Wolves Sack Rob Edwards as Cesar Peixoto Takes Charge

Wolverhampton Wanderers have sacked head coach Rob Edwards in a ruthless twist that cuts straight across the optimism generated by their headline summer signings.

Edwards was informed by the club’s hierarchy that his time at Molineux is over, despite playing a central role in bringing in Kieran Trippier and Raúl Jiménez in recent weeks. Both arrivals had been sold on a project with Edwards at the heart of it. That project has been abruptly torn up.

Cesar Peixoto, the former Gil Vicente coach, is now on the brink of taking charge. The 44-year-old Portuguese, represented by Jorge Mendes’s Gestifute agency, has coached only in his homeland but is being lined up as the latest Mendes-connected figure to step into the Wolves dugout.

This is a club still reeling from last season. Wolves finished bottom of the Premier League, a campaign that saw Vitor Pereira dismissed in November and Edwards brought in with a clear, if grim, understanding: relegation was likely, and the real work would begin in the Championship.

Wolves did not hesitate to invest in that plan. They paid Middlesbrough, then top of the Championship, £4 million to prise Edwards away and make him the figurehead of a long-term rebuild. He arrived as the man trusted to reshape a broken side and reset a fractured dressing room.

The early signs pointed to exactly that. Edwards built a strong working relationship with technical director Matt Jackson, and together they targeted British talent to strengthen the home-grown core of the squad. The idea was simple: restore identity, restore connection, restore edge.

The mood around the club had started to lift. Jiménez’s return was framed as a statement of intent, and Edwards was front and centre of the “Welcome Home” announcement video posted on social media just two days ago. He wasn’t just in the background; he was part of the sales pitch.

Trippier echoed that sentiment. In his first club interview, released on Wednesday, the England international highlighted Edwards’s presence as a key factor in his decision to sign. Inside the training ground, staff spoke of a cultural shift under the new manager – standards raised, clarity restored, a sense of direction at last.

Now that narrative has been ripped up in a matter of hours.

While Edwards worked on reshaping the squad, powerful forces were moving in the shadows. Mendes and his associate Valdir Cardoso, who have maintained a close relationship with Wolves’ owners Fosun since their 2016 takeover, were quietly constructing a deal to bring Peixoto to Molineux before the new campaign kicks off.

The timing is brutal. The decision does more than remove a head coach; it risks shattering the fragile positivity that had begun to form around the club after relegation. Players who had bought into Edwards’s vision now face a different voice, a different style, and a different power structure above them.

Peixoto, if and when he walks through the door, will inherit a squad built with another man’s blueprint and another man’s promises. The question now is not just how he will manage that, but how a fanbase already wary of off-field influence will respond to yet another Mendes-era reshuffle.