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Adam Bate
Comment and Analysis @ghostgoal
In an exclusive interview with Sky Sports, Conor Coady discusses his unique role at Wolves, why it works, and his future at the club.
Last Updated: 24/12/19 12:05am
According to the song sung at Molineux, they said he was a Scouser but he’s really gold and black. While Conor Coady is still proud of his roots, it’s not without some truth. His children are Wolves supporters now. His father and brother booked their flights to Barcelona for the club’s Europa League tie away to Espanyol within minutes of the draw being made.
Coady has found a home at Wolves these past five seasons. Liverpool shaped him and his rapport with Jamie Carragher is still obvious in the dressing room before the Wolves captain’s recent appearance on Monday Night Football. He enjoyed his time at Sheffield United and Huddersfield too. But it is at Molineux his career has really progressed.
2:48 Coady is not the first to drop down the divisions only to rise back up. But there is a twist in his tale. It not just a story of hard work and talent. There is an element of serendipity for a man who was playing as a Championship midfielder before being shifted to right-back for much of his second season at Wolves. It was, he admits, never his position.
“I am not a right-back,” Coady tells Sky Sports. “I was just filling in there and, I will be honest with you, it was tough. I was just doing the job for the team that was needed at the time so I tried not to look too far ahead with it. I certainly never told myself I was going to get back to the Premier League because if it doesn’t happen then you’re in trouble.
“Luckily, I found myself with a world-class manager.”
Nuno Espirito Santo has transformed Wolves but there has been no greater beneficiary of his arrival than Coady, his leader and mouthpiece on the pitch. Reinvented in the centre of a back three, his role is near unique in its interpretation within the Premier League. Coady is perhaps the closest thing to a traditional sweeper that exists in the modern game.
Rui Patricio is a goalkeeper who is reluctant to stray too far from line, relying instead on his reactions – something fellow Wolves goalkeeper John Ruddy noted recently. “He is completely different to anyone I’ve worked with ever before,” Ruddy explained. “He works very close to his line, closer than anyone I’ve seen and, clearly, it works for him.”
The consequence of this is that Coady operates deeper than any other outfield player in the Premier League, often fulfilling the sweeper duties most clubs now regard as the responsibility of the goalkeeper. The stats show Coady’s defensive actions come – on average – at least five yards closer to goal than any other defender at a top-eight team.
“We play a totally different way to normal centre-halves,” he explains. “I have centre-halves either side of me and then my job is to try to organise as much as possible.”
The fact Coady’s starting position is so deep puts huge emphasis on his long passing. So far this season he has hit 129 accurate long passes in the Premier League. The next defender on the list is Virgil van Dijk with 87 of them. That highlights just how different his role is. No team relies on the long-range distribution of a defender more than Wolves.
“It’s a big part of our game,” says Coady.
“It’s important because our wing-backs are vital to us. They are huge for us in terms of how we play and how we want to go forward. So it’s important we have players in the team – like Ruben Neves and Joao Moutinho too – who can find them quite quickly, because the wing-backs are the ones who can move us forward and create chances for us.”
It is not just that Coady is attempting these passes – anybody can do that – it is that he is so accurate with them. He has pedigree as a former England U20 captain and credits his time at right-back for helping him adjust to having the game ahead of him. Whatever the reason, he has a better success rate with his long passes than Van Dijk and the rest.
The ball to Matt Doherty or Adama Traore out on the right flank is his speciality, turning defence into attack in an instant. According to Opta, when it comes to direct attacks – defined as moves that start in a team’s own half, move quickly towards the opposition goal, and end in a shot or touch inside the box – Wolves do this more than any other team.
It is down to hours of hard work on the training ground.
“It is not just about me practising the pass either, it’s about knowing where your runners are going to be. I have to make sure that I know what run that Doc or Adama is going to do to make sure that the pass lands in their path. Sometimes they can drop back or sometimes they can go forward with it more. But everybody knows their role and how to play it.”
There is a metronomic quality to Wolves’ play when they are at their best, hypnotic in its repetition. Nuno’s methods do not always deliver victory but the principles never change. The team is so well drilled in a system that has seen only minor tweaks since the day the Portuguese coach first walked through the door two-and-a-half years ago.
For Coady, his knowledge of his role has led to England calls – particularly when Gareth Southgate was playing a back three himself. But so specialised is his skill-set that any chance of international recognition would appear unlikely if England persist with a back four.
Curiously, if they revert to a back three once more, Coady would surely go from outsider to automatic pick. Not that he is giving it a second thought. “It is always other people who are talking about that,” he insists. “It’s not something that I look at. England have got some fantastic centre-halves. I just want to play as many games for Wolves as I can.”
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For now, Wolves is enough. More than enough, in fact.
Indeed, he has become so integral to this team that when Nuno took charge of his 100th league game as Wolves boss against Brighton recently, it was noted that Coady had started 99 of them. He was suspended for the other. Coady is Nuno on the pitch – his gestures, urging the team to stay compact, often mirroring the manager on the touchline.
He does not want this journey to end.
“My kids have grown up Wolves fans and they will be Wolves fans now,” adds Coady. “My wife brings them to the games and they know every song. All they have known is their dad playing for Wolves. It has been a massive chunk of our lives. That’s how it’s going to be now because I want to play for Wolves for a very long time. It is a brilliant club.”
On Sunday, the journey will take him back to where it began when Wolves visit Liverpool at Anfield. He won an FA Cup tie there in 2017 but a lot has changed since then – his manager, his division, his position and his status. Coady returns as captain of a fellow Premier League team. As the song goes, his name is Conor Coady. The leader of the pack.
