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This article is part of Football FanCast's Transfer Focus series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent transfer news...

According to Goal, Wolves are keeping tabs on Wigan Athletic’s young forward Joe Gelhardt, but they face stiff competition from a whole host of Premier League clubs, including Liverpool.

What’s the word?

The striker is viewed as one of the Championship’s most promising talents and this week he will feature at international level after he was called up to England’s U18 squad.

Gelhardt has been at Wigan for seven years but has made just two senior Championship appearances for the club, most recently last weekend coming on for the final 27 minutes as they drew 0-0 with Barnsley.

The 17-year-old drew high praise from his Latics boss Paul Cook, who said he was ‘so comfortable at this level’ during a pre-season fixture against Premier League outfit Burnley.

Youth project

Wolves’ commitment to improving their youth ranks has been clear to see over the past two years or so.

Evidence of that was seen as recently as this summer when signed Bruno Jordao, Flavio Cristovao, and Renat Dadashov.

The club have also got Rob Edwards, the Under-23 manager, playing the same brand of football that Nuno Santo tries to deploy so that any step up a player makes will be all the more comfortable.

The potential move for Gelhardt only continues the Fosun trend of strengthening from the bottom up over at Molineux.

Their dedication to this philosophy has only been emphasised by head of recruitment John Marshall being specifically told to find the best young players across Europe.

Jeff Shi has also made comments in the past about how Wolves want to strengthen the academy. Signing Gelhardt, therefore, would help this significantly.

Morgan Gibbs-White and Ruben Vinagre continue to make waves in the first-team this season - both starting a Premier League game each, which only takes further measures in proving that a move for a highly-rated teenager like the one Wigan have in their hands would be the correct thing to do.

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