Wolves’ head of performance Phil Hayward says Rob Edwards’ people skills will have all departments pulling in the same direction, in a big to turn results around.
When Hayward first joined Wolves in 2008 Edwards was playing and they continued to work closely when he returned as a coach, particularly with the first-team under Walter Zenga and Paul Lambert. They reunited once more with Hayward consulting for Edwards’ Forest Green Rovers side, and now they’ll join forces yet again at Molineux.
Hayward was at Compton Park earlier in the week to welcome Edwards, having been working hard with the players remaining during the international period, and he’s now confident the new head coach can get a tune out of the squad in place.
On welcoming Edwards back
“Rob is someone that we know well at the club and someone who I've personally worked with before, both here and elsewhere. I think he's going to be a great appointment for the club and hopefully can help get us back on track and inject a lot of positivity and energy into the playing group, and also the staff and everyone around the club. I think he can really help with that energy, that positivity.”
On Edwards bringing the right personality
“The big thing about Rob is his personality, his people skills, his enthusiasm, his ability to really get the most out of people, not just the players, but the staff as well. I think people really want to work hard for him, because he creates a good connection on a personal level, and because of that interpersonal connection that he establishes with people, it naturally motivates them to want to work harder and want to help him, and that's going to stand him in good stead here, initially with the players, but also with the staff at Compton.
“There's definitely a lot of excitement here amongst the staff, both ones who've known and worked with him before, but then also ones who haven't have heard good things about him from his time here before. I think a lot of people are excited to get working with him.
“Everyone's going to want to do absolutely everything they can to try and get the most out of this playing group, to try and get us where we need to be, which is obviously a lot higher up the table than we are at the moment. Everyone's going to be pulling together to make sure we're giving everything we can to get this thing turned around.”
On how Edwards has evolved as a coach
“Rob's journey is different to a lot of coaches in that he actually went into coaching very early. So, although he's still fairly young, he is relatively experienced as a coach and obviously has been the head coach now for since his time at Forest Green. It's been interesting to see how he's evolved and developed in that time. He's had lots of important influences along the way, including Kenny [Jackett] initially and Paul [Lambert]. Then probably the time spent with Nuno [Espirito Santo] was really important for him in terms of looking at how Nuno set the team up, and how he got the most from that group.
“In addition to the roles that he's had, he's also spent a lot of time when he's not been in work going around Europe and the Premier League, working with some top coaches to understand how they operate. I know he spent time at Man City with Pep [Guardiola]. He’s taken a lot from that experience and tried to take some aspects into how he set his teams up, and I know that he's taken an awful lot from a variety of different jobs and tried to implement the best bits from all the different coaches that he's worked with. He's got a wide skill set that he can use to hopefully get the most out of this playing group, and have a real instant impact, to get us moving onwards and upwards as soon as we can.”
Familiar faces at Compton 🤗 pic.twitter.com/bzQVEwP1al
— Wolves (@Wolves) November 13, 2025
On a hunger to turn things around
“Everyone wants it to turn around. I think we've got to do everything that we can to work as hard as we possibly can to make sure we do turn it around. There's a lot of positivity and a lot of confidence here that we've definitely got enough in the playing group to get more from every one of the players, to allow us to get the points on board that we need to do to get ourselves back into a much better position in the table.”
