New sporting director Matt Hobbs has suggested that Wolverhampton Wanderers will look to make significant changes to their first-team squad in January.
On Thursday evening, Wolves announced that Hobbs had been promoted to a new role with Scott Sellars departing his position as technical director.
The change comes at a time when Wolves are sitting at the bottom of the Premier League table and have just appointed a new head coach in Julen Lopetegui.
At his official unveiling earlier this month, the Spaniard acknowledged that he wanted to make changes to his squad in a bid to keep the club in the top flight.
Hobbs has now admitted that the West Midlands outfit have already commenced work ahead of the market opening at the turn of the year.
© Reuters
Speaking in an interview with the club's official website, Hobbs said: "The last two weeks have been about meeting with Julen regarding the club as a whole, speaking to Oscar [Caro] about medical and sports performance aspects and I have a group chat with Ben [Wrigglesworth], head of scouting, Elliot [Sutcliffe], scouting coordinator, Fran [Garagaza] and Dan [Lopetegui], for information and data on players we are discussing. As you can imagine this is very busy at the moment
"Whilst we are reviewing lots of areas, first and foremost, it's about players. My job in the immediate future is to make sure we get the right players. We've got a world-renowned manager, with a support team to match, and we've got a lot of top players, who are not playing to their potential at the moment.
"But we need to add in January because we are short in some areas. That's what it has to be all focused on at the moment."
Hobbs also outlined the process that Lopetegui would undertake when looking to bring in fresh faces, the former Sevilla boss insisting on holding direct conversations with a player rather than relying solely on the club's infrastructure.
© Reuters
He added: "Julen also won't sign a player he hasn't spoken to, which is something we have wanted for while. He wants to meet every player before we sign them, either face-to-face or a call on Zoom because he wants to have a feel for them as people.
"We are working with Fran, who will be traveling around Europe for us, and Dan whose insight has been invaluable, but we all communicate regularly, and the relationships have been easy to forge so far.
"They came in with a list of players they believe can help us and Ben and the team have been working on ours, but what has helped build the relationships were that we had a lot of the same names, which quickly showed everyone was on the same page."
Wolves have been linked with a number of players since Lopetegui's arrival at Molineux, including Real Madrid duo Nacho and Mariano Diaz who he knows from his time at the Bernabeu.
Darren Plant
