Coaching career started as a college team coach

Speaking of coaches, in addition to the original fitness coach Sergio Perez, Wei Le also recruited Mark Hulls, who has been a fitness coach there since 2012, from the Wolves U23 to work with Sergio Perez.

Their job is to enable the Wolves players to fight on two fronts and play every game with high quality.

The standard of high quality is that the Wolves players have to run more than 12 kilometers per game on average!

This level is not a shocking data in 2017. Starting from the youth storm brought by Klopp's Dortmund and the subsequent transformation of Bayern Munich, the longer and longer average running distance is an inevitable requirement for teams that focus on high-position overall pressing.

The Wolves' mid-position pressing also requires a very high overall running ability. Last season, under the arrangement of Sergio Perez, the Wolves basically did not suffer from a large-scale injury wave and performed well in the league.

This season, with the help of Mark Hulls, the Wolves must do better to keep their expected position in the upper half of the league or even the Europa League.

In addition, Wei Le also contacted Nicolas Youville, the technical coach of Brentford. The Frenchman worked as a performance analyst in Montpellier, France before 2016, and was invited by Brentford to be a technical coach in 2016.

Youville's new job at Wolves is a set-piece coach.

Wei Le believes that set-pieces will be the focus of Wolves in the new season to seek goals and avoid conceding goals. Wolves have a backcourt combination with a very suitable height, they are all very suitable for headers, and Wolves can get a lot of set-piece opportunities in the game.

Only a few of these opportunities were converted into scoring opportunities before.

Most of them were wasted.

As a performance analyst, Youville was also a coach who attached great importance to the rational use of data, which is the same direction advocated by Wei Le.

When players are playing and training, they can only look at the game with their own eyes and first-person perspective, while Youville advocates using the "third perspective" to reflect again.

He also introduced many advanced evaluation criteria to measure a player's adaptability to free kick tactics.

He placed several cameras in every corner of the field so that players can see their set-piece arrangements, as well as potential gaps and dangers from all angles.

With Youwell's arrival, his unique understanding of set-pieces made the Wolves coaching staff recognize this 38-year-old set-piece coach with little coaching experience.

(In reality, he was invited by Arsenal to be a set-piece coach in 2021. In the same year, Arsenal was the Premier League team with the fewest goals conceded from set-pieces)

There is also the elite development coach that the team has been vacant since last season.

The term elite development coach may be a little unfamiliar, but the job of this position is not difficult to understand, which is to help a player play to his strengths and avoid weaknesses and further develop his career.

To put it bluntly, it is to hone his skills.

In this position, Wei Le brought in Conte based on Conte's recommendation... This Conte is not the Conte who is the head coach, but Gianluca Conte, Antonio Conte's brother.

The two look very similar.

Antonio Conte is currently streamlining his coaching team. His brother has been following him since the beginning of his career, but when he came to the Premier League, Gianluca Conte thought that Chelsea's level was still too high and he was a little overwhelmed.

Antonio Conte sent him directly to Wolverhampton, which was reasonable.

After talking with Wei Le, Gianluca Conte also admired Wei Le's ambitions. He traveled all over the country. Although it was good to be with his brothers, he also had to pursue his own goals.

The arrival of Gianluca Conte brought fresher vitality to the coaching staff.

Perhaps because of the previous cooperation with Antonio Conte, Gianluca Conte also had his own understanding of player training. He believed that the efficiency of Wolves' training sessions could be further improved, so he immediately invested in improvement work.

Originally, Celars, who was a little overwhelmed by arranging training alone, did not feel that his position was taken away after Conte's arrival. His work was actually more about personnel management and giving advice to Wei Le.

After losing two games against strong opponents, Wei Le felt a little disappointed. Not only Wei Le, but the whole team was a little disappointed about such a blow. Last season, they were the absolute leading team in the English Championship and had basically never tasted the taste of failure.

At the beginning of this season, they just tied with Manchester United and thought it was the beginning, but they didn't expect that Tottenham and Chelsea would give them a blow. AlwaysA little disappointed.

After a training session, Celars stopped Wei Le who was returning to the office, "I think this atmosphere is not right."

"Hmm?" Wei Le turned around and wanted to hear what his assistant said.

"Don't mind if I'm wrong." Celars was a little cautious, "But I think this team atmosphere is a little too... ordinary."

Ordinary?

Wei Le frowned, but he still gave Celars an encouraging look and asked him to continue.

"Yes, it's normal." Celars continued, "I think that the players and coaches on our team feel that playing in the league is like going to work, clocking in and out on time."

"There is nothing wrong with this. But last season, many of our players chose to practice more after training, and everyone had expectations for the future or certain goals."

"We were very passionate at the time."

"But now, although it is normal, I always feel that something is missing."

Wei Le touched his chin, and although his face did not change, he felt a little terrified as Celars said.

Because this is the team atmosphere he least wants to see, but now it has happened in the team unknowingly, and if it were not for the reminder of Celars, the experienced former youth team coach, he would not even recognize such a situation.

"I understand." Wei Le said in a deep voice, and he sighed, "This is a serious problem. You reminded me too well. I am definitely not as experienced as you in the position of head coach. If you can, you should remind me more."

Cellars smiled and nodded, "You have done well enough. If I lead the team, I can't even reach this level."

This is the truth. Although Celars discovered the problem first this time, Celars did not doubt Wei Le's talent and ability at all. Before, he was very sensitive to the team's problems. Perhaps this time it was just because he had no experience in the Premier League that he missed this problem that was not a problem.

This problem is small, but the team atmosphere is not passionate. But to put it in a big way, it may even affect the development of Wolves this season and even in the next few seasons.

Maybe someone will say, isn't it good to be mediocre? Isn't it good to follow the rules?

It's pretty good. For some teams, being mediocre is already a luxury that is difficult for a team to achieve - after all, there are no obvious conflicts in the team, everyone is in harmony, no big mistakes will be made, and the head coach will not be under great pressure.

But the inevitable result of everyone being in harmony is that everyone starts to play badly.

Was Wolves in harmony last season?

Yes, but there is also competition within the Wolves team. Bowen and Jota are competing for the top scorer position, De Paul and Van der Beck are brushing each other's data, Rodri is helping Almiron adapt to the English football environment, and Haaland and White, needless to say, are of similar age and will definitely not give in to each other.

Under Wei Le's intentional guidance, these are all healthy competitions.

Everyone is competing, but it is not about wages, who wears a new watch, or what brand of new car they drive. It is about how to improve themselves and how to help the team maintain its top position in the league.