Previously linked with Crystal Palace, do Wolves face challenge holding onto Kortney Hause?

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The 21-year-old has improved beyond recognition under Paul Lambert but Wolves may lose him in the summer.

While Wolves may not be conceding goals at such an alarming rate since Paul Lambert replaced Walter Zenga at the helm in October, individual defensive mistakes have cost the Midlands club dear on far too many occasions this season.

It didn’t help that two of the regular starters in Wolves’ back four, Kortney Hause and Dominic Iorfa, were just 21 years of age and enduring the kind of inconsistency you’d perhaps expect from an inexperienced centre-half.

Hause, in particular, struggled to demonstrate the potential that had once marked him out as one of the country’s top defensive talents. Until, that is, a virtuoso performance in Wolves’ famous 2-1 FA Cup victory at Anfield offered a timely reminder of his prodigious ability.

“When I first came in I thought there were mistakes in his game,” manager Paul Lambert, who went as far as to drop Hause from the line-up earlier in the season, told the Express and Star recently.

“Especially being at centre-half you tend not to get away with them, because you’re the last line of defence.

“I took him out and brought him back in. He’s stepped up in games.”

In fact, you could make a case for Hause being the most improved player in Wolves’ squad during Lambert’s tenure. The flipside, however, is the fact that such performances will inevitably give rise to questions over his future.

The Express and Star reported in the summer that Hause had caught Crystal Palace’s eye and, with Sam Allardyce admitting recently that the club are unlikely to keep hold of stand-out loanee Mamadou Sakho, The Eagles will surely be in the market for a long-term replacement for the ageing Scott Dann and Damien Delaney.

And Hause’s improved performances in the Championship, not to mention that televised FA Cup tie at Anfield, may have caught the eye with a number of top flight clubs desperately in need of defensive reinforcements.

Wolves fans have pretty much already accepted that star winger Helder Costa, linked with a £20 million move to Arsenal and Chelsea according to The Sun, will not be at Molineux next season but they will be praying that Hause doesn’t follow him out the exit.