Wolves chief Jeff Shi: "We're ahead of schedule"

Three league wins from five matches – plus two Carabao Cup victories including away at Premier League Southampton – have represented a great start to life under Nuno Espirito Santo.

Wolves are fourth in the early Championship table despite having a new head coach, 12 new players (of whom 10 have been blooded) and a new backroom team, formation and playing style.

Shi, speaking exclusively to the Express & Star, said: "So far so good.

"The team is progressing ahead of our plan. We thought two or three months ago that it's a new team and we'd need more time to gel them together.

"We thought we may need more time. But so far the progress of the team is much better than we thought.

"Last summer we signed two or three good players but maybe the others didn’t fit into the system or the league.

"This time we had time to think over what the team should be like, especially according to the requirements of Nuno, according to his plan and system.

"It’s only five games, it’s a long season, so we've tried make a squad deep enough to play through the whole season.

"I’m confident in our current squad."

As well as 12 first team players Wolves have also signed a number of talented youngsters from overseas to go into Scott Sellars' under-23 squad.

Portuguese trio Pedro Goncalves, Boubacar Hanne and Jose Nuno Rodrigues Xavier have been snapped up along with Danish right-back Oskar Buur and Swiss youth international Ming-yang Yang.

"We care a lot about the under-23s – it's a key strategy," Shi added.

"In the first team squad we have many players from the academy. This season we can see Bright (Enobakhare), Connor (Ronan) and Donovan (Wilson) doing very well.

"Compared with the signings of key players I'm more happy about the young boys because we have more emotional attachment to them, they grew up in the academy and we promoted them.

"We will never be a club that just buys players and spends money – we care very seriously about our academy players and will do our best to give them chances.

"For example, at left back originally we thought maybe we needed to buy one. After two or three games we realised (Ruben) Vinagre is a good player, very young, only 18 but we think he can do it.

"We always want to give young players chances. Maybe more than the other teams."