Why Middlesbrough fans could be laughing extra hard at Rob Edwards in May | OneFootball

Rob Edwards is heading for the Premier League with Wolves, but Middlesbrough may be passing them in the opposite direction come May.

Rob Edwards has angered Middlesbrough fans by upping and leaving for the Premier League at the earliest available opportunity, but Boro fans may yet have the last laugh.

Edwards is on his way back to Molineux. He was absent from Middlesbrough's 2-1 home win against Birmingham City at the weekend, and subsequent reports have stated that the Boro boss is set to be announced as the next manager of Premier League Wolverhampton Wanderers at any moment.

The reaction at The Riverside Stadium on Saturday was incandescent. News of the move had already filtered through before the game started, and the afternoon was overshadowed by the mood in the stands, all the more accentuated by the fact that he wasn't even there for it. The win lifted Middlesbrough into the Championship's automatic promotion places, yet a manager who was only appointed into the position in June, less than five months ago, would be leaving.

But while Middlesbrough fans are angry right now, in another six months they might be feeling a very different emotion altogether, because it may well be that they find themselves passing Edwards and Wolves come the end of the season.

There are practical and emotional reasons why Rob Edwards would want to head for Wolves

Football is a business, being the manager of a football club is a job, and the Premier League is arguably the summit of the game in terms of domestic leagues. The amount of money that can be earned from being there and the exposure that comes with it can turbo-charge a career, whether for players or coaches. On an entirely pragmatic level, it is not surprising that Rob Edwards wanted to be in the top flight at the earliest available opportunity.

And it's also more than fair to say that Edwards has a connection with Wolves. He was born in the Shropshire town of Telford, which is Wolves "territory", and his family still live in the area. And while Edwards started his career in the academy at Aston Villa, after five years at Villa Park during which he failed to break into the first team and after having been sent out on loan to Crystal Palace and Derby County, he signed for Wolves in 2004 for £150,000 and stayed with the club for four years, running up over 100 appearances for them, before moving on to Blackpool.

The connection doesn't end there, either. When he retired from playing in 2013, he became the under-18s coach at Molineux before stepping up to become the club's first-team coach, and when Walter Zenga was sacked as their manager after just 87 days in charge in October 2016, he was even their interim first-team manager for two matches before Paul Lambert took over.

Following a spell in the non-league game managing his hometown team AFC Telford United, he returned to Wolves again in 2019 to manage their under-23s team, before leaving for a role with the England under-16s the following year.

Middlesbrough are well-placed for a promotion bid this season, while Wolves have been a shambles

If football is a business, then contracts should also matter. Edwards signed a three-year contract to manage Middlesbrough in June 2025, five months after his previous position at Luton Town came to an end. It is completely understandable, that Boro supporters should have been angered by him leaving this quickly.

But Middlesbrough fans may well find themselves in a position in which they have the last laugh next May. The Boro team that Edwards built is good. They've already demonstrated that this season, having beaten two of the three teams relegated from last year's Premier League in the form of Ipswich Town and Sheffield United, while they drew away to the third of them, Leicester City.

On the basis of what we've seen so far this season, with a third of it now having been played, they're plenty capable of maintaining their challenge for a return to the Premier League themselves for the first time since 2018.

Furthermore, Wolves have been chaotic in the Premier League this season. With just two points from their first eleven matches of the season so far, they're hopelessly adrift at the bottom of the table, seven points below second from bottom Nottingham Forest and eight points from safety. Keeping them in the top flight is going to be a huge challenge, and the last time that Edwards was there with Luton Town in the 2023-24 season, his team fell well short.

So, while Middlesbrough fans may be angry at the moment - and this is understandable on an emotional level, since the very loyalty that they demonstrate every demonstrate so often seems so absent from the professional game at all levels - it may well end up being the case that they get their revenge over this, come the end of the season.

It's far from implausible that they might find themselves returning to the Premier League and passing Wolves on the escalator as they go. Given how trigger-happy clubs seem to be when it comes to hiring and firing managers these days, he might even be looking for work again, in this eventuality.

Rob Edwards' decision to jettison Middlesbrough in favour of Wolves was understandable, on more than one level, but the reaction of Boro fans was as well, and they may yet find that they have the last laugh over this come May. Should this come to pass, it may even make any Premier League return all the sweeter.