Report: Bruno Lage has Wolves players doing something they didn’t do at all under Nuno

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Bruno Lage is switching things up at Wolverhampton Wanderers and is moving away from a passive style of football regularly seen under Nuno Espirito Santo, as reported by The Athletic.

To quote Monty Python: ‘And now for something completely different’. 

Bruno Lage, like Nuno Espirito Santo, is a Portuguese tactician who made a name for himself at one of the Primeira Liga big-hitters. He is also, as you might have guessed, a client of the almighty Jorge Mendes.

But that is where the similarities end.

While Nuno’s Wolves often sat back, absorbed the pressure and then used the searing pace of Pedro Neto and Adama Traore to hit teams on the break, that is just not how Lage does things.  

His Benfica side passed and probed their opponents to death en route to the Portuguese title in 2019 and a new-look Wolves will be equally ambitious in and out of possession, pressing high and pushing up the pitch in an attempt to snatch the ball back at the earliest opportunity.

Will Bruno Lage’s new approach work at Wolves?

According to The Athletic, Lage has even radicalised the club’s approach to defending, introducing an offside trap – a tactic Wolves have not utilised since Nuno’s arrival all the way back in 2017, when they were merely a run-of-the-mill Championship club lodged between Barnsley and Ipswich in the second-tier table. 

The new system will bring its fair share of teething problems of course – Wolves conceded a couple of sloppy goals in the 3-2 defeat to Las Palmas recently – but that is what pre-season is for; ironing out those kinks long before the new Premier League season kicks off away at Leicester City on August 14. 

It remains to be seen whether the long-serving trio of Willy Boly, Conor Coady and Romain Saiss have the requisite pace to adapt to life in a vertigo-inducing high-line.

Although a new, forward-thinking system should suit Yerson Mosquera, the all-action Colombian youngster snapped up from Atletico Nacional in June, down to the ground.