Bruno Lage manager
Bruno Lage admits Wolverhampton Wanderers’ dire run of form has taken the gloss off a first season in charge which has made him ‘proud’. Wolves ended the campaign with a 3-1 defeat at Liverpool to bring up a ninth loss in their final 14 matches. After flirting with the European places for most of the season, Wolves finished 10th in the Premier League. Lage would have taken a mid-table finish after Wolves lost his first three games in charge last August. But his final reflections on his maiden Premier League season centred around frustration at an opportunity missed.
Bruno Lage said: “I am not pleased. I’m proud of what we did but when you spend a lot of time, I’m not pleased at this moment. If it was on the first day of the season and people would say we did the season we did, everyone would stay happy, but my ambition from February was to fight for fourth place. When we miss that opportunity, let’s fight for fifth place, sixth place, seventh place. I think the fans of Wolves should feel like me. We should have finished in a different way. If we had all the players fit, we maybe could do that. But when you look back at all the season, they may feel how I feel, proud of the players for what we did and especially proud of the way we played all season.”
Lage will now set about rebuilding his squad, alongside chairman Jeff Shi and sporting director Scott Sellars. The 46-year-old hopes to build a bigger, more competitive squad for 2022/23.
Bruno Lage said: “We need good solutions with us to solve all the problems. We cannot have a team like Liverpool. You see the way Jurgen managed the team, he replaced Jota with Salah. We don’t have that, but I think in the market we can find a good strategy to bring competition to increase our quality so that when something happens we have quality to manage it.”
