Promotion stress 'will be embraced by Wolves'
Wolves will embrace the pressure – that was the message from Molineux today as the bookies named them among the Championship title favourites.
Wolves are the fourth most fancied team with many bookmakers after narrowly missing the play-offs last season. Derby, Hull, Middlesbrough and Burnley join Wolves as the pre-season promotion favourites.
And managing expectations among success-hungry Wolves fans has been a problem for past Molineux managers.
[breakout title="Promotion odds:" align="right"]
Derby 8/1
Hull 8/1
Middlesbrough 9/1
Wolves 12/1
Burnley 12/1Brentford 14/1
[/breakout]
But head of football development and recruitment Kevin Thelwell, who is eyeing up the club's summer transfers, said it was a 'privilege' for the club to have such lofty expectations.
"We work for a big club – and when you work for a big club enough is never enough," he said. "If we were to get promoted to the Premier League we'd have to stay in the Premier League, if we stayed in the Premier League it'd be 'can you get to 12th', if we got to 12th we'd want to get in the top 10, if we got in the top 10 everyone would say, 'we're not that far off Europe are we?'.
"So you've got to embrace the pressure.
"And pressure is a bit of a privilege because there's not many clubs that have the opportunity to achieve what we could achieve."
Wolves will look to dip into the transfer market for some first-team additions over the coming weeks to boost their ranks.
And Thelwell said promotion was definitely next season's aim, as it was in 2014/15.
He added: "There'll be pressure, it'll certainly be tough and it'll be made more difficult in terms of the teams coming into the league this year.
"There are some difficult teams coming up and some difficult teams coming down
"If you look at the history of teams that have tried to get back up – Middlesbrough are a good example of a club who've spent a lot of money trying to get back to the Premier League – it's not that easy.
"So, yes, the league will be difficult and it'll be difficult to achieve our aim of getting to the Premier League, but that is our aim all the same, to get promotion one way or the other."
Meanwhile, one-time Wolves caretaker boss Stuart Gray has been sacked by Sheffield Wednesday after little more than a year and a half in the job.
