Julen Lopetegui set to officially take over as Wolves head coach

After arriving in England on Friday and making his first visit to Compton, where he met the club’s players and staff, the Spaniard watched from the stands as Wolves lost to Arsenal on Saturday night.

He was unveiled to the Molineux crowd and received a rapturous reception, before interim head coach Steve Davis oversaw the 2-0 loss to the Gunners.

Today, he officially takes over as the new head coach and has a a huge job on his hands to overturn Wolves’ fortunes, as they sit bottom of the Premier League during the World Cup break.

On Friday, Davis said Lopetegui carried an impressive presence around the training ground and that the new boss and his team worked hard last week to prepare for their new roles.

“He’s gone everywhere, into the academy, the first team building, into every office and introduced himself,” Davis said.

“He’s had a lot of meetings, and his staff had a lot of meetings with every department prior to him coming in. They’re very stringent in what they’ve done and covered all the areas. I spoke to him yesterday (Friday) with the other staff for about an hour, going through every player in the squad.

“We spoke about the players and their characters and what my and James’ (Collins) thoughts are. It was a good conversation.

“He has his opinions on that too. It was a very healthy conversation. He said we’d be helpful to him moving forward, which is good.”

Lopetegui will be unveiled to the media at Molineux today as his era at Wolves begins.

However, as a handful of players leave for the World Cup and the rest go on holiday, Lopetegui will only briefly be in England before flying back to Spain.

He will return again to work with the players before a warm weather training camp in Marbella. When asked if the club is in a good place by bringing Lopetegui in, despite the lowly league position, Davis added: “I still think it’s early in the season and we’ve seen better signs over the last four or five games.

“That’s a positive, and he’ll know what he needs to do with the current players and what he might need to bring in. Arguably, they need some more competition and some more quality.”