Jesus Vallejo, Patrick Cutrone and Pedro Neto all made their first starts for Wolverhampton Wanderers as Nuno Espirito Santo’s side battered Pyunik.
If you were watching Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Europa League qualifier against Pyunik at a glance, you would have been forgiven for thinking Nuno Espirito Santo had put out a full strength team against their Armenian opposition with Raul Jimenez leading the line, Diogo Jota running riot and Ryan Bennett spraying passes out from the back with trademark accuracy.
A closer look, however, tells a very different story.
Because it wasn’t Jimenez, Jota, Bennett and Willy Boly who inspired Wolves to a 4-0 win at Molineux. Instead, Patrick Cutrone, Pedro Neto, Jesus Vallejo and Max Kilman started in ‘old gold’ for the first time and they immediately looked right at home en route to sealing an 8-0 aggregate triumph.
The cynics and the critics (we’re looking at you Andrea Radrizzani) might accuse the Black Country outfit simply buying their way into the Premier League since being taken over by Chinese billionaires Fosun International in 2016.
And while there is an element of truth to this assertion with club-record fees invested in Ruben Neves, Adama Traore and Raul Jimenez, to say that Wolves are merely throwing the cash around like a kid in a candy store does a disservice to the inspired, intelligent recruitment which has taken them from 15th in the Championship to seventh in the Premier League in just two years.
Wolves don’t just sign on a whim; they buy promising, hungry young footballers with a long-term plan in place and a designated role in Nuno’s squad. This was clearer than ever on Thursday night.
Vallejo and Kilman, a former Real Madrid defender and an England international Futsal player respectively, already look perfectly suited to playing on either side of Nuno’s famed back three, distributing the ball brilliantly from the back. It was Vallejo’s perfectly weighted pass which teed up the first of four goals on the night.
Neto, meanwhile, looked every inch a young Diogo Jota on his Wolves debut, albeit with a few rough edges. A 19-year-old who joined from Lazio this summer for around £16 million, Neto was an irrepressible bundle of energy, capping a tireless display with a goal and an assist.
And Cutrone looks immediately like the perfect back-up for Jimenez, leading the line with intelligent movement and the selfless link-play. The former AC Milan youngster is yet to open his account but it was he who set up Neto’s opener.
The future looks brighter than ever at Molineux. Nuno is now in a position most managers could only dream of; he can rest his key players and bring in replacements with an almost identical skill-set.
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
