The club may be bottom of the Premier League and winless, but new head coach is delighted to be back

In a cosy room off the reception at Wolves’s Compton training base, Rob Edwards is reminded he is back talking at the top table where nine years ago he struggled to conceal his excitement at being in caretaker charge of the club. “Was that when I had to sort of say I didn’t want the job and had to be really diplomatic?” he says, smiling. Now this is the real thing, after jumping at the chance to take permanent charge despite the club being bottom of the Premier League with two points from 11 matches and possessing the ignominious mantle of being the only winless team in the top seven tiers of English football.

No Premier League team have recovered from such a poor start to retain their top-flight status but Edwards is pleased to be back and has belief in achieving the seemingly impossible. These are familiar surroundings – his family remain in the Midlands – though the stakes are far higher than those couple of games in interim charge in the Championship in the autumn of 2016.