Wolves 0-2 Crystal Palace ANALYSIS: Rob Edwards' arrival offers hope - but this squad's limits were laid bare in limp defeat, and he MUST be backed in January or he'll be back in the Championship in no time

If Rob Edwards manages to keep Wolves in the Premier League this season, he should have no rivals for the manager of the year award.

Ask Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp or Carlo Ancelotti to turn around this campaign and they would struggle. Wolves’ recruitment was a mess, their players lack quality and they are without a league win all season. Yet again, they were booed at full-time.

Edwards left a Championship promotion race with Middlesbrough to take this job and he looks certain to be heading back there at the end of the season. Second-half goals from Daniel Munoz and Yeremy Pino condemned Wolves to defeat by Crystal Palace, their 10th loss in 12 games.

So if Wolves survive from this starting point – two points gathered, and 10 from safety – it be the greatest fightbacks of the Premier League era.

Edwards added most of the ingredients you expect from new managers: more energy, more commitment, more aggression, not to mention a sensible team selection.

But Edwards cannot turn Marshall Munetsi into Diego Maradona – or even a good Premier League player like Morgan Gibbs-White. Whoever is the manager, he will not suddenly develop Tolu Arokodare into a 15-goals-a-season striker.

That is why Edwards needs help in January but to have any chance of improving the team this winter, somehow he must ensure Wolves are not cut adrift completely by the end of the year.

Any player who is worth signing has more than one option. And in that situation, which decent footballer is going to choose a club who are virtually certain to be relegated?

Crystal Palace showed Wolves what a club of this size can achieve if run properly. Palace are only six points adrift of leaders Arsenal and in Oliver Glasner, they have one of the most coveted coaches in Europe.

A smart recruitment policy enabled them to sign players like Munoz, who scored the opener when Adam Wharton’s shot took a fortunate bounce off Maxence Lacroix.

Losing Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze in consecutive summers would damage many clubs yet Palace look untroubled. It was fitting that Pino, playing in the Eze role, should score the second with a glorious strike from the edge of the box that went in off the underside of the bar.

Palace’s players know their system and tactics by heart and their starting XI virtually picks itself. During the majority of Nuno Espirito Santo’s time as Wolves manager, that was the case for this club, too. Since then, Wolves have lost their way, lurching from manager to manager and strategy to strategy, always forced to abandon the plan and draw up a new one in relatively short time.

That can happen to clubs outside the wealthy six, where there is so little margin of error. One mistake can lead quickly to others and before these clubs know it, they deteriorate from established Premier League sides into certainties for the Championship.

Wolves are not quite there yet but they certainly have one foot in the second tier. Meanwhile, Palace remain bitter that they are in the Europa Conference League rather than the Europa League this year due to a technicality. If they keep going like this, they may miss out on the Europa League again next season. Only this time, it would be because Glasner’s men were heading for the Champions League. Don’t bet against it.