Next Wolves manager: Interviews continue as club willing to wait on Walter Zenga's replacement

An announcement is expected either late this week or early next week as Jeff Shi and Kevin Thelwell whittle down their list of candidates.

It's thought that Paul Lambert and Nigel Pearson remain the front-runners for the job, although it's believed that a mystery candidate may have entered the race.

Outsider Paul Ince is now thought to be out of the running, while it's unclear if Tim Sherwood has survived the cull. He has been out of the country this week in Doha, while Lambert is due back from a trip to Germany today.

Interim boss Rob Edwards remains in contention and the signs point to him still being in charge for Saturday's visit of Derby County.

As previously reported, Wolves have no problem with Edwards running the team in the meantime.

It's believed that sporting director Thelwell's preferred option after the first round of interviews was Lambert. He will make a final recommendation to Shi, who has sat in on all the interviews and will have the final say.

Meanwhile Edwards hopes that supporters start to see an identity in his Wolves team if he's still in charge on Saturday.

After spending more time with the players this week he's hopeful of seeing an improvement from last weekend's performance at Blackburn, which finished 1-1.

Edwards said: "We're going to watch Derby and nail down a game plan. We know what we want to focus on and to build our identity, if we get the chance, to at least show over these couple of games that we had a game plan and that everyone knows what they're doing.

"There'll be some work on off-the-ball and on how we can hurt Derby as well. We'll try and work in a similar way to last week – hopefully it's a second week of similar messages and we should see an improvement."

A feature of Saturday's game at Ewood Park was the two full backs Matt Doherty and Cameron Borthwick-Jackson getting far forward into the opposition half.

Edwards said of the tactic: "Both Doc and Cameron and also Silvio (who was on the bench) are comfortable in possession. You can use that to your advantage and it allows people to get further forward.

"I've spoken a lot about getting more shots and crosses in and with more people further forward, the idea is you can stop early counter attacks as well.

"After three or four days – or three or four years – it'll never be perfect, but it'll be better.

"We're going to ask a lot of everyone, but especially the full backs."