The Portuguese has done an excellent job at Sheffield Wednesday – and will Wolves’ owners see him as the man to take their project to the next level?
When Chinese consortium Fosun International seized control of Wolves in the summer and nailed their colours to the mast with fanciful promises of Premier League football, you wondered how many managers they would churn through to achieve their aim.
The baffling reign of Walter Zenga, who had managed more clubs in the Middle East than in Europe, lasted a predictably short 14 games while Paul Lambert, parachuted in during a crisis, was reported at the weekend by The Sun to have a questionable future.
The publication claims that Fosun are less than impressed with the Scotsman who has failed to recover from testing spells at Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers by leading Wolves to just four points above the relegation zone.
And The Sun adds that the owners have their hearts set on a foreign manager with Championship experience – something that is bound to get Paul Merson clambering onto his pedestal.
Though if this is the case, one manager truly stands out as the ideal candidate. As it stands, Portuguese coach Carlos Carvalhal is on the verge of leading Sheffield Wednesday into the play-offs just one season after suffering heart-break against Hull City at Wembley.
And while it’s easy to claim that he’s had far more funds to play around with under the current ownership, as the January arrivals of Jordan Rhodes and Sam Winnall will attest, it’s still a mightily impressive achievement given that Wednesday had not been so close to returning to the Premier League since their relegation in 2000.
But why would he leave a stable club for the madness at Molineux?
Well, you could see why he would reject any prospective approach out of hand as the project at Hillsborough goes strong with the backing of supportive owner Dejphon Chansiri.
Then again, with 16 clubs on his CV across a management career spanning two decades, Carvalhal is clearly not a man for whom setting down is second nature, even if he did tell the Yorkshire Post that he was targeting a longer stay in the Steel City.
With money to burn, could Wolves tempt him to start afresh once more?
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