Wolves no longer in the wild

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This article was published 05/04/2019 (2690 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Is this as good as it gets for Wolverhampton Wanderers?

Last weekend, thanks to a 2-1 win at home to Manchester United, the West Midlands outfit closed out the Premier League’s 32nd round of fixtures in seventh place, a spot they’ve held with some regularity since their late-December victory at Tottenham Hotspur. It’s looking ever more likely that they’ll finish the campaign as the “best of the rest” — the top team outside the top six — and on Sunday they’ll face Watford in an FA Cup semifinal game at Wembley.

“You just go around Wolverhampton in the streets and you feel the excitement and the emotion of the fans,” manager Nuno Espirito Santo gushed in his pre-match press conference. “Just saying ‘Wembley’ means a lot to everybody involved in football.”

Victory would take Wolves into their first FA Cup final since 1960, when Norman Deeley scored twice in a 3-0 triumph over Blackburn Rovers. English football’s pre-eminent force in those days, they also came second in the league that season, narrowly missing out on a three-peat following titles in 1958 and ’59.

In 1954, following Hungary’s double dispatch of England in London and Budapest, Wolves beat Hungarian champions Honvéd, which featured the likes of Ferenc Puskas and Sandor Kocsis, prompting the Daily Mirror to proclaim them “champions of the world.” There’s an argument to be made that the many international friendlies hosted by Stan Cullis’s side did much to inspire the Champions League.

So the present might not be quite “as good as it gets” for Wolves, what with their illustrious past, but in the context of the modern Premier League and the concentration of wealth among a handful of its clubs, it’s certainly a present worth getting excited about.

Raul Jimenez, for one, is not exactly hiding his enthusiasm, nor tempering his expectations.

“Since I arrived here, I’ve seen the team growing,” he remarked on Thursday, as per the Daily Mail. “The chairman, too, is doing good things. Now we are seventh. For a promoted team, that’s very good.” And, he added: “Why not think about aiming for the Champions League or the top six?”

Now, it’s hardly surprising that Jimenez, Wolves’ record signing who won four major trophies with Benfica, should expect to play in one of Europe’s continental club competitions, even the Champions League. Apart from his eye for goal and playmaking ability, those experiences and that attitude will have had something to do with the 32 million pounds that was paid during the week to make his move permanent.

It was a transaction that took Wolves’ spending to nearly 120 million pounds in 2018-19 — almost all of it meaningful, the outlay resulting in a march into the top half of the table and a prospective FA Cup final. Player for player, there are few teams in the English top-flight that can field an 11 superior to that put out by Nuno.

Consider the centre of the park. A midfield trio of Moutinho, Leo Dendoncker (on loan from Anderlecht) and Ruben Neves (acquired last term from Porto) could walk into many Premier League sides, and one or two of them could get regular minutes in the top six. They bring equal parts pace, passing ability, experience, patience and ball-winning capability. It’s an all-action unit.

Then there’s attacking magician Diogo Jota, who has scored twice against Manchester United this season and also potted the winner against Chelsea late last year. He’ll play just off Jimenez against Watford.

Just 22, Jota has already found his name in the transfer scuttlebutt, with Juventus and Tottenham rumoured to interested in his services.

It’s a problem Wolves will no doubt run into with some regularity over the coming months, even if they qualify for the Europa League.

Neves, also 22, has already played 10 times for Portugal and one of the brighter, young playmaking midfielders in Europe. If a Juventus or Manchester City ponied up 60 million pounds to sign him, it’s doubtful Wolves would be able to turn down the offer — and that’s if the player didn’t ask out in the first place.

This is the conundrum of league football that rewards and keeps rewarding those teams already benefiting from the seemingly bottomless coffers of the Champions League: it’s nearly impossible to break into the Champions League places.

Now, by spending another 120 million pounds this summer and again the next, Wolves might, just might, give themselves a shot. But that’s assuming they’ll be able to hold onto the players they currently have in the meantime.

Wolves are like the Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Rays or Toronto Blue Jays, building and waiting, and waiting some more, until they have a window, however small, to make a run at the American League East.

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Unfortunately, it’s far more probable that the players so excelling at the moment will be somewhere else next season, or the one after that. Nuno, for one, seems to understand the importance of the present.

“Make the game special,” he said. “Don’t think about what could happen after. Play the game.”

An FA Cup parade would no doubt crown what has already been a memorable season at Molineux. It could hardly get any better than that.

jerradpeters@gmail.comTwitter: @JerradPeters