Georg Margreitter back in action – Wolves' Where Are They Now?
As Nuno Espirito Santo’s crop of stars eagerly await a date for football’s return, one former Wolves man was back playing this past weekend.
He did not do too much in his time at Molineux, but Austrian defender Georg Margreitter has managed to carve out a decent career for himself.
And as Germany’s top two tiers resumed behind closed doors, the 31-year-old got 90 minutes under his belt for Nuremberg in Bundesliga 2 on Sunday.
His side lost 1-0 at St Pauli but, still, having also played for them in the top flight last campaign, it does make you wonder why his spell at Wolves was so unfruitful.
Well, when you look at it in a bit more detail, the fact he called out his team-mates for a lack of hunger probably did not help matters.
Signed for around £500,000 in the summer of 2012, Margreitter was supposed to be one of the figureheads of a new Wolves era – a fresh start.
Stale Solbakken had been appointed boss on the back of relegation from the Premier League and Margreitter was one of his chosen ones, brought in on a four-year deal no less.
But things, of course, quickly unravelled – for both men. Solbakken’s style of football did not capture the imagination, nor did it bring results. So, he was sacked.
Margreitter, meanwhile, had a knack for picking up knocks.
He made his debut in a 3-1 League Cup win against Northampton, came on for 10 minutes at Ipswich in the league and then featured in a 6-0 cup loss to Chelsea – and that was it.
Instead of helping Wolves rebuild in the second tier, Margreitter mostly watched on from the sidelines as the club made it back-to-back relegations.
And then he laid bare the scale of under-achievement in a rather bold blog.
“Our problem lay in the dressing room,” stated Margreitter.
“Too many players were satisfied. They earn a great deal of money and drive big cars, and they are content with their lot.
“The hunger that young players bring to a team was simply not there. An attitude like that from a club’s leading players is fatal.
“When the players were in the Premier League they got a spanking week after week. Some of them probably didn’t want to go back up, preferring a cushy life in the Championship. I have never experienced anything like it.”
While there may have been a fair amount of truth in Margreitter’s words – we all know it was a bad season – speaking in such a scathing way about your team-mates is not exactly a conventional thing to do.
Suffice to say, he never played for the club again.
He was sent out on loan to Copenhagen – back under Solbakken – and then to Chesterfield in League One before seeing his contract cancelled, with one year left to run, in 2015.
Since then, he has been at Nuremberg – and a mainstay in their backline the whole time. They host Erzgebirge Aue on Friday.
