Why Wolves have done the right thing by not letting go of Adama Traore
According to a report in Northern Echo, Championship hopefuls Middlesbrough were keen to re-sign winger Adama Traore during the recently concluded January transfer window. It was clear that Tony Pulis was looking to add to his attacking personnel to enhance his team’s chance of getting promoted to the Premier League.
However, Wolves weren’t ready to offload the Spaniard, who arrived at the Molineux in the summer of 2018 from Teesside. Hence, Boro tried to sign either of Jacob Murphy or Kamil Grosicki, but none of the deals went through (h/t Northern Echo).
Here’s why Wolves have done the right thing by not offloading Traore to the same club from where he was bought:
Traore’s counter-attacking threat still a problem to defenders
In their first season back in top-flight football, Wolves are playing some fantastic football under Nuno Espirito Santo. They made some valuable summer signings to add experience and steel to the squad, and since then, the team has looked balanced in all departments.
One of their summer recruits was Adama Traore, who is still the fastest player in the league. Even though he lacks the final ball quality and hasn’t played much this season, his pace and direct running with the ball is enough to terrify the opposition.
As of now, Nuno is playing with a 3-5-2 formation with Diogo Jota and Raul Jimenez leading the line. The manager can bring either of them off and unleash Traore to add pace in behind the opposition defence. This ploy can be deployed when the team is either looking to just defend and play on the counter, or when they need to break down a deep-line defence.
Hence, we can clearly see the options a rapid forward player can provide to the manager. Furthermore, having a variety of attacking threat on the bench is always a good sign for a squad that is building towards considerable success in a short period of time.
Thus, the club did the right thing by not offloading Adama Traore back to Middlesbrough. From the player’s point of view as well, he would rather choose to impact games in the Premier League and learn from it rather than dropping one division down to the Championship and ply his trade for the club he previously used to play for.