Familiar Stars Still Strutting Their Stuff At The Top

Have Wolves ever had so many former players dispersed in top-flight football – here and abroad – and making a major impact?

Tough though it has been to see the club manage such a meagre return from their opening run of matches this season, a look around the country and beyond provides a timely reminder of the riches we have enjoyed at Molineux in recent years.

Some will see that as evidence of Wolves selling their best players but credit is surely due to those in charge of recruitment and development at Compton that such stars came here in the first place.

Look down these names and either remember the good times they gave us or at least be thankful for the major fees they brought in as they left:

Diogo Jota has netted four times in 2024-25 and 60 times in all now for Liverpool.

Raul Jimenez has scored four times in nine games this season for Fulham, where Adama Traore has also become more of a regular in recent weeks.  

Morgan Gibbs-White has emerged as Nottingham Forest’s star turn, already winning player of the year honours there and being named in England squads. Among his club colleagues are Willy Boly, who has had something of a renaissance in the East Midlands, and Wayne Hennessey, who hasn’t. 

Nathan Collins has become a regular starter for Brentford and is approaching he 150 mark in appearances for his various clubs.

Matheus Nunes still gives the impression of being a bits-and-pieces player at Manchester City and is due back at Molineux next weekend after his unhappy first return last autumn.

Pedro Neto (at Chelsea) and Max Kilman (at West Ham) continue to settle in with the clubs they joined for big money in the summer but John Ruddy has yet to make it past the substitutes’ bench at Newcastle, who he joined in the summer after quitting Birmingham.

Conor Coady, who has generally had to be patient for first-team starts at Leicester, has had an injury-interrupted start to the season that has left him even more on the fringes.

Of those who went abroad after Molineux, Joao Moutinho has played three times in the Europa League this season for Braga, Leander Dendoncker is at Anderlecht on loan from Villa, Romain Saiss (Qatar) and Ruben Neves (Saudi Arabia) are in the Gulf, Daniel Podence and Vitinho are seen as star men at Olympiakos and Paris St Germain respectively, Ruben Vinagre is with Legia Warsaw, Rui Patricio is an Atalanta player and Fabio Silva has been borrowed by Las Palmas and come up with one La Liga goal so far.

One other ex-Wolves player still registered with a Premier League club is the injury-hit Kortney Hause at Villa but this theme also stretches to the other side of the white line.

Namely that Jolen Lopetegui and Nuno Espirito Santo – in charge of playing matters at Molineux for contrasting amounts of time – are now in similar roles at West Ham and Forest.

All of which underlines the point that Wolves must have been doing a lot right in the last few years.