What do Wolverhampton Wanderers have to do to have any hope of persuading Cunha to turn down the plethora of offers he will surely receive this summer? Let’s put it into context. Next season, assuming no one leaves and no one arrives, we would line up something like this:
Sa – Johnstone
Semedo – Lima
Yerson – Doherty
Agbadou – Bueno S.
Toti – Nasser
RAN – Bueno H./Gomes R.
Gomes – Traore/ Bellegarde
Andre – Doyle/Marshall
Marshall – Guedes/Gomes R.
Cunha – Sarabia
Larsen – Hwang/Sasa
For me that is a side, especially at the back and in midfield, that is capable of being a lower, mid table side. Take Cunha out of the side, however and whilst it remains sound defensively the offence looks hopelessly weak and we are a side fighting and probably failing to achieve 17th.
I believe that there are 2 things that will drive his decision:
1) Wages – if he moves, he will double his salary at the very least. Wolves could offer to match this. In reality that would cost between £5 and say £10m a year. Peanuts compared to the money lost by dropping even to 17th from mid table and obviously totally insignificant compared to the money lost if we are relegated.
2) His belief that we can in the very near future provide European Football – Amazingly I genuinely believe, perhaps ludicrously optimistically, that to move from lower, mid table Premier League to European football it only needs 2 new players. 2 new forwards who can replace Marshall and Larsen and play alongside Cunha and carry the load.
However, firstly he has to believe we can find those high quality players. Despite my seemingly constant criticism of the club, we have in fact done pretty well since the post Seville debacle signing a number of high quality players including obviously Cunha.
Even this summer we signed 2 top quality prospects in Lima and Gomes R. in addition to a diamond in Andre and an adequate player in Larsen. So maybe he could believe that we have the ability to find those players.
Secondly, he has to believe we won’t lose anyone else. Only Semedo, (I have said before it is a no brainer to resign him) and Sarabia, (a back up who wouldn’t be missed if we sign 2 new forwards ), are out of contract this summer. Larsen will be signed. So we don’t have to lose anyone we don’t want to leave.
But finally he has to believe that we have both the will and the money to do all this? His wages increase, which may have negative impacts in the dressing room as he would be on double to treble the next highest paid player and 4 to 5 times the average salary, but is a modest £5 to £10m pounds per anum.
The squad improvement however would be perhaps £100m or more and the Jeff tax – the amount we have to raise each year to cover our losses – is also circa £100m. So, we have to find not far short of £0.25 billion down the back of the sofa this summer! Sadly I am struggling to see where that comes from.
Ironically if we didn’t have to pay the Jeff tax each year and were just as well run as say the previously discussed and surely much smaller club Brentford who made, pre player sales, nearly £200m, yes say that again £200m more than Wolves over the last 2 years alone not only wouldn’t we need to raise £100m a year from player sales but could have kept Neto, Neves, Kilman and Jota.
Consequently, we wouldn’t need to buy 2 new players as Neto and Jota would more than fit the bill. Indeed, if you add those 4 to the current squad we would be and probably would have been over the period since Seville – a European regular and may even have had a trophy or two to add to the history of the club.
So if Cunha believes we are going to become as well run as Brentford, then in the medium term we could achieve all the things he wants. Maybe if Jeff is replaced immediately i.e. this week – and a competent CEO is put in place who can turn our financial fortunes around, then maybe there is a tiny chance he might give us another year to see what can be done?
Written by Thefutureisoldgold1 February 24 2025 17:14:30
