02 Sep 2026 21:13:18
Transfer window
How does it rate playing wise and financially?
Bought
Trippier - free - should be v good but 35 one year punt on his fitness and attitude
Raul - see above
James - loan with option - looks like a genuinely good player with real potential!
Viginia - £1.3m - inexperienced but HG and presumably cheap in terms of wages bench cover.
Ruddy - free as above but v experienced. Don't expect either to have been bought with the intention of playing.
Said - £7m V strange signing for what in Wolves terms is a large fee. No pedigree, not HG nor particularly young. Presumably the manager's pick?
Neave loan no option. - v odd signing. Unless he is far better than his progress to date indicates unlikely to play despite screaming need for a cf back up to Raul
Konan - free. I know nothing about him and his career to date offers little to indicate that he is likely to be a first choice at this level.
Sold
Gomes J - £35m Wolves best player last year. In a summer of insanely high fees Wolves manage to sell for an insanely low fee!
Hoever - £1m A good sale bringing to an end a disastrous Wolves career.
Moller Wolfe - loan with option. This is merely a financial move to try and minimise costs. Wolfe will be still be a drain on Wolves finances this year!
Sasa - free - As above a poor deal that provides minimal financial relief.
Doherty - free. As above
Bentley - free As above
Tolu - loan with option See Moller Wolfe
Hwang - loan with option. As above
Johnstone - loan with option As above
From a football perspective the transfer window minimally at most improves the first 11 and markedly weakens the squad. However the emergence of Djiga, the re emergence of Munetsi and the revelation of Lopez means the side is clearly stronger than last year and the squad is probably no weaker as the players who left were largely modest squad players.
Financially
In reality the window was sadly always going to be driven by finances - boring I know but that is reality.
The comments by the club about its intentions were always nonsense or as many are saying just brazen lies to get people to buy season tickets.
Wolves are now bound by SCR and everyone - in the game - knows that this is a serious constraint for Wolves. Wolves are also truly abysmal at transfers - regularly over paying both on fees and wages and incredibly underselling in many cases!
The window was therefore all about trying to shore up the mess that Wolves finances are in!
Sadly the window, due to the 2 problems - the market knows Wolves are in trouble and secondly Wolves are quite capable of being hopeless all by themselves without other clubs pressurising them! - was from a financial perspective pretty unsuccessful.
Sales raised far less than would have been hoped for/expected and in the end Wolves were effectively forced to give away players on frees/loans to get whatever relief from wages/amort they could.
Overall the transfer window was very poor but not as bad as some of the previous ones.
The club did not do anything particularly stupid like massively overpaying for poor players or apart from J Gomes selling players at pennies in the pound.
But it totally failed in its two aims - shoring up the finances and restructuring and improving the squad.
A badly missed opportunity, especially poor as the club had months and months to prepare as it knew it was going to be playing Champ football this season from virtually the first few weeks of the last season.
03 Sep 2026 04:13:20
Some interesting points, Future, and I'm in general agreement, apart from your view on Gomes. In my opinion, both 'our' Brazilians have been overhyped, possibly because of the Brazilian tag, whereas they are both similar players and have limited abilities. They can both break up play and get a tackle in, but their passing prowess is suspect and non-progressive; neither offers a goal threat, and whilst Gomes is a slightly more progressive runner, he does go up blind alleys and get caught in possession.
His debut for Villa against Brighton was much worse than Andre's performance against West Ham, which verged on dire, and it'll be interesting to see how his career develops and whether that £35m really was too low.
03 Sep 2026 13:01:38
Gomes apart, there are not many of the players who have left that you could make a full argument for wanting to keep based on ability and attitude.