Wolves’ Contract Decisions Loom as Promotion Charge Continues

Wolves’ promotion charge is front and centre this season, but the club’s board can’t ignore what’s quietly ticking away in the background: a small cluster of contracts running down towards next summer.

Relegation forced a reset. Now, under Cesar Peixoto, Wolves have taken 11 points from their first six Championship games and look like a side with more gears to find. The football has a fresher edge, the mood around Molineux lighter. But the scars of recent mismanagement still linger, and that’s exactly why the hierarchy can’t afford to drift through another contract cycle.

Five deals, one clear priority

At the end of the 2026/27 campaign, five senior players see their deals expire. On paper, it doesn’t scream crisis. In practice, it still needs handling with a level of care Wolves have too often lacked.

Three of those players only walked through the door this summer.

• John Ruddy, a familiar face and a popular one, returned after his Newcastle United contract ended.
• At the other end of the pitch, Bertrand Traore arrived following his Sunderland exit.
• Ghislain Konan followed a more direct route, signing from Peixoto’s old club Gil Vicente.

All three agreed contracts through to the end of this season.

They are stopgaps only if they play like stopgaps. Perform, and the conversation changes. Drift, and Wolves can move on without a second thought. The pressure is clear: each of them has one campaign to convince the club they belong in the next phase of this rebuild.

Ruddy’s case is unique. At his age, the decision may hinge as much on how long he wants to keep going as it does on Wolves’ plans. For Traore and Konan, it’s more ruthless. If they can’t break into the team and show they’re capable of operating at a higher level, the club will not lose sleep over letting their contracts run down.

Chirewa at a crossroads

Tawanda Chirewa’s situation is more delicate.

Signed from Ipswich Town in 2023 as a promising youngster, the attacking midfielder is now 22 and hovering on the fringes of Peixoto’s plans. There have been flashes, hints of what he might become, but nothing sustained enough to force his way into the Championship starting XI.

He started in the Carabao Cup defeat to Everton on Wednesday, another chance to stake a claim. Yet the numbers tell a blunt story: 40 senior appearances, no goals, no assists. For an attacking midfielder, that’s a glaring gap.

This season becomes an audition. Can he finally add end product to his tidy build-up play? Can he show he’s more than a squad filler? If not, Wolves will have a difficult but logical decision to make when his deal runs out.

The big call: Boubacar Traore

Then there’s Boubacar Traore, the most significant contract call of the lot.

Wolves paid a reported £9.5m for the Malian midfielder in 2023. Letting that kind of asset walk away for nothing would be a painful symbol of the waste that dragged the club back into the Championship.

At 25, time is still on his side, but his Wolves career hasn’t fully caught fire. Like Chirewa, his starts have come in the cups rather than the league. Breaking into Peixoto’s preferred XI looks a steep climb right now.

That’s why a 2027 departure already feels like the logical outcome. Either Wolves cash in for a reduced fee in the winter window or they accept the hit and watch him leave for free in the summer. Unless he forces a rethink with a surge in form, the path seems set.

No drama, but no room for errors

Strip it all back and Wolves are not staring at a contract meltdown.

None of the players out of contract next summer are nailed-on starters in Peixoto’s Championship side. There are no star forwards, no defensive pillars, no midfield metronomes on the brink of walking away.

Ruddy’s future can be handled with respect and realism. Bertrand Traore and Konan will only be missed if they play well enough to make themselves missable. Chirewa and Boubacar Traore still have time to change the narrative, but the burden is firmly on them.

And that suits Peixoto just fine. He can keep his eyes on the pitch, on promotion, on turning a solid start into a relentless campaign. Behind him, the board has a cleaner, calmer contract landscape to navigate.

After the chaos that dragged Wolves down, that in itself feels like progress. The real question now: can they match that off-field clarity with the kind of on-field consistency that carries them straight back to the Premier League?