Matt Maher: Julen Lopetegui deserves every accolade for Wolves job
Almost as loud as the roars at Molineux on Tuesday night were the sighs of relief.
After eight often stressful months, Wolves can finally breathe easy.
Julen Lopetegui will obviously say the job is not finished but the truth is victory over Crystal Palace pretty much spelled mission accomplished for the Spaniard in his first task of keeping the club in the Premier League. Even in the unlikely scenario Wolves were to lose their final remaining five matches, it would still require a freakish set of results for them to be caught.
It is time, then, for Lopetegui to receive the plaudits deserved for the excellent job he has done in bringing the club back from the brink.
Perhaps the turnaround hasn’t been so smooth or dramatic as the one carried out by his compatriot Unai Emery down the road at Villa. But it’s been mightily impressive, all the same.
Memories can be painfully short in football and it is too easy to forget just how poor Wolves were prior to Lopetegui’s arrival. Through the first 15 matches of the season under Bruno Lage and then the caretaker management of Steve Davis and James Collins, they claimed just 10 points and scored only eight goals.
To now be safe, with five matches to play, is some going. If the season had started the day Lopetegui took charge, Wolves would be eighth, right in the mix for the European places.
That does not mean the first part of the season should be consigned to history. Serious questions still need to be asked and answered at boardroom level into how Wolves found themselves in such a mess in the first place after investing more than £100million in the squad last summer.
They should forever feel fortunate to have descended into crisis during a season with a six-week break in the middle. A January window which delivered the likes of Joao Gomes and Mario Lemina is, meanwhile, hopefully a sign lessons from past mistakes in recruitment have been heeded.
But with Lopetegui at the helm, there is genuine reason for supporters to look toward the future with optimism. So far, he’s delivered on the promise.
