Wolverhampton Wanderers have fired manager Bruno Lage following a two-goal defeat at West Ham United on Saturday, which dropped the club into the Premier League relegation zone.
Lage, who took over as manager of Wolves in the summer to replace Nuno Espirito Santo, has overseen a long-term slump in form at Molineux, with the club winning just one of their first eight Premier League games this season, following a disastrous season in which they failed to win a league game in their final seven games.
Wolves are the Premier League’s lowest scoring team, with three goals in their first eight games, continuing their troubling form in front of goal from last season, when they had the fewest Premier League goals of any team that avoided relegation, with 38 goals.
Lage took the Midlands club to a respectable top-half finish in his first season at the helm but their hopes of European football tailed off in the closing weeks of the season with an alarming seven-game winless run, which was to carry on into this season.
Expectations at the club were raised this summer after a transfer spend that exceeded £120million with Portuguese internationals Matheus Nunes and Goncalo Guedes signed from Sporting CP and Valencia respectively, defender Nathan Collins joined from Burnley, Hee-chan Hwang’s loan move from RB Leipzig was made permanent and striker Sasa Kalajdzic arrived from Stuttgart.
Austrian Kalajdzic, 25, suffered a knee ligament injury during his debut in his side’s 1-0 win over Southampton – their only Premier League victory to date this season – and there are fears the striker could miss the majority of the campaign.
