Wolves had a nightmare in Patrick Cutrone signing | OneFootball

While Wolverhampton Wanderers’ transfer business has been largely successful in recent years, with Jeff Shi and Fosun bringing a number of impressive additions to Molineux from overseas, there have nevertheless been a couple of deals that have not worked out for the Premier League side.

Perhaps the most prominent of these failed transfers was the club’s capture of AC Milan centre-forward Patrick Cutrone, whose £16.2m move to Wolves has proven to be a rather considerable waste of money.

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Indeed, upon leaving the San Siro for Wolverhampton in the summer of 2019, it initially appeared as if Wolves had secured an extremely promising player at a very reasonable price – with Cutrone previously being dubbed by SI as a “wonderkid” and the 23-year-old boasting a Transfermarkt valuation of £25.2m at the time of his move, £9m more than the fee Wolves paid for his services.

However, in the first half of his debut season at Molineux, the Italy U21 international started just three Premier League games under Nuno Espirito Santo – making a further nine appearances from the bench – scoring two goals, registering no assists and missing two big chances for his side.

These returns saw the striker average a disappointing SofaScore match rating of 6.63, ranking him as the club’s second-worst player in the top flight back in 2019/20.

Seemingly as a result of this level of performance, Nuno then decided to send the £63k-per-week man to ACF Fiorentina on a one-and-a-half-year loan deal in the January transfer window, just six months after joining the club.

However, in a surprising turn of events, Wolves cancelled this loan deal – and subsequently Fiorentina’s obligation to purchase the 23-year-old at the end of last season – 12 months in, only to once again send the striker out on a temporary basis just 24 days later, this time to Valencia.

And, after arguably a more unsuccessful spell in LaLiga than his half-season at Wolves, scoring no goals and averaging a SofaScore match rating of 6.55 over his seven appearances for Los Murcielagos, the Spanish side decided not to purchase the centre-forward, sending him back to Wolves this summer.

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Although, with seemingly no future ahead of him at Molineux, Bruno Lage once again sanctioned a loan move for the Italian, who will be spending the penultimate year of his Wolves’ contract at Serie A side Empoli.

As such, considering the fact that Cutrone has played a grand total of just 28 games for Wolves, in addition to his Transfermarkt valuation is now sitting at a mere £6.3m – £9.9m less than the £16.2m Wolves paid to sign him – the argument that the player whose agent claimed has “gone into oblivion” at Molineux was something of a nightmare signing for the Premier League club is a rather easy one to make.