I'm speaking to you just under a week ahead of the summer transfer deadline on Tuesday 1 September. The summer overhaul we were all expecting (promised?) hasn't quite taken hold and Wolves have made a solid, if unspectacular start to the season. New manager Cesar Peixoto has won three of the four competitive games he's presided over, albeit two were played against lower league opposition in the Carabao Cup.
What's becoming clear is that Peixoto has been brought in to oversee a tweaking of the playing squad over wholesale change. My reading between the lines has led me to believe Rob Edwards' revolution was simply too difficult to follow through on and so, the club decided to dispense with his services in favour of a manager more like to take a scalpel to the playing group as opposed to an axe.
Where that leaves us is interesting. Following the departures of Ki-Jana Hoever and Dan Bentley, the playing squad is as follows:
27 in total. Three U21s with no need to be included as part of the squad registration. Eight homegrown players, seven of which will need to be included in the matchday squad each week and one of which is the impending arrival of John Ruddy (although I believe the inclusion of some of those U21s names will essentially count towards this). Those of us not expecting to see too much of Tawanda Chirewa may be surprised this season. Finally, one slot in the matchday squad is reserved for a club trained player, thus increasing the importance perhaps of keeping hold of the likes of Hugo Bueno or Mateus Mane (we can leave a space on the bench if we can't fulfil this requirement).
I have deliberately not included Sasa Kalajdzic or Hwang Hee-Chan as they look to secure a move away.
The gaps are relatively clear - work needs to be done in the forward areas. Yes, the likes of Armstrong and Fer Lopez can supplement these numbers, but beyond that there is just a concern over the regularity with which the names that are in that table can produce numbers as the season wears on.
One thing we can't say though is that we don't have enough midfielders. If anything, we now have too many. Based on Peixoto's current configuration of a single sitting midfielder and two more box-to-box players with varying responsibilities in and out of possession, this is how I see the profiles fitting as it stands:
No. 6/Defensive Midfielder/Pivot/Your Preferred Nomenclature:
Andre
Boubacar Traore
Tommy Doyle
Right No. 8/RCM/The Fer Lopez Role:
Fer Lopez
Tommy Doyle
Jean-Ricner Bellegarde
Left No. 8/LCM/Box Crasher:
Jordan James
Marshall Munetsi
Jean-Ricner Bellegarde
I think it's clear to most that Andre and Fer Lopez will start whenever fit and available. They're simply too good to be operating at this level and therefore we must leverage their ability to get us out of the league as much as possible. Stands to reason the third slot goes to the new £10m summer signing Jordan James.
So what's left over? Boubacar Traore, who appears to be suited primarily to the pivot. Marshall Munetsi who must not be positioned anywhere other than where he's currenty playing. Tommy Doyle who the manager seemingly doesn't want to see anywhere near the pivot. And Jean-Ricner Bellegarde who may not wish to be seen anywhere near Wolverhampton for all we know.
Something has to give. You're probably well versed in where I believe the give is within this selection, but for all of the aerial presence within our midfield options to fall upon Jordan James is a big responsibility to carry. I personally believe Bellegarde would sit comfortably within the Top 5 midfielders in the league, two of which are Andre and Fer Lopez.
It's the archetypal 'good problem to have', but I'm minded to think of the last time we were in the league where we sauntered to the title with a menu list of midfielders consisting of:
Ruben Neves
Romain Saiss
Alfred N'Diaye
17-year-old Morgan Gibbs-White
The famous Championship slog is a familiar line to us all. And yet our most successful season at this level was built on a foundation of durability, as opposed to variability.
We have 12,420 minutes to dish out to a group of players who would invariably walk into the starting XI of the majority of the rest of the league.
If you assume Fer Lopez play around 80% of the minutes available to them, we're left with 5,806 minutes between five good footballers. Say Jordan James and Marshall Munetsi share the 90 minutes at a 60:30 ratio every week, you're left with 1,666 minutes between Boubacar Traore, Tommy Doyle and Jean-Ricner Bellegarde. That's a collective 6 games worth of minutes per man.
Given Boubacar's injury record to date, this may be all he can handle. Tommy Doyle will have been expecting more from this season. And it may just end up being the case that Bellegarde moves on and there's little to worry about, but we'd be passing up on a top class player for the level.
Anyway: deal with that Cesar.