Wolves Sack Rob Edwards as Cesar Peixoto Awaits

Wolverhampton Wanderers have sacked Rob Edwards in a brutal twist that rips straight through the optimism of their summer rebuild, with Portuguese coach Cesar Peixoto now poised to take charge.

Edwards was informed of the decision by the Wolves hierarchy despite having been central to the club’s recruitment drive, which delivered headline arrivals Kieran Trippier and Raúl Jiménez. He had helped sell the project. Now he is out of it.

The timing is staggering.

Only two days ago, Edwards appeared in the club’s “Welcome Home” video for Jiménez, front and centre in the messaging around a new era. On Wednesday, Trippier publicly credited Edwards as a major reason for choosing Wolves, speaking of the manager’s influence and the cultural shift he had already started to impose at Molineux.

Inside the club, that cultural work was real. Edwards had built a strong partnership with technical director Matt Jackson, the pair driving a deliberate push towards British talent to strengthen the home-grown core of the squad. It was a clear strategy: stabilise in the Championship with a tighter identity and a more local spine.

Now that vision has been abruptly discarded.

Wolves, who finished bottom of the Premier League last season, hired Edwards after sacking Vitor Pereira in November, fully aware that relegation was likely and that a long rebuild awaited in the Championship. They backed that belief with money, paying Middlesbrough £4 million to prise him away while Boro were top of the Championship table.

It looked like a long-term bet. It has lasted barely a few months.

Behind the scenes, another powerbase never went away.

Cesar Peixoto, represented by the Jorge Mendes-owned Gestifute agency, has been lined up to replace Edwards ahead of the new campaign. Mendes and his associate Valdir Cardoso, who have maintained close ties with Wolves’ owners Fosun since their 2016 takeover, have been working on the deal while Edwards fronted the club’s public reset.

Peixoto’s coaching career to date has been exclusively in Portugal, most notably as head coach of Gil Vicente. He arrives from a different track entirely to the British-focused route Edwards and Jackson were trying to build.

The decision to move on from Edwards threatens to puncture the surge of positivity that greeted the signings of Trippier and Jiménez. Supporters had been invited to buy into a clear narrative: a young coach, a refreshed dressing room, big-name additions, and a sense of unity around a fall-and-rise story in the Championship.

Instead, they wake up to another abrupt change of direction, another Mendes-linked appointment, and a familiar question hanging over Molineux: who is really steering the club’s future?