially if we go off the word of mouth from the Wolves hierarchy. Hobbs recently came out and said we were more than happy with what we had in defence come the close of the window and wouldn’t have carried any additional defenders in the squad anyway. I question how much of that is true, given reports have recently emerged that we were in fact in for Webster from Brighton but pulled the plug (how costly that proves to be remains to be seen).

So, if the club were happy with the squad, and like many fans, deemed it overall stronger than last season, under the helm of a manager who knows the group and was now able to have a full pre-season to implement his ideas, why is it that after the opening six fixtures, we find ourselves on a single point? In the exact corresponding fixtures last season, we accrued five points. Furthermore, it’s difficult to argue we’ve been particularly unlucky either—one, maybe two, points is all we’ve deserved.

Last season we beat Brentford 4-1 away from home, so should a result not be found on Saturday, that record would change to eight points last season versus one point this season. At which point serious questions would need to be asked (if they haven’t been already), such as:

– Is this squad actually stronger than last season, or have we weakened ourselves?

– Are we currently playing a system that gets the best out of the squad?

– Are the players fit enough?

– Is this manager the right man to take us forward?

Among many, many others…

A loss against Brentford would rip away the protective shield of “difficult fixture list” that so far could well be masking a whole lot of deeper issues at the club.

I say “might be” because five points versus one point for many will already suggest we are clearly not moving forward—we’re regressing. The opening six games alone already have some fans saying they’ve seen enough to provide answers to my aforementioned hypothetical questions. For some fans, the fixture list will provide no reassurance whatsoever because they’ve seen all too often “the Wolves way”: Is our record any better against so-called smaller clubs in so-called winnable games? No. Do we often stumble and struggle to get results against weaker teams lower down the table? Yes.

It’s a false narrative, and one that’s come from nowhere. But in credit to the club’s hierarchy—less so Jeff Shi, but certainly applicable to Matt Hobbs and Gary O’Neil—they seem more than able to push and propagate a narrative. Like the one that we will be fine and it’s just the fixtures. There is no historical evidence to suggest this will be the case whatsoever, and yet it’s a message that has spread like wildfire amongst the fans and media. Even the BBC’s Jonathan Pearce felt the need to drop in at the end of his post-match interview with O’Neil on Match of the Day that “he thinks Wolves will be fine.” A verdict met with a beaming smile from our manager, as if that actually meant anything. I find such definitive verdicts from neutral pundits nothing but patronising, quite frankly, plus I take no solace because there is no god-given right to stay in this division. All such statements do is stoke the fires of the clubs who’ve been told “you’re straight back down.”

We are an established Premier League club now, yes, but every season, every game, is a fight, and if you’re not in 100% the right headspace, you’ll be eaten alive. To me, we seem confused about our identity as a club. Who are we? Hobbs said we’d push for Europe; O’Neil speaks like a newly promoted plucky Championship side. Tactically, we’ve had five at the back, then a hybrid, then four at the back, then Lemina starts stepping back into defence after we lose our starting centre-back. Pre-match formations show 4-4-1-1, but it’s nothing like what we actually play. ‘Football experts’ will say graphics mean nothing, but I think it’s needlessly complicated, and I don’t actually think we know ourselves, truly, how or what system of football we are playing. Hence, we cannot carry out a full 90 minutes effectively. This is in total contrast to the rigid, regimented, and clear systems that served us well under Nuno and Lopetegui. Pre-match formations were no mystery then, no puzzle to be solved. We played how we were set up, and everybody knew their roles, and by and large… it worked. We knew ourselves.

So, what am I getting at here? Well, it has long been accepted that football, with all its passion and tribalism and players representing warriors elect, is a proxy for war. So I’ll end with a quote from The Art of War by Sun Tzu, which may well foretell our fate should nothing change:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  

If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat.  

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

So far this season, the last part of this prophecy is all I’ve yet to see. 

If Gary O’Neil is to keep his place on the Molineux throne, change must come, and soon. Starting on Saturday at Brentford.