Wolves rant might not spare Edwards the sack as they hit low even Derby 07/08 avoided | OneFootball

“We have to stick together,” said Rob Edwards three weeks ago. “We want to try and take some momentum and positive momentum into next season, on and off the pitch.”

Since then, Edwards has been called a “w*nker” by what he would struggle to pretend is only a vocal minority of the Molineux support, before throwing his Wolves players under the bus while washing his hands of a situation that is “not my fault”.

It does feel like there are better ways to stick together and create positive momentum.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” the manager said after a “horrible”, “embarrassing” and “atrocious” defeat to Brighton which confirmed Wolves as only the second team in Premier League history to lose to the other 19 sides in the same season.

“It looked like we were still in our nice hotel for the first five minutes,” he continued, before dropping a laughable bombshell: that some of the players “have got to go”.

For any other club, that message might have resonated. At Wolves, it will be celebrated in the dressing room and shrugged at by the fans who have seen these myriad problems created by what Edwards now feels is part of the solution.

Wolves are in this predicament because of a recruitment strategy which has hinged on routinely selling their best players every summer and replacing them by speculating to accumulate. Even as this shameful relegation procession plays out, Joao Gomes is in negotiations to join Champions League semi-finalists Atletico Madrid. Anyone else of even vague worth to another team will be shipped out, but to paint that as part of a grand mission to return Wolves to the Premier League, rather than simply something Wolves have done for the last few years, is disingenuous.

But really this was inevitable the moment Edwards jumped on board a ship that was sinking fast in November. He was never going to be able to turn this mess around, it was too long a time to sustain these unavoidable defeats and deplorable performances without lasting harm being caused, and he is now weaponising the fact that no-one else could possibly have been foolish enough to inherit it on the pretence it was a long-term project.

The damage has been done and does not feel particularly remediable.

It does create an intrigue over how many changes Edwards makes for the final two games. He was never going to name names but those he feels are culpable will be indirectly identified by their absence against Fulham and Burnley.

And even that hilariously depressing one-two punch cannot simply be written off. Edwards compartmentalised the Brighton defeat as coming against a side that is “light years ahead of us at the moment,” adding that “it’s not that easy” to simply attack with reckless abandon even with nothing to lose.

It’s not that easy to make an inexorable relegation even more depressing either, but Edwards has managed it.

It does also beg the question as to how this team beat Liverpool and Aston Villa in March, drawing with Brentford and Arsenal around the same time.

But now “everyone needs to realise we’re bottom of the league and every other team is better than us”.

If Edwards tries that excuse either at home to a dreadfully out-of-form Fulham this weekend or Burnley on the final day, the players will not be the only ones who might have to leave for Wolves to have any chance of bouncing back.