Rob Edwards has been confirmed as the Wolves head coach on a three-and-a-half-year deal after the Premier League’s bottom club paid about £3m in compensation to Middlesbrough. The 42-year-old has resigned at Boro 15 games into a three-year contract to take over from Vítor Pereira, who was sacked on 2 November.
Wolves have two points from 11 games and will hope to avoid a fifth straight defeat when they host Crystal Palace on 22 November in Edwards’ first game.
Edwards has left a team pushing for promotion from the Championship, with Boro second after winning without him on Saturday. Boro rejected an initial approach from Wolves but Edwards wanted to rejoin the club where he was a player and later a coach. Edwards had two games in caretaker charge at Molineux in 2016.
The former Forest Green, Watford and Luton manager felt this was an opportunity he could not turn down. Edwards’ family are based in Telford, where he was born, about half an hour from Wolverhampton.
The Wolves director of player recruitment and development, Matt Jackson, said: “The energy that he brings off the field, we have to get it on to the pitch. We have to be realistic about where we are, and we definitely need to be held accountable. We now need to get that belief into the players quickly and think Rob will be great culturally for the whole football club.”
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Middlesbrough said Edwards had “resigned his post as head coach after agreeing a contract with Wolves” and that “after he made it clear he was keen to join Wolves, we reluctantly agreed a figure of compensation for both himself and one of his first-team coaches, Harry Watling”.
