Cost £37m, now worth £22.5m: Fosun dropped a clanger on Wolves’ £84k-p/w “liability” - opinion

Wolves have certainly shown over the years that they are capable of spending money on new players, spending significant amounts of money on individual players such as Fabio Silva and Raul Jimenez.

One player, in particular, that cost the Midlands club a lot of money to bring to Molineux is full-back Nelson Semedo, who signed from Spanish club Barcelona in a deal worth a total fee of £37m back in September 2020.

Since then, the 28-year-old has gone on to make a total of 60 appearances for the Old Gold across all competitions, prior to their midweek Premier League clash against Arsenal, chipping in with two goals and two assists in the process.

Despite being a regular figure in the team after Matt Doherty left the club shortly before Semedo arrived, this hasn’t stopped the Portuguese international’s market value from taking a significant dip since joining Bruno Lage’s side.

Two months before he made the move to Molineux, Transfermarkt had his value listed as £36m, whereas it now stands at £22.5m, showing a quite meteoric fall since he moved from La Liga to the Premier League.

Labelled as a “liability” in the past by Wolves journalist Tim Spiers in terms of his defensive capabilities, Semedo has been listed as Wolves’ lowest-rated player for their two previous league games against Tottenham Hotspur and Leicester City, prior to the Arsenal match, with a rating of 6.4 for each performance from SofaScore.

Taking all of this into account, with his hefty transfer fee and significant weekly wages of £84k-per-week, making him the fourth-highest earner at Wolves in mind, Fosun have dropped a clanger on spending so much money on bringing the former Barcelona defender to Molineux.

If Wolves were of the mind to sell the full-back, it