Chelsea are probably the richest and most notable team in world football that’s more of a player trading operation than a football club, and Wolverhampton Wanderers are the budget version of that. Under chairman Jeff Shi, Wolves have repeatedly acquired gobs of little known players — primarily from Brazil or Portugal, but also frequently from the English Championship and Ligue 2 — and sold them on at a profit.

Given that they’ve gotten to watch a lot of extremely talented players and see their team comfortably stay in the Premier League, Wolves fans probably don’t mind this setup one bit. But heading into this season, their place in the top flight looks more endangered than it has at any point since their 2018 promotion. Wolves weren’t very good last season, sold their two best players, and have purchased unconvincing replacements.

But this isn’t the first Wolves season in which traditional and egghead pundits alike have criticized their summer, only for the squad to outperform expectations and stay in the Premier League comfortably. While they quietly play below-average-but-kinda-decent football, someone always crashes and burns worse.

Bad, but probably not quite as bad as the numbers? Much has been made of Matheus Cunha being the Premier League’s biggest xG overperformer, but the bigger swing of luck came on the other end, in a bad way.

Wolves conceded an astonishing 61 non-penalty goals from only 46.39 xG allowed. Goalkeeper José Sá did have a poor season, but he only directly accounted for about 6 fewer goals stopped than you’d expect from the average keeper. This isn’t that bad of a defense for a relegation battling team, the bounces just did not go their way.

I feel for former manager Gary O'Neil, who can make the case that he deserved some more time in his job. Wolves started the season horribly, but he had already started to turn things around by the time he was sacked. Still, the team was inarguably better under Vítor Pereira’s leadership, and ownership will be happy to head into this season with him in charge given what he was able to accomplish in the 2nd half of the season.

Under Pereira, Wolves were pretty much an exactly league average teams on both sides of the ball, which is a massive compliment to the manager of a team that finished in 16th place with a -15 goal differential.

They were also stylistically pretty middle of the road in attack, with the length of passing in their build-up play, crossing frequency, and how often they took longer shots vs. trying to work a high xG chance.

Wolves prioritized shape over pressing as you might expect for a team in their table position, and did so very successfully. They were well above average when it came to clear shots and counter-attacking shots conceded. Unfortunately, they did have some bad defensive errors and allowed some pretty high xG individual shots, despite being an overall solid defensive team.

Pereira prefers a 3-4-3 shape with the “wingers” pinching inside a lot to become more like dual attacking midfielders, opening up space for the wingbacks to overlap in wide areas. Matheus Cunha’s performances in a system so similar to Ruben Amorim’s is probably what convinced Manchester United to pay £62m for him.

There’s no evidence that Pereira will alter this system whatsoever going forward. Wolves have continued to play with it in preseason, and the new players they’ve bought this summer fit into it sensibly.

Both starting wingbacks are out, as well as the team’s top scorer. The incoming players, in typical Wolves fashion, are not big names or proven producers in top leagues.

Players out: FW Matheus Cunha, LB Rayan Ait-Nouri, RB Nélson Semedo, CB Craig Dawson, W Chiquinho, W Carlos Forbs, W Goncalo Guedes, W Pablo Sarabia, CB Nasser Djiga, CM Tommy Doyle, CM Boubacar Traore

Cunha and Ait-Nouri are the obvious impact departures to people who don’t follow Wolves closely, but Semedo is almost as important. He played over 3000 minutes last season and had been a starter for the team for 5 years.

The other backup players have been released on frees or sold for small fees. Nasser Djiga, Tommy Doyle and Boubacar Traore have all been loaned out.

Players in: W Fer Lopez, W Jhon Arias, LB David Moller Wolfe

Lopez played limited minutes for Celta Vigo last year, but he was excellent in them, and I think Wolves might have found another great diamond in the rough.

Wolfe not even putting up great numbers in Eredivisie has me extremely skeptical of his signing.

And Arias was fine, but not exceptional in Brazil before making his name in the Club World Cup. Given that he’s already 27, I was surprised to see him brought over from South America.

Summary:

The players that Wolves lost outside of the 3 big names might not seem like major impact players, but collectively, they put up the minutes and production of 2 excellent players or 3 really nice squad players. Wolves enter the season extremely short on competent bodies. While they have some young players who can be counted on for increased minutes this year, I do expect them to be active in the market up until the deadline.

Larsen was brought in on loan last season with an obligation to buy if certain conditions were met, and Wolves met those conditions. He arrives permanently for £23m, and I think it’s solid value given what he contributed to the team last season.

This might not look like a terribly impressive radar, but on an attack as limited as Wolves’ — and that was centered around another player who took a lot of shots from distance — this is pretty nice production. He also did a lot of pressing work and had high xG per shot.

Larsen got into good shooting positions and didn’t kill attacks by taking crummy ones. I like that he was a threat in so many different ways — he was equally good at running the channels to get onto through balls, winning headers, and cleaning up the garbage bouncing around the 6-yard box. I’m not sure if he can duplicate his xG overperformance, but he’s good enough at heading that it’s possible.

With Cunha gone and a youngster replacing him, Wolves’ attack will be based more around getting the ball to Larsen in good shooting positions. He’ll need to match last season’s production, if not increase it, to keep them up in the Premier League.

I am not hating on Andre or Gomes, who were both above average players relative to expectations last season. They’re playing in a system that asks them to hold their position and play it safe while the wingbacks and attacking midfielders get to do the fun stuff, which is going to suppress their numbers. I get all that.

But these guys offered basically zero passing value last season. Zilch.

Gomes seems the much more likely of the pair to develop a more expansive passing game; Andre seems like a bit more of a pure DM. And if Wolves can get just a little bit more progressive passing out of these guys, they’re going to be in good shape. But if these numbers stay the same, I think the Wolves attack will struggle without Cunha to bail them out with 25-yard bangers from nothing.

Most of the Wolves lineup picks itself after last season. My most contentious pick might be Bueno at RCB, since I think the club will have to slowly phase out Matt Doherty as he gets older. Ki-Jana Hoever spent last season on loan at Auxerre, and has been the starting right wingback so far in preseason.

I deadass could not find Jhon Arias in Lineup Builder despite him having played in a top league and for a top national team for several seasons. Please enjoy my garbage MS Paint skills.

Collectively, our writers have voted for Wolves to be the last team to avoid the drop. This was my vote as well, but I think it’s going to go down to the final day between them and Leeds, with perhaps West Ham or Brentford in the mix as well. But if Wolves do stay up, they’ll be able to consider this season a success.

Prediction: 17th