Wolves sack Vitor Pereira: Recruitment errors and poor team selections - how it went wrong for the Portuguese coach

The final image of Vitor Pereira on the pitch as Wolves manager was a damning one. As the away supporters at Craven Cottage chanted for him to be sacked in the morning, there was applause for the Brazil international midfielders Andre and Joao Gomes.

The pair, stood a little apart from the rest, had been dropped to the bench for the 3-0 defeat to Fulham. It was just the latest decision that had left fans bewildered, emblematic of the unravelling under Pereira that sees Wolves rooted to the bottom.

The issues at Molineux, ones that leave them with two points from 10 Premier League games and odds-on favourites for relegation after eight seasons in the top division, undoubtedly run deeper than Pereira. This is a club that has been drifting for too long.

It is the fourth consecutive season in which Wolves will finish the calendar year with a different head coach to the one who had taken the team in pre-season. It is the second season in a row in which they have contrived to win none of their opening 10 games.

Other clubs might cope with such upheaval, able to point to an overarching strategy beyond the coach. It is difficult to make that case for Wolves given that Pereira became so central to their plans, particularly following the exit of sporting director Matt Hobbs.

The appointment of Domenico Teti as director of football, a man Pereira knew from their time together at Al Shabab in Saudi Arabia, had indicated a growing level of control. The failure of this latest personnel change, just 45 days after Pereira had been rewarded with a new three-year contract, reflects badly on chairman Jeff Shi.

The Fosun-appointed chief has been the focus of much of the fans' ire with grand plans for the stadium and talk of top-four finishes not forgotten at Molineux even as the club's Chinese owners have downscaled the ambitions, any sense of momentum long lost.

But Pereira has exacerbated the problem, leaving the club in a worse predicament than any prior to this. Even when bottom at Christmas in the aftermath of Bruno Lage's exit and in disarray under Gary O'Neil last year, Wolves had the quality to come through it.

Not so much now. It is not just the form of the promoted teams that explains why there is less reason to believe. Wolves' recruitment was badly received at the time, by those inside and outside the game, and looks worse now. There are no unqualified successes.

Ladislav Krejci, picked up from Girona, has been the pick, despite an uncertain display against Burnley. But the fee for him, one that could rise to £26m, raised eyebrows and means that even that deal can hardly be described as shrewd business by the club.

Jhon Arias, the 27-year-old Colombian moving to Europe for the first time, and Fer Lopez, a promising young Spaniard with seven starts in LaLiga to his name with Celta Vigo, were both gambles for different reasons. Neither has scored or shone for Wolves thus far.

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The new wing-backs, David Moller Wolfe from AZ Alkmaar and Jackson Tchatchoua from Hellas Verona, have been out of the team more than in. Neither made the team at Fulham. Tolu Arokodare, a £22.5m buy from Genk, is back-up for Jorgen Strand Larsen.

In total, nine senior players came in during Pereira's reign, for a sum in the vicinity of £150m. But Wolves look far weaker following the departures of Matheus Cunha and Rayan Ait Nouri, while the loss of Nelson Semedo has been felt on the field and off.

Bizarrely, Wolves have started each of their last four Premier League games with a different captain. It is an example of the uncertainty. And yet, Pereira had been the one to bring clarity last season, transforming the club's fortunes completely.

Six wins in a row in the spring earned him a Premier League manager of the season nomination. But the Portuguese's reputation for being a combustible character, not one who stays the course, has proved justified. When Wolves started to struggle, so did he.

Pereira has been keen to stress that he has never been in such a situation before, a fair point from a coach who has won titles in three different countries and is accustomed to life at the top end of the table. But his handling of events laid bare that inexperience.

In truth, he floundered, flip-flopping from one idea to the next in a desperate search for solutions. Even prior to the weekend, he had made 29 changes to his Premier League line-up - the most of any team in the competition - but there was more to it than that.

"When we planned the squad, we planned to play with three defenders," he said firmly in early September, shortly after the window had shut. Eleven days later, he was starting with a back four for the first time in his reign in a Carabao Cup tie at home to Everton.

Wolves won that game and so Pereira stuck with it for the trip to Tottenham - for 45 minutes, at least. From there, the uncertainty continued. By the middle of October, Pereira had seemingly reached the conclusion that the squad did not fit his new tactics.

"At this moment, we have a lot of players - the right players to play in the 3-4-3, but we are missing wingers. Now we are trying to find solutions in the squad to add more wingers." It was a curious admission given the level of his involvement in constructing it.

He never did find the solution, his final selection smacking of a coach who had lost his way - and some of his players. Perhaps the only image more instructive than the sight at Craven Cottage had been the one after the home defeat to Burnley the previous week.

Pereira's predecessor O'Neil had been sacked after a late winner by Ipswich at Molineux in December. In the dying moments of that match Ait Nouri was sent off, while Cunha became involved in a scuffle with an Ipswich member of staff, grabbing at his glasses.

The unseemly incident, fresh from the then captain Mario Lemina squaring up to a member of Wolves' own coaching staff on the pitch at West Ham just prior to that, added to the growing suspicion that O'Neil was a coach who could no longer control his players.

Almost a year on, after Burnley became the latest promoted team to score a late winner at Molineux, it was the players who were attempting to restrain the coach as he tried to remonstrate with the club's own supporters. It turns out, there was to be no way back.

Pereira's passion was never in doubt. It was a trait that helped him develop an affinity with those same fans with his mantra of 'first the points then the pints'. But the thirst for him dried up when the wins stopped. He had to go. But the problems at Molineux remain.

(c) Sky Sports 2025: Wolves sack Vitor Pereira: Recruitment errors and poor team selections - how it went wrong for the Portuguese coach