Why Wolves Boss Nuno Santo Is Better Off At Everton Than Managing At Championship Level
In the fast-moving world of English football, it would no surprise to see a manager such as Nuno Espirito Santo leave the project he is managing at Wolves so quickly to take on another one.
True, it would be shattering news for Wolves and it remains highly unlikely to happen. However, even with money to spend, most managers would look upon Wolves as a lesser favoured career move than Everton and so generally speaking, given the chance, most ambitious coaches would opt for Merseyside over the West Midlands.
There is no doubting the quality of the job that Santo has done so far at Molineuex – it’s been excellent. Regular readers of these pages will remember us recounting the dour, miserable performances of a dull Wolverhampton Wanderers team last season that was going nowhere.
One managerial change (and a fistful of dollars for him to play with of course) has transformed this club in the blink of an eye. Also (self pat on the back alert) when the club were still a reasonably large price to win the league, they were named here as the most likely team to do so, and now they sit proudly atop the Championship pile.
Everton’s season has gone rather differently. With the same large budget (comparatively speaking) to play with, Ronald Koeman indeed did spend big by bringing in Gylfi Sigurdsson, Michael Keane, Jordan Pickford, Davy Klaassen, Wayne Rooney and others.
In mitigation, it must be said that they earned a good amount of money from the sale of Romelu Lukaku and nobody really knows how much influence Koeman himself had on choosing the individuals who were signed. Assuming they were his choices though, they have not done the business well and in fact, some of them have made Everton look as though they were robbed.
Michael Keane, at today’s prices, may yet prove to be worth his fee and at under £10million Nikola Vlasic too has not pulled anyone’s eyes out. However, the fee they paid for Jordan Pickford looks absolutely ludicrous and as talented as he is, to shell out such a chunk of money on Sigurdsson was just plain stupid of the club and the manager.
In Santo’s case, he has been able to choose the Portuguese players he knows he can get the best out of and in the case of Diogo Jota and Ruben Neves to name two, he has players who could get into the Everton side right now without problems.
I wonder who else he could have attracted to Goodison Park from the Ibernian Peninsula with the budget Koeman had?
So he’s certainly worthy of succeeding Koeman at Everton.
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