Doherty Inches On….But Who Will Be Next?

Conor Coady, Joao Moutinho, Ruben Neves, Romain Saiss, Richard Stearman, Dave Edwards and Danny Batth – all now departed from Molineux – are already in the list from relatively recent times.

But who will be the next addition to the Legends area that we enjoy monitoring and updating on this website?

Who will be the next man to go to the 200-game mark with Wolverhampton Wanderers?

The next in line, as things stand, is defender Nelson Semedo, who has played 155 games for the club since being signed from Barcelona in the autumn of 2020.

Behind him in the present squad come Rayan Ait-Nouri (128 matches), Jose Sa (123) and Hwang Hee-Chan (102) as the only other men at Gary O’Neil’s disposal who have played a century or more times for Wolves.

Several others from the recent past, though, would probably have reached the double hundred had they stayed in these parts for longer.

Max Kilman was just past the 150-game mark with Wolves when he moved on to West Ham in the summer while Pedro Neto was not too far behind on 135 Wanderers appearances when he left for Chelsea.

But the two men who moved from Molineux to Fulham the previous year, Raul Jimenez and Adama Traore, were even firmer parts of the fabric here.

Jimenez played 166 games for Wolves while Traore was within a handful of outings of qualifying for our Legends area when he departed after 194 appearances in these parts.

So what of the one man whose total and appearance-making we are having to keep an extra close eye on these days?

Until going on as a last minute substitute in the victory against Southampton on Saturday, Matt Doherty had not kicked a ball in the first team since starting in the Carabao Cup defeat at Brighton in mid-September.

But his brief appearance four days ago moved him level in 23rd place with Billy Harrison, a forward who played in gold and black before and after the First World War.