The panic button is yet to be pressed at Wolverhampton Wanderers but there is an acknowledgement it could get worse before it gets better.
After one draw and two defeats to open their Premier League campaign, Wolves have Aston Villa away and both Liverpool and Manchester City at home on the horizon in a tricky run of fixtures that only looks a little rosier come November.
That is what makes Sunday’s game against Newcastle United an early opportunity for Wolves to prove they are above the relegation class of 2024-25. Few believe they are contenders, after all, but points are the point of this game and as it stands only Everton and the promoted trio have lower odds to go down.
“I think they’re going to be absolutely fine,” Matt Jarvis, who played for Wolves and was a teammate of Gary O’Neil at West Ham and Norwich City, tells i. “I’ve got no doubts about that. I saw quite a bit of them in pre-season and they were really sharp.”
Central to their success this season will be the decisions taken above head coach O’Neil. A cool £40.7m profit in the summer window – a net spend bettered only by City in the Premier League – helped ease PSR concerns, but the greater concern after selling Pedro Neto and Max Kilman for a combined £94m is their failure to replace the latter.
No new centre-back arrived and, to add an element of surprise to that disappointment, there was no Craig Dawson in the opening two starting XIs, a point rectified by O’Neil when he reinstated the experienced defender for their draw at Nottingham Forest.
“I’m happy with our signings, I think there’s been some smart business, but the one thing we needed was a centre-back, we could have done with a Kilman replacement,” Ryan Leister, co-host of The Wolves Report podcast, says.
“I think Wolves have taken a gamble, although Dawson, fantastic player, he’s the reason we’re playing Premier League football.”
Dawson brings much-needed leadership qualities, while their hat-trick of deadline-day signings vary on the spectrum between proven and risky.
Goalkeeper Sam Johnstone is the safe pair of hands, having already displaced Jose Sa, while midfielder Andre and winger Carlos Forbs are the greater unknowns – although Wolves are refreshingly open about how they came about signing the duo.
The club’s website enlightens fans on the scouting process, with Andre arriving from Fluminense three years after he was first scouted by Wolves – the same time they identified Joao Gomes – and have labelled the 23-year-old a “gritty, tenacious, battling midfield player”.
Just where Andre squeezes in, or who he squeezes out, remains to be seen given Wolves’ central midfield is already packed, but the Brazil international could outshine compatriot Gomes and offers the club further strength in this area.
“He looks like a player,” Jarvis adds. “I saw him playing for the national team, and I think he’ll be a massive help for the team.”
The arrival of Forbs is undoubtedly a greater gamble.
The winger’s loan from Ajax – with an option to buy the 20-year-old next summer – was deemed an “unbelievable” transfer by Marco van Basten, albeit from the perspective of the Dutch side getting rid of a “kid” he deems “not good enough” to succeed at Wolves either.
Nevertheless, Wolves believe Forbs’ speed, directness and confidence will make him a “good weapon” for O’Neil, with the club having first noted the player’s “frightening” numbers when he played for Manchester City’s Under-18s.
This transparency on transfers is accentuated by the honesty of sporting director Matt Hobbs, who goes into further detail about their signings.
“You can never have enough players that have won trophies,” he explains of Andre, who won the Copa Libertadores in 2023, before acknowledging Wolves is a stepping stone for the player.
“But it’s a player that we’re picking on the way up, he’s not coming to having won his trophies on the way down.
“He’s won trophies at a young age and he’s still on his way up and still wants to learn and grow and commit and be part of the project.
“Like I always say, all the players have to want to be part of our project, because it’s not the norm in the Premier League, and I understand there’s sometimes frustration around players moving on, but that’s what our project looks like.
“The downside to that is top players leave and we reinvest, but we also need to have a certain amount of faith put in us that we can reinvest in the right way.”
The project is no secret, therefore, and represents a recognition of where Wolves are compared to their rivals.
This is not the mentality of a club with top-four aspirations, which will naturally disappoint a fanbase that witnessed two straight seventh-place finishes in 2019 and 2020.
However, in a PSR world where the importance of avoiding relegation from the Premier League is increasing by the season, fans recognise that it is no bad position to be in either, a Brighton-esque, buy-low, sell-high model that moves players on and relies on a shrewd scouting network – with Wolves focusing heavily on South America and now boasting four Brazilians in their squad.
“Every player has to move on at some point,” Dazzling Dave, founder and main presenter of Always Wolves Fan TV, says.
“We had Ruben Neves for five years, Neto for five years, Gomes is going to be an £80m player. I don’t like to call us a selling club. I think we’re a trading club, and Brighton set the benchmark.
“With PSR, just look at Newcastle, they’ve had to sell players, and it feels like there’s a bit of a glass ceiling for teams like Newcastle and Wolves, so the question will be if the owners are still ambitious.
“I think Hobbs has done an excellent job for Wolves, he has been very open, very astute, and he’s done a really good job.”
Leister echoes this point, similarly referencing Brighton, who have shown it is possible to qualify for Europe while boasting a scouting network the envy of the league over.
“Transfer wise we have to be self-sufficient, and if that means selling players, that’s just the way it is,” Leister says.
“If Wolves are a stepping stone, you sign Andre for £20m and then sell him for 50 or 60, Brighton have proven you can do that and get European football.
“If you recruit well around Europe, if you look to Brazil, that business can be done. It’s all about the quality of recruitment coming in, and for that model to work, it has to work both ways.
“You never want your club to be a stepping stone, but unfortunately that is the model now.”
With players coming and going, stability is key, and right now it is there at Wolves in the form of O’Neil, but now 13 months into his reign he is facing arguably his biggest test.
A limp end to last season – two wins in 13 – has been followed by a winless start to the league campaign, and while the puzzle features missing pieces and duplicates elsewhere, the buck will ultimately stop with the coach, who has the backing of his old teammate.
“If I’m completely honest, I wouldn’t have said manager in the making [when we played together], but what he did as a player, he was the ultimate professional in the way that he approached training, the way he approached games,” Jarvis adds.
“He knows how to win games. He’s played at the top level and you could see he wanted to be a coach and the way he tactically wanted to improve. That dedication has turned into a great opportunity and he has taken it with both hands.
“You can see the development in him, you can see the development in his players and their style of play. And I think that just shows what he can do and the character he is.
“The players coming in are exceptional talents, otherwise they wouldn’t have signed them, and it’s about knowing the surroundings, the pressures, and everything that comes with playing in the Premier League. Gary’s got that.”
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