Johnny Phillips: Mentality key to being a member of Nuno’s Wolves pack

He made the comment in response to an enquiry about why Wolves had been slow to impose themselves during the game at Elland Road.

Youth, pace and intelligence. Nuno places a premium on these three facets when choosing his players.

This particular game perfectly illustrated the type of intelligence he seeks.

It was a very different first half to the one we witnessed against Crystal Palace last Friday evening. They players were prepared to be patient, when it might have appeared they were being too cautious.

“Conor was right, every team has a different strategy,” said Daniel Podence during our interview, to be shown on Sky Sports this weekend.

“Leeds has a different strategy to anything we had played against before. So we had to see what was happening in the game.

“It’s not only about the coaching staff telling us what to do, it’s about understanding everything that is around us.

“We needed to play with our heads and after the first half we managed the game well.

“If you have creativity you must balance it in a way that benefits the team. When we are training we have a lot of things the coach wants us to do. He shows us good strategies, but we must also show in ourselves that we have the answers.”

Personality analysis plays a huge part in the recruitment of players. Intelligence levels are an indicator of how much players can improve and how adaptable they can be.

Nuno prefers to work with those who can play in more than one position and in more than one way. There is a mentality that players here must buy into. The ones who succeed understand the bigger picture and the environment they are being asked to work in.

This is illustrated not just by the recruits but by those who have left the club under this management.

Nelson Semedo is looking every inch the Barcelona player Wolves paid big money for. Under Nuno, Wolves have had great strength in the right wing-back position, with Matt Doherty excelling for three seasons before making his £15million summer move to Spurs.

But there was one other player given an opportunity to make the position his own under Nuno.

Back in the summer of 2017 Jordan Graham was the name on the lips of the new coaching staff when they were considering the best wing-backs for Wolves’ Championship season ahead.

In fact, Graham’s versatility meant he offered an exciting option on either flank. Nuno worked tirelessly with the player during pre-season and watched him set up the only goal, playing in Doherty’s position, during a friendly against Peterborough United less than a fortnight before the start of the season.

But the player and head coach rubbed up against each other. Graham did not want to play as a wing-back and believed his future lay further forward on the pitch. He did not see the value in Nuno coaching him in a position that did not appeal.

The contrast with his approach to that of Coady’s is marked. “I would have played anywhere”. The club captain has gone on record many times about the value of moving from his once-preferred position, central midfield, to the heart of defence.

From the moment Nuno walked through the door, Coady recognised his future prosperity depended on a devotion to Nuno’s methods.

Graham is an articulate character, there is no lack of intelligence there. But he is a different personality to Coady and his approach to the issues he was confronted with took him down another path.

Now Graham occupies the position he always coveted, at League One Gillingham.

Podence had his own challenges on moving to Molineux. He began last season playing regular Champions’ League football but following the January switch from Olympiakos he was restricted to just 43 minutes of Premier League football before the lockdown. It hurt.

“I was worried, I came here to play and I was on the bench,” he explained. “I spoke with Nuno and he told me that every player needs to wait to have a place in his team.

“I waited and I worked a lot. The lockdown gave me a lot of time to work on the things I was not good at. I improved my English and I worked on my game, sometimes alone, at the training ground. I came back much stronger after the quarantine.”

Podence unquestionably benefitted from the lockdown break and the chance to assess his pathway at the club, but it was his mentality – to the point of working diligently on improving his multilingual skills – that ensured he succeeded in forcing his way into Nuno’s plans.

The ‘One Pack’ slogan that has become an integral part of Nuno’s Wolves runs right throughout the club. Work was commissioned in 2018 to identify the club’s core values, the principles that players, coaches and staff should live by.

The five values are: progressive, determined, bright, humble and unity. It was about creating a mentality that could be prosperous. At first team level, it should not be underestimated just how much work goes into identifying players who can become part of this mindset.

Podence understands the surroundings he has moved into. He was unequivocal in his answer when asked if he sensed, on arrival here, that he was part of ‘The Project’ as Nuno calls it.

“Yeah a lot, it’s about the project, the future, growing up as a club and a team and improving all the time,” he said.

“We can see since Nuno came here, year by year, the club is much better. We can see that we can improve and achieve more goals.

“If you have the mentality to stay strong then things will come. It’s about mentality if you want to achieve the biggest things in football.”