AN EVENING WITH JEFF SHI (AND OTHERS)
Insight into where the club is heading
Last night I was invited to a meeting at Molineux with Jeff Shi, Laurie Dalrymple and Kevin Thelwell. Aren't I the lucky one. The meeting took the form of a focus group, with no set agenda as such and nothing appeared to be on or off the table. That said, this was clearly not the place for asking “why ay we signed Marcus Rashford yet” so anyone looking for juicy transfer gossip...look away now. Try the Daily Star if you like. Or I'll just make up a random story for you now; we're chasing Adam Lallana after the Liverpool ace voiced concerns over his lack of playing time. There, that'll do. See, I could write for the tabloids, if I had my soul ripped out.
Anyway, back to stuff that actually happened. None of this was explicitly off the record so I guess it's all ok to put out there. If not, I'm sure the club will tell me.
We aren't signing Andre Silva. Sorry to disappoint. Not going to happen. Apparently we have never been interested in him, not once. We've never bid for him, we've never enquired about him. Just goes to show that you can make a story out of anything.
The situation with Oleksandr Zinchenko is that we're...waiting. The bid is in, it's been accepted, it's down to the player but we don't have an answer yet and it doesn't seem that we're getting one any time soon. Obviously we only have a finite amount of time in this window so how long we allow him to make his mind up, I don't know. He seems to have said after one of City's pre-season games that he wants to stay and fight for his place there, but then I want the BBC to bring back Sports Mastermind and to stop using Mark Lawrenson at international tournaments. It doesn't mean it's going to happen.
So much of what we're doing is focused around the manager. Nuno is meticulous to the point of obsession. Almost like Pep Guardiola in that respect. This is one of the reasons why he doesn't speak to the media much; not only does he not enjoy that side of things, he's simply too focused on the task at hand and puts an incredible amount of work into every single game. I said at one point that in terms of coaches in England, there's a top three of Pep, Jürgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino at the moment (what with Jose Mourinho being a sad, grey shadow of what he used to be)...beyond that, I genuinely wouldn't swap our manager for anyone else. So really, the risk to me is not that players will come and go, because that will happen – that's football. Real Madrid have just sold Ronaldo, Juventus have finallly waved goodbye to Gigi Buffon. Our key asset is Nuno. If he goes then we have a problem. Thankfully it doesn't seem to be an issue right now.
In terms of our media output, there was rightful praise for how that side of things has improved over the last couple of years. Long gone are the days of “one minute highlights”. But we want to keep stepping it up. Manchester City are the benchmark with how they do things on this side and we want to reach that if we can. The team is growing and we want to put out the best possible quality that we can. It's a side of the club that we need to look at as we get the message out about what we're doing. NBC are doing a piece on us to come out early in the season.
Top six is very much our aim. The club don't see any point in aiming below that. They're realistic in that it might not happen this season, but that's where we want to be. The club has to be in Europe for any number of reasons and they'll do everything they can to get us there. This isn't a tinpot Jez Moxey style ambition either where you chuck out a soundbite and hope it all works out.
We want to stay at Molineux. Voice around the table was unanimous in that our city centre location is absolutely a part of what we are as a club and what that means for fans and our matchday experience. So relocation will only be as a last resort. That said – having a stadium that holds say, 38,000 is no good to us. 50,000 is an absolute minimum, we're possibly even looking at 60,000. These numbers might seem fanciful but let's face it, we're about to have a 31,000 seater stadium sold out for every single game next season. If you keep adding players of the calibre of Rui Patricio and Joao Moutinho, people will want to come to see us play. For logistical reasons, the South Bank will be redeveloped first. We're still looking at a single tier stand at that end and the club are keen to engage with fans on how we progress. The council are being as co-operative as they can (as well they might, given the state of the city itself and their own finances), a stumbling block is potentially that we still don't own all of the land around the stadium as it stands, although we are working on that. The same architects who were charged with Steve Morgan's plans are the ones looking at a solution as it stands, though as with everything this is permanently up for review. In any case, we will not be running with the redevelopment as originally envisaged in 2010. It'll be much bigger than that, which stands to reason as we intend being a much bigger club than that.
We all know about the speculation about Barry Douglas over the last couple of days. When the question was raised (in the context of the fans trusting the club and management in contrast to the previous regime), Jeff sort of half-laughed. I don't think that deal is necessarily as far down the line as others assume it is. That's not to say he won't go (if I had to put my neck on the line about it, I'd say he will), but we might very well be waiting for our replacement to come in first. He was still at training today when pictured with Carl Ikeme (and on that note, I'm sure everyone wishes him all the very best in his retirement and it's great to see him looking well).
Every single player we sign is brought in with a view to fitting the system and style of play that we have. There is no scattergun approach. In terms of a striker, we are very much focused on finding someone who links play, as we know that Leo Bonatini can do and we are told that Raul Jimenez also can. Jeff himself liked Benik Afobe, but he could see that he didn't fit how we played. So it's not to say we aren't after someone else in that position, but they do have to fit a very specific profile. We won't be signing whoever the modern equivalent of Michael Owen is. It's not about names, it's about fitting our project. Personality is a key too. Let's just say that Mr Thelwell wasn't too complimentary about Roger Johnson and Jamie O'Hara on that front. Not that it's news.
I'm editorialising a little here, but our transfer policy will be more Tottenham and less West Ham. Financial Fair Play rules do impact on us to a point and while Fosun as a group have the money to put into the club (and they're happy to do so), it's not possible to go and chuck £300m at it in one window. So we try to buy smart. Jeff was quite dismissive of Everton picking up Richarlison for a deal rising to £50m when we've signed Joao Moutinho for a tenth of that. That's our market.
Championship clubs are already talking about “doing a Wolves”. Quite the compliment really given that for much of the last 30 years, teams would have done well to do the exact opposite to us.
Conspiracy theorists can have a day off as no, Jorge Mendes has no official position with Wolves. We all know he advises us, we all know he helps us and we all know why that is. We would have had no chance whatsoever of landing Ruben Neves without him. Yet there aren't any rules being broken here. Look as hard as you like, it's not happening.
That's about it. The company was good, the three men on show were very erudite and accommodating. The freebie bottle of Peroni went down well, which just goes to show how easily I can be bought off. I did try to pin down Thelwell on the signing of Joe Mason but he didn't even flicker, and as I didn't want to waste three hours of everyone's time, I left it. Some other day, maybe. Thanks for reading, I hope it filled in a few gaps.
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