Revolution of Wolves: Kenny Jackett on lighting the fuse in Molineux recovery
At the end of the 2012/13 season, Wolves were in a mess. Having had one manager in Mick McCarthy for almost six years, they had gone through three in just 15 months.
After Dean Saunders’ dismissal it was paramount that the next appointment was spot on.
Wolves had been relegated all the way through the divisions before – and without the right person in the manager’s seat, they were just one more disastrous season from it happening all over again.
“I had done nearly six years at Millwall and had told the club towards the end of the season that it was going to be my last one there,” Kenny Jackett explains.
“A few jobs came up pretty quickly and I went for an interview at Sheffield United and put in for the Wolves job.”
Twelve candidates were interviewed as part of the initial process, including names such as Steve McClaren, David Weir, Paul Tisdale and Steve Cotterill. Ultimately it came down to a final interview shootout between Jackett and the emerging Uwe Rosler.
Wolves still had many players on the books from the Premier League era, good players and committed players but many still on sizeable contracts, especially for League One.
“The themes through the interviews were very specific to Wolves at the time, with part of it asking what I would do within the first 30 days, and also what was my attitude to developing young players,” says Jackett.
“The 30 days question showed me that they wanted someone to take some action in the first month to really set the tone and take the club in a different direction.
“A lot of decisions you take at a club are best done in the summer where you can have a complete reset, because it’s hard to do that during a season.
“So it was about what I thought Wolves needed to do straight away, and then how I would incorporate the young players, whom CEO Jez Moxey and head of recruitment Kevin Thelwell had said might not necessarily be brilliant from the start, but deserved a chance.
