Wolves have done several brilliant transfer deals over the years, but also some very questionable ones – and for many, the Fabio Silva one is right up there with the very worst.
On this day four years ago, Wolves officially completed a £35.6 million move for Fabio Silva, who had established himself as one of FC Porto’s top prospects.
It was a lot of money to pay, but Wolves genuinely felt they had landed a potential star of the future.
The plan had been for Silva to operate as an understudy to Raul Jimenez.
But the Mexican would suffer an horrendous skull fracture, which resulted in Silva playing much more in his first term than the club had intended.
Silva gave his all for Wolves that season. But it was clear to see that he was extremely raw and not really physical enough for the Premier League.
Silva has never cut it at Wanderers and he recently just sealed his fourth loan move since becoming a Wolves player. He is now spending the 2024/25 season with Las Palmas.
One man who might be feeling slightly uncomfortable today as Wolves fans note Silva’s four-year anniversary is chairman Jeff Shi, whose first comments about the player have aged badly to say the least.
What Jeff Shi first said about Fabio Silva four years ago looks laughable now
There are a number of reasons why Silva has not made a success of his time at Wolves.
First of all, the money that was paid for him was just ridiculous. Silva had only made 21 mostly substitute appearances for Porto’s first-team before his big-money move.
Wolves were just foolish for signing off on that deal over someone so unproven at senior level, even if he did have high potential.
Silva even suggested earlier this year that he wasn’t fully on board with the proposed move, but there was just too much money involved. He said that Porto would have put him in the reserves if he did not make the move.
So there has to be some sympathy for him., and criticism for the Wolves owners.
But Silva also did just fall well short of the standards expected. To date, he has scored just five goals in 72 appearances for the Wolves first-team.
It is remarkable to think just how disappointing this move turned out to be, and borderline laughable to look back on what Jeff Shi said about Silva four years ago today when the player first signed.
He said (via Wolves official): “We’ve been following Fabio’s development for a long time. He’s a player that you only need several minutes to see his natural football talent.
“The timing of this deal is similar to the timing of when we bought Ruben Neves; we’ve waited for the right time to get a high-quality player at the right price.
“Fabio has the potential to be a generational talent and for us to see him develop under Nuno is very exciting. He is the type of player our fans will love.”
Silva move couldn’t have gone much worse
- READ MORE: Wolves’ most expensive transfers of all time
Shi’s first comments about Silva have definitely aged like milk.
The youngster did have good potential, but there was always a risk of Shi and Fosun looking foolish with this transfer deal. Purely because of how much money was invested into someone not proven.
Unfortunately, there have been zero signs of Silva being a ‘generational talent’, and the price was certainly not ‘right’ and never was.
Thankfully, Wolves appear to have learned their lesson from the Silva deal, with the club having placed emphasis on paying much smaller fees for unpolished gems in recent times.
Regarding Silva himself, his failures at Wolves are not entirely on him. Hopefully he can do well at Las Palmas this season to earn himself a move to a bigger club next summer. He just hasn’t suited Wolves, but he could well be ideal for another club in a different league.