- Wolves are set to visit King Power Stadium on the opening weekend of 2021/22
- Leicester City host the Midlands outfit on day one for the second time in three season
- The visitors will be managed by Bruno Lage following the Portuguese's appointment this summer
- Express and Star journalist Joe Edwards has provided an assessment of the club's prospects
For the second time in three Premier League seasons, the Foxes will host their Midlands neighbours on Filbert Way on the opening day of a new season, but their visitors will arrive with a different approach in 2021/22 – following the appointment of ex-Benfica manager Lage.
A Primeira Liga and Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira winner in Portugal, Lage replaces Nuno Espírito Santo at Molineux after a 13th-placed finish last time out. Wolves, though, remain as ambitious as ever and, according to Express and Star journalist Joe Edwards, they will admire City's recent success.
"It’s always a difficult game against Leicester and I think they’re a team that Wolves have a lot of admiration for," Edwards told LCFC Radio earlier this week, following confirmation of the 2021/22 season's full top-flight fixture schedule. "Wolves are ultimately quite an ambitious team.
"They’ve obviously made quite a significant change this summer, but their ambition is to break into that old-school mould in England as Leicester arguably have done already. It’s always an interesting game and they always tend to be pretty close games as well.
"They tend to be even, closely-fought games and, hopefully, it’ll be the same thing this time around because it’s a tough start for the new manager with three daunting opening games. Wolves tend to get a point from these games and I think they’d probably take a point again this time around."
Lage arrives in England with a reputation for playing attacking football – something which Edwards believes will be a change in tact for the three-time champions of England, who only scored 36 Premier League goals across the 2020/21 campaign.
"It’s Nuno gone, Bruno in for Wolves," he continued. "It’s a new era and a bold call to part ways with Nuno. It was mutual consent, but it’s understood to have been instigated by the club.
"There is a new manager in and, of course, he’s been successful in Portugal, winning the Primeira Liga title, with a more expansive, attacking-minded brand of football than Wolves have been used to. They’ve played some very good stuff over the years, but the foundation was always about being solid at the back.
"With Lage’s teams, it’s a bit more gung-ho perhaps. Whether that’ll translate into the Premier League, or whether he’ll have to rein it in a little bit, we’ll have to wait and see. This will be an evolution rather than a revolution. They will build on the Portuguese influence already there.
"They will also try and get this team, with some signings, back performing how they believe they can. They need to score more goals and concede less goals. Scoring goals was a big shortcoming last season – they only scored 36 in 38 games – and that is something that needs to be addressed.
"Hopefully, with the return of Raúl Jiménez, that will help Wolves find more goals and get more points. The expectation is he should be able to play a part, but we’ll have to see how pre-season goes."
The return of Jiménez and the arrivals of new faces are all expected over the upcoming summer and Edwards highlighted some of the areas which Lage may need to prioritise over the coming weeks at Molineux.
"Everybody’s just having to contend with the Euros at the moment, but in terms of signings, they need to make signings," Edwards added. "A centre-back, you feel, has to be a priority, as has a central midfielder, and probably another striking option.
"While Fábio Silva did well as a young player coming in for big money last season, you don’t want to lean too much on him and then you don’t want to expect too much from Jiménez when he’s been out for so long. The spine of the team needs to be reinforced.
"The left-back position is another area you can look at because Jonny Otto’s got another ACL injury. Rayan Aït-Nouri filled in fairly well last season, but they’re going to decide whether they make that move permanent or not. There’s a lot of things to be done.
"Getting a new manager in was a bold step, but really, it’s just the start for Wolves this summer. There’s a refresh to the squad that needs to be done and Lage has a history of playing a more attacking-minded style of play, so it’s hard to say who’ll line up for them at Leicester at the moment.
"We’ll have to see if they can get the business done in time for that, but the window doesn’t close until the end of August. If they can get a couple in before then, the good thing is, Lage has a full pre-season to try and get his philosophy across to his new players."