Football News: My take On Wolverhampton Wanderers' Summer

With just over a week to go to the start of the season and after all bar one of the club's pre season friendlies, what are the main takeaways for Wolverhampton Wanderers from the 'Summer'.

Firstly, Lopez looks far better than I had feared and would seem to have a far better attitude to the physical aspects of the game than the 3 other young Iberians we have paid so handsomely for in the past; Fabio, Trincao and Guedes.

Secondly, both Arias and Wolfe, (superb name), look to be fairly sound purchases based on the price paid and their potential.

And thirdly, I have to acknowledge what an absolute blinder Jeff has played. Despite clearly markedly weakening the first 11 and, far from addressing the massive lack of depth in the squad, making it far worse. I estimated the "need" -as a consequence of the squad's slow but steady dismantling over the past few years - as, post Lopez's signing, 9 players. With just over a week to go to the start of the season Wolves have added a net 1!

The majority of posters on here - admittedly not so much on other Wolves sites - seem to be quite relaxed. Jeff has reduced expectations and hope so much - a poster on one site said that if we bought two lads from Millwall and a warm body to cover CM he would think we had had a good window - and has also seemingly persuaded an army of Mr Micawber posters to post at such a regular rate, that even some of the more rationale posters are simply worn down by it all.

Clearly Wolves were never going to replace Cunha and RAN like for like, but given the wide range of abilities in the squad the idea was surely to reshape the side/squad from one that had a few 8s and 9s out of 10 players but also a few 4s and 5s in the side and on the bench some 2s and 3s to one where it had mostly 7s and a few 8s in the side and 5s, 6s and perhaps 7s on the bench.

But whilst Arias (replacing Cunha) and hopefully Wolfe (RAN) and Lopez (Sarabia) are 6s and 7s or in Arias's case even an 8, the club simply hasn't addressed the massive shortcomings in the side/squad. The, to date, non replacement of Semedo, (other than with Hoever who for the last 5 years has looked totally disinterested - does a contract year mean he will now turn up? ) and other less significant players such as Doyle and Traore only adds to it.

Note, this is a side that, even excluding the GON influence, was at its best a mid table team. Wolves have had a number of modest widows of late that have caused the side to plummet down the table, but in terms of the net reduction in talent across the squad, this one is by far the worse. It is almost certainly the worst by some distance of any team competing in the Premier League next season.

Yes, a number of other clubs have not made as much progress as they would like - Everton, Aston Villa, Newcastle United Fulham, Crystal Palace, West Ham United, but very few, Bournemouth, Brentford and Wolves (anyone else? have actually gone backwards and none, to anything like the extent Wolves have.

I accept that the 3 teams coming up will almost certainly be pretty poor. I also acknowledge that Wolves may purchase several more quality players over the next few days / weeks, until the window ends - why not do it earlier so that the manager has some hope of starting the season on the front foot.

However, despite applauding Jeff for his superb PR work, my main takeaway is that I am becoming increasingly afraid his grossly incompetent management of the club may have extremely serious repercussions for the very future of the club this season.

Written by Thefutureisoldgold1 August 04 2025 21:16:24