With the 2025/26 season finally behind him and the opportunity to look towards the future, Rob Edwards’ attention is now firmly on getting the club back to the Premier League.
Although the coaching staff and playing group will undergo a brief recharge after a demanding and difficult campaign, there is already a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes at Compton Park and Molineux as the club prepares for what Edwards hopes will be a really exciting and memorable season.
The upcoming season will also see Wolves celebrate its 150th anniversary, and the head coach insists the building blocks which have been put in place over the last six months have brought everyone inside the club together with a common goal – to mark the club’s milestone year by rediscovering just what makes this historic club so special, creating the best possible team for an immediate return to the top flight and bringing long-term success back to Molineux.
On looking positively towards next season
“It’s been about six months since we’ve been here, and it’s been kind of exactly what I thought it was going to be. It’s been challenging, it’s been difficult, there’s been difficult periods, but within that, we’ve been able to get some hope, we’ve been able to improve and compete, but there’s not that much that has surprised me at all.
“Sometimes the negativity might be about 10 per cent and that gets amplified, but then I speak to a lot of people and they understand the situation. There’s a lot of hard work to do, but if we do our work here, then that’ll be rewarded on a matchday, and everyone will come with us.
“I hope we’ll be getting a winning team, a team that the fans can get behind, because, ultimately, everyone wants a winning team. We’re six months in now and it was always going to take a bit of time to get there, but we knew that when we came in, so if we can start well next season, I think there’ll be a great feeling around the club once again.”
On having the foundations in place to rebuild
“We know the group, so we know where we want to be with the group next season. We know who we want to be able to work with and who will be moving on.
“It has given us that benefit and we’re ahead of the game. If we were coming in now, it would obviously be very challenging, because you’re coming in blind and you’re having to try and work things out quickly, but we’re not.
“We know the group really well and we’ve got a very clear plan of what we want to try and do going forward, so that certainly helps. That’s the most important thing now. We can review, and we can look back at loads of things, but I’m not in that mindset now.
“I’m thinking about what’s next? What do we need to do to improve? Because there’s no doubt we’ve got to build a stronger group than what we’ve had this season, but we’re going to be in the Championship.”
On wanting to make the club proud
“I’m privileged to be at this football club. It’s a club that I love, and I’ve got a big affiliation to. I’ve had so many positions here, as a player, under-18s coach, under-23s coach – as it was then – first-team coach, interim head coach – loads of loads of positions.
“It’s a role I made no secret about that I always wanted, and to be in it now, I know I’m really privileged, and I’m really proud to be in in this role right now. But again, I knew what we were walking into. We were leaving something that was going really well, and in a really stable place, to come into something that I knew we were going to take a lot of stick, we were going to find it really difficult, but it’s going to be really rewarding when we’re able to get it right.
“I’ve enjoyed the challenge. I’ve loved it. Obviously, I don’t like losing games, so don’t get me wrong, we wanted to go into every game and try to get points and try to win, and that’s been our aim in all of them, but the reality is we’ve not been good enough. But that’s not because of a lack of passion, or drive, or determination to keep going and keep improving.
“When I come through the gates every morning, I just think that I’m so lucky and privileged to be here, and can’t wait for a year down the line, where we really hoped we’ve got things right.”
We invited four lifelong fans and season ticket holders to Molineux.
— Wolves (@Wolves) May 29, 2026
They were told they were being interviewed about their experiences for our 150th anniversary.
Instead, they were given a surprise from King John Richards 👑 pic.twitter.com/BE5hUtASZU
On what he wants the team to look like
“We want to be an aggressive team. We want to be able to play on the front foot. We want to be able to dominate and create chances. That’s been really difficult for us to do this year and we’ve had to be different to that, even in games where we’ve been able to pick up results, we’ve not necessarily done it in the way we want to have been able to do it.
“But in the Premier League, unless you’re at one of the top few clubs, most of us are having to adapt the way we really want to play, so that’s understandable, but there will be change.
“We want to be more dynamic and aggressive, playing forward more, and we obviously want the game to be in a different area of the pitch to where it has been a lot of this year, where we’ve been forced to play this year. There’s hope that it can look very different going forward.”
On much-needed squad improvements
“We need a fresh group of players. There’s a core here that we can build around and that we want to be able to work with, but we’re going to need a big refresh.
“We need to become a more dynamic team, and sometimes, no matter the work that you do on the grass, the individual can bring that to life because of their quality and the attributes that they have. We’re going to need players with different attributes to what we’ve got right now.
“We’ve spoken a lot that, but we’ve got a good group of people in the main, and there’s a lot of good lads there, but there’s no doubt we’ve lacked some experience, some leadership, maybe a little bit of know-how at key moments.
“The Championship is something else to this league, so there’s no doubt we’re going to need good characters, people who want to be here and want to fight. That’s the most important thing.”
On what he’s learned from being in the Premier League
“It’s been more, new experiences again. My two experiences at this level have obviously been with Luton Town – it was their first year, we had the smallest budget by far, and obviously we were always going to be up against it straight away – and then coming into a team that’s 11 games into a season and have got two points, so again are favourites for relegation, so it’s been two really hard experiences at this level, but very different.
“It’s been two different clubs, two different sets of expectations, but of course I’m going to improve with more experience, getting the opportunity to go up against the best, and when you’re able to take points off some of these people and compete with them, it can give you some confidence and belief that we’re doing the right things.
“I’m still going to learn and think, ‘We could have done that better, we could have improved there’, so there’s no doubt that we’ve improved as we’ve gone as a group of staff, and it will make us better going forward. This level can’t fail to improve you, if you’re open to it, and admitting that there are still things to learn and get better at, and change and evolve.
“But it’s probably taught me that I may be tougher than I think at times, because there’ll be a lot of opinions around there, and football is a game like nothing else, where everyone can do things better and differently, and we’ve had to be strong and believe in what we’re doing, because we have the club’s best interests at heart, and we’re really confident and we believe that we can be a part of turning this thing around.
“It was never going to be a quick fix and the process for the change started in January, and it’s continuing now, so you’re always learning about yourself and what you’re capable of.”
On having Championship experience behind the scenes
“Not only myself, but the staff I work with closely, everyone in that office have all experienced promotion out of the Championship. Paul [Trollope] has done it four times, as a player and a coach, Rui [Pedro Silva] has been part of the staff with Nuno here, that won the league, Danny [Alcock]’s done it with Coops [Steve Cooper] at Nottingham Forest, and I’ve been lucky enough to be part of three promotions from the Championship – two as a player, and obviously then with Luton.
“Harry [Watling] and I left Middlesbrough after having the best start in their history last season, so we’ve got good experience of the league. If we’re able to do what we want to be able to do with the recruitment, with the experience that we’ve got, I feel like we can be strong, but we all know that the league is very competitive.
“There’ll be a number of teams that will believe they can do it next season. There’ll be a few teams that will be really going for it, so it’ll be really interesting and competitive. It’s not going to be easy, but we’ve all got a knowledge of the level and what is required to be successful at that level.”
