How Shrewsbury boss Sam Ricketts helped to rebuild giants Wolves

An extremely difficult couple of years for the Molineux men saw them drop from the Premier League to League One in consecutive seasons between 2011 and 2013.

They were a long way from eighth in the top flight, on the coattails of the big six, where they find themselves on the eve of their latest FA Cup adventure – at League One Shrewsbury Town, now managed by Ricketts, finding his feet in the management game.

In July 2013, Wolves boss Kenny Jackett brought 31-year-old versatile defender Ricketts in from Bolton and gave him the captain’s armband as he searched for some League One steel.

Ricketts was deployed at right-back by Jackett – who gave him his Football League break in 2004 with Swansea – and the Welshman played 44 of the 46 games in that successful season.

Wolves cruised to the third tier title with a record 103 points. Ricketts was a big hit, a focal point and a connection to supporters who had become disenchanted.

Ricketts has no doubt what the key ingredient was to Jackett’s success at the club 30 miles along the M54 from Shrewsbury.

“Organisation. Character of players and quality of players. It was a good team that found a way of playing,” he said with a certain confidence.

“It was the start of rebuilding the club, with the fanbase after back-to-back relegations, it kind of brought everyone back together.

“There were players who fans could see cared about the club and gave their all in every game whether we won or lost, everyone certainly gave their all.

“It was a year that brought everyone back together and allowed everyone to enjoy their football after two disappointing years.”

Ricketts, 37, is remembered fondly, if not for his stability, passion and organisation, then for his more unexpected rocket into the top corner of the crazy 6-4 victory over Rotherham.

The Millers had somehow brought it back to 4-4 that day, before Ricketts took centre stage – where he was teed up by one Dave Edwards.

He continued: “I’d rather be liked than disliked! I’m not egotistic, it doesn’t worry me, as a player I’d just do my job to the best of my ability.

“If people liked it they liked it, if they didn’t then they didn’t. Fortunately they liked it.”

Ricketts spent time coaching young players during his second season at Wolves, where he experienced less game time in the Championship. At his next – and final – club, Coventry, he did similar, before being forced to hang up his boots in November 2016.

Having began to build up his coaching repertoire, he went in search of honing his abilities, linking back up with Wolves’ academy. Ricketts also spent time under the stewardship of Brendan Rodgers at Celtic.

Ricketts was not gambling on doing it any other way – and then Wrexham, of the National League, came calling.

The highly-rated young boss continued: “Organisation is everything. Structure – without that you’re flipping a coin every week and I don’t like flipping a coin to see if I’m going to win a game.

“I’d rather have some structure, if I win it then I know why, if I didn’t then I can easily see what the problems were.

“To be fair we’ve got it now, to an extent, but it does take an awful long time to install fully. A pre-season helps because you’ve got six weeks of training and practice games.

“We’re inching our way along a little bit and seeing good bits of play.

“That structures and processes in place take a long time to come to fruition.”

The Wolves he faces tomorrow have come a long way to the one he helped steer back into the Championship five years ago. Since, in the summer of 2016, Chinese conglomerate Fosun International took over. Success wasn’t instant, but in 2017 Nuno Espirito Santo was appointed from Portugal giants Porto.

“It’s great. It’s great that someone has a vision and are backing it in a nearly-sustainable way,” added Ricketts.

“They’re not being stupid with money. They’ve not been really frivolous with it.

“They’ve been quite cautious in everything that they’re doing and fair play to them. They’ve got a way of playing now, a real identity and it’s proving very successful.”