Wolves' Promotion Chances: A Surprising Squad Analysis

Mike Taylor believes Wolves may yet have a promotion-winning squad on their hands – just not the one anyone thought they’d see when the window opened.

The BBC Radio WM commentator sat down with former Wolves striker David Kelly to pick apart a summer of heavy recruitment, a bloated dressing room and a nagging question: does this group actually know the Championship well enough to drag the club back to the Premier League at the first attempt?

Wolves have numbers. That much is clear. The debate now is about know-how – the kind of scar tissue and savvy that tends to separate contenders from nearly-men over a 46-game slog.

“This might be a promotion squad – the only thing that we can say for the moment is it is not what we were anticipating,” Taylor said, summing up the uneasy mix of curiosity and doubt around Molineux.

He didn’t dress it up. The window has produced something different, not necessarily worse, just unfamiliar.

“That doesn't mean it will necessarily be bad. We'll know that in a few weeks, but it is not what we were expecting. It just isn't,” he added, capturing the mood of a fanbase trying to work out exactly what this team is going to be.

The answers will come soon enough, under Championship floodlights, when the size of the squad and the lack – or presence – of hardened second-tier experience are tested for real.