The one £52m player that Wolves need to sign in January to avoid relegation this season

It won’t have escaped the notice of many Wolverhampton Wanderers fans, but the 2025/26 season is not going according to plan. This was meant to be a team on the up under Vitor Pereira, one which entered the new season with justified optimism. Instead, it has been a disaster.

Perhaps the international break will have provided a chance for a much needed pause and reset – and a fully fit Jørgen Strand Larsen will certainly help – but this is, ultimately, a team without a win from their first seven games and which needs to turn things around at speed. Carry on like this, and they may well get relegated.

If Pereira can’t orchestrate an immediate change of fortunes in the next two months, then the January transfer window will at least offer a chance to find some answers. But what kind of player do they need the most, and are there any quick fixes for a team struggling so badly at both ends of the field?

What Wolves need in the January transfer window

At first glance, it’s hard to know where to start. Wolves have scored just five goals (the joint fewest in the Premier League) and have conceded 14, more than any team outside of the relegation zone. Problems appear to be abundant wherever you look.

Digging deeper into the stats, however, does suggest that attack is more problematic than the defence. Wolves have, arguably, been a little unlucky at the back, and those 14 goals have been conceded from just 9.4xG. Eight teams have provided more or better opportunities to their opponents.

That’s cold comfort right now, perhaps, but teams whose performances at either end greatly exceed or undershoot statistical expectations usually revert to the mean to some degree – in other words, the defence is playing like a mid-table defence and is likely to look more like it as the season goes on. That’s the mathematical likelihood, anyway. It doesn’t always pan out as the numbers say it should.

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It's going forward where those same numbers really ring alarm bells. Not only have they scored the joint-fewest goals, but they have the lowest xG of any team, a paltry 4.9. Only two sides have taken fewer shots on goal and the average quality of their chances is at rock bottom.

Strand Larsen is a quality centre-forward who has proven that he can score goals, but the service has been desperate. Jhon Arias and Fer López have shown us flashes but only have one assist (and one expected assist) between them, Hwang Hee-Chan has struggled to make any kind of creative impact and the midfield have offered the front three practically nothing to work with.

If there’s one thing that Wolves desperately need to improve, it’s their chance creation. That could come in the form of a supporting forward who could displace Hwang and take up the slack lost when Matheus Cunha left for Manchester United, or it could come in the shape of a central conductor with vision and a bit of box-to-box huff-and-puff to complement the relatively defensive set-up of the midfield as a whole. But all evidence so far suggests that if there’s one thing Wolves really need this January, it’s a playmaker.

Could Yeremay or Patrik Mercado be the answer?

Most of the players Wolves have been linked with since the summer transfer window closed don’t seem to be the kind of immediate answers required – younger players, largely, inexperienced if undeniably talented, like Flamengo’s Wallace Yan or Real Betis’ Pablo García. Good long-term investments, perhaps, but not as good as staying in the Premier League would be.

Two names currently up in the gossip columns do tick more boxes, however, not least Yeremay Hernández, a flying left winger playing in the second tier of Spanish football for Deportivo de la Coruña.

A host of teams have been linked with Yeremay, ranging from Como – head coach Cesc Fàbregas has admitted that they are watching him - all the way up to Arsenal, so there will likely be competition, and Deportivo won’t want to sell their most dangerous player in the middle of a promotion drive, but he has a €60m (£52m) release clause should Wolves be desperate enough to gamble that kind of money.

Not that it would be too bad of a gamble. Yeremay scored 15 goals and set up five more last season and has three to his name already this year. He’s direct, a superb dribbler and blessed with both excellent movement and a quick burst of pace. At 22, he’s also got plenty of potential to grow. He’s unproven at the highest level, granted, but his talent and ability to grasp games by the scruff of the neck is beyond question.

Another name on the shortlist somewhere, according to stories in South America at least, is Independiente del Valle midfielder Patrik Mercado. Like Yeremay, it’s hard to know how for certain how he’d get on in the Premier League given that he’s only played at a slightly lower level in Ecuador, but Independiente are no joke and he’s a box-to-box midfielder who has provided 11 goals and assists while his team dominated their division over the 2025 season.

Able to work front to back and provide the combination of defensive graft and forward-thinking guile that Wolves are likely to need from a midfielder to add creativity without losing integrity when the ball is coming back the other way, Mercado is also a fine ball-carrier who is lethal on the counter-attack.

Signing a player who wasn’t a sure thing in the Premier League would be a risk, but the talent and skill set is there and if Wolves are still in a relegation battle come January then the truth is that few proven top-flight players would make the move anyway – but Mercado would be a good player to take a chance on, and at 22 again offers resale value and potential for further development.

Whether Wolves sign either player remains to be seen – as it stands, these are just names on the rumour mill, with no hard evidence that an approach is imminent. They do, however, provide a template for the kind of player that Wolves might require to survive this season, and perhaps offer hope that club’s recruitment team is looking in the right places already. And Yeremay, in particular, would be an extremely exciting signing if they can pull it off.