Matt Jackson is delighted to be back at Wolves, after he returned as the club’s new head of professional football development recently.
Jackson, who previously spent two years heading Wolves’ strategic player marketing department, already had more than 500 professional games to his name as a player and has now served as president at Grasshopper Club Zurich over the past eight months, providing a range of experience.
His new role will see Jackson once again oversee the loan department, but also work closely with first-team recruitment, assessing those temporarily elsewhere and playing for the under-21s, ensuring no stone is left unturned.
On making his return
“I’m delighted to be back. It’s an environment I was very comfortable in before. I enjoyed the work and the teamwork we had immensely. I had a great experience over in Switzerland with Grasshoppers, an oversight of running a whole football club and the pressures that brings has been excellent, but the Premier League as an environment is really the only place to work and I’m delighted to be back.
“The best way to describe it is having an oversight of the processes and great work already going on with loans, recruitment and academy, and just trying to find a way to be as productive as possible in producing resource for the first-team. That’s the main part of it. That’s ultimately why a football club exists, to have, in our case, Premier League quality, and everything we can do to channel the best work we’re doing as a football club up to the first-team is exactly what this role encompasses.”
On bringing all his experiences together
“I’ll definitely benefit [from Grasshoppers spell]. Just in terms of pulling teams together, managing information which comes to you, coming up with strategies that work to keep a team competitive. It’s obviously slightly different in terms of levels, the Swiss League to Premier League, but the principles are very much the same and you still need to have a functioning football club. It was a brilliant experience for that.
“I also have my playing past and experience in the agency world, so I know that side of it. I set up recruitment departments around the academy at Wigan when EPPP was first coming into existence, so I’ve worked in the areas involved and that football link. Also, crossing the white line and being a part of the Premier League and a lot of Championship games, I know what the middle of the pitch looks like, and I think that could be a help as well.”
On his seamless transition back at Wolves
“Football’s very good at people going different pathways all of the time but I had a call from people here who I was very close to and that’s going to be the easiest part, slotting back into the workforce here.
“I know what the brief is, I know what we’re all trying to achieve collectively to make Wolves as good and competitive as possible. That’s the easy part, knowing that. The difficult part is putting it all into practice.”
