If you’d been following Wolves news in the last week or so, you will have seen a trend emerging.
Wherever you look, it’s following Nuno Santo’s team.
What’s the word?
The theme we’re talking about is the need for a new striker at Wolves. Ever since Raul Jimenez fractured his skull against Arsenal, it has been a topic of hot debate at Molineux.
Patrick Cutrone has now been recalled from his loan spell at Fiorentina but that hasn’t stopped a number of rumours from circulating.
Whether it be Divock Origi or Diego Costa, a plethora of options are on the table for Wolves.
However, one of them could well be Bournemouth forward Josh King. That’s according to the club’s transfer guru Tim Spiers who spoke about a possible deal on the Molineux View podcast this week. He said:
“Another one who has been doing the rounds for quite a few clubs is Josh King at Bournemouth who has had great success in the Premier League before, scored a fair amount of goals and he’s not playing for Bournemouth at the moment because he’s out of contract in the summer as well.
“So it would only be a sale, and from what I’m told, they’d probably be looking for around £10 million for a player who is out of contract in the summer, as is their right, they’re not going to sell him on the cheap, so I think that would be a bit of a sticking point for Wolves at this moment in time.”
Sign him
Wolves simply cannot afford to let a mere £10m transfer fee be a sticking point in this window.
They may want to acquire someone on loan as cover for Jimenez but King - who is capped 51 times - is a proven Premier League striker and would be a fantastic squad rotation option.
He might not be as pedigreed as a certain Diego Costa, but if you consider their respective salaries and the baggage that would come with the former Chelsea man, King would surely be a safer option.
Costa was on a weekly wage of £265k-a-week at Atletico Madrid compared to the £45k wage that King currently earns at Bournemouth.
Yes, the Spain international is more proven at the elite level, but they’d be walking into a financial disaster by signing him.
King might well come with a transfer fee attached but his salary would be less of a sticking point. Furthermore, he's pretty similar to Costa, Eddie Howe once said that the Cherries striker is "outstanding physically."
Having scored 48 times in 161 top-flight outings, he isn’t a bad option at all.