The final five weeks of the Premier League season will mean very little to Wolverhampton Wanderers.
They might mean everything to Rob Edwards.
After a second successive heavy defeat, this time at Leeds United, Wolves will end the weekend with only goal difference, and the theoretical possibility of a massive swing, between them and confirmed relegation.
That tenuous safety wire will be cut on Monday evening if West Ham United avoid defeat at Crystal Palace, confirming Wolves’ return to the Championship after eight years in the top flight.
But if the remaining five fixtures of this campaign will have no bearing to Wolves’ final destination, they could make all the difference to the course of Edwards’ reign.
After a run of one defeat in six league games, including statement victories over Aston Villa and Liverpool, Edwards had the majority of Wolves supporters behind him, happy for their former defender to lead their efforts to win promotion at the first attempt next season.
But a second-half capitulation at West Ham, followed by Saturday’s insipid display and 3-0 loss at Elland Road, has once more fired up the Edwards sceptics.
Hwang Hee-chan sums up the mood (George Wood/Getty Images)
It is no surprise that Wolves fans are nervous about the end of the season, even though their fate has long since been sealed.
They feel like they have walked this path before, and it has never led to a happy destination.
Beginning under their most successful manager of modern times, Nuno Espirito Santo, and continuing under Bruno Lage, Gary O’Neil and Vitor Pereira, Wolves have made a habit of ending seasons badly and then seeing the inertia bleeding into the summer and the start of the following season.
Nuno left at the end of his tricky final campaign and Lage, O’Neil and Pereira were all moved on before the halfway point of their second campaigns.
Of Nuno’s successors, only Julen Lopetegui in 2023 enjoyed a respectable end to a season, and he chose to walk away a couple of months later.
Wolves’ month-by-month record since they returned to the top division in 2018 highlights the recurring them and poor ends to seasons, and even worse starts.
The only month in which their win rate is worse than the 14 per cent figure for May is August, when they have won just once in 23 attempts.
Wolves’ league record since 2018-19
Month
Wins
Draws
Losses
Win %
January
8
7
14
28
February
15
9
11
43
March
8
5
10
35
April
15
4
13
47
May
3
5
14
14
June
3
0
0
100
July
2
1
3
33
August
1
9
13
4
September
9
4
13
35
October
9
9
10
32
November
8
5
14
30
December
16
9
20
36
That is a pattern that Edwards simply cannot afford to repeat, and the process of avoiding it has to start now.
“The result is the bit that we can’t guarantee but we need to try to get some because that’s ultimately what everyone wants,” he said in his post-match press conference at Elland Road.
“There were a lot of duels and the lads were working hard, they were running and they were fighting so you can’t question that.
“But that is our bare minimum and we need to try to find some results between now and the end of the season to try to get a bit of credit and togetherness going into next season.”
Only the most churlish of Wolves fans would deny that Edwards has made Wolves better since he replaced Pereira in mid-November, with his three wins and 15 points from 22 games comparing favourably to his predecessor’s zero wins and two points from 10 games at the start of the season.
But even in a table made up only of results since Edwards took charge, Wolves are still in the bottom three, in 18th place, seven points behind fourth-from-bottom West Ham.
So those supporters still harbouring doubts about Edwards have a solid statistical basis.
At Wolves, the hierarchy are taking a more global view, taking into account the dreadful squad and dark mood he inherited, considering the fact they weakened the group further in January with a few to attacking the summer from a position of greater financial strength, and remembering that generating momentum is doubly difficult for a head coach who takes over a side as good as relegated before Christmas.
Saturday’s game again highlighted the utter dearth of attacking game-changers he has in his squad but that did not spare him and his players some of the angriest gestures of his reign so far from travelling fans at the final whistle.
Edwards has been heavily involved in the planning that has been taking place at Molineux since just before Christmas, when Nathan Shi and Matt Jackson took up the positions of chairman and sporting director respectively.
So it would take something hugely dramatic to persuade the club to change course now.
But what the next five games will determine is the atmosphere Edwards finds himself working in when his side kick off the Championship campaign.
A fast start to the EFL season is already viewed as vital to Wolves’ hopes of turning around their fortunes, but if they end this season badly, Edwards will need a stellar start simply to silence his critics.
Too many more displays like the last game and a half, and the Wolves head coach could start phase two of his Molineux mission from the last chance saloon.