Wolves suffered their third straight Premier League defeat in a row after losing to West Ham on Monday night.
In a fixture dubbed ‘El Sackico’, Wolves failed to secure a victory on the road as they attempted to save Gary O’Neil’s job.
The Old Gold remain 19th in the Premier League table with only two wins on the board as supporters expected O’Neil to be sacked at full-time.
Despite their dire situation, Fosun remain supportive of O’Neil and this appears to be a recipe for disaster in their battle against relegation.
The Wolves manager can have no excuse for being dismissed from his role at Molineux once it happens, although factors out of his control haven’t helped him.
Gary O’Neil hits out at Wolves transfer strategy under Fosun
Wolves have suffered a sad decline down the Premier League table. From qualifying for Europe twice under Nuno Espirito Santo to looking destined for the bottom three at Christmas, the Wanderers now find themselves in a desperate situation.
| Position | Team | Played MP | Won W | Drawn D | Lost L | For GF | Against GA | Diff GD | Points Pts |
| 17 |  Crystal PalaceCrystal Palace | 15 | 2 | 7 | 6 | 14 | 20 | -6 | 13 |
| 18 |  IpswichIpswich | 15 | 1 | 6 | 8 | 14 | 27 | -13 | 9 |
| 19 |  WolvesWolves | 15 | 2 | 3 | 10 | 23 | 38 | -15 | 9 |
| 20 |  SouthamptonSouthampton | 15 | 1 | 2 | 12 | 11 | 31 | -20 | 5 |
Some of the blame has to be put on O’Neil, who has failed to address his squad’s glaring issues on the pitch, while most of it has to be attributed to Fosun.
In recent years, the club have imposed a self-sustainable model, whereby the Wanderers sell their best players and spend a fraction of the money received on replacements.
As a result, Wolves have the second-highest net spend in the Premier League across the last five seasons, behind only Everton, and O’Neil directed a dig at this strategy in his post-match interview.
The Englishman listed off all of the great players Wolves have sold since 2020 and admitted how the club no longer targets stars who are proven in the top flight.
“When I arrived at this football club, they’d just collected 39 points in the Premier League. Since that moment, we’ve managed to make £200 million in player sales; we’ve sold an awful lot of Premier League players, an awful lot,” O’Neil told Sky Sports.
“If you go back to [Ruben] Neves, [Joao] Moutinho, [Daniel] Podence, [Adama] Traore, [Raul] Jimenez, [Diego] Costa, Nathan Collins, Pedro Neto, Max Kilman.
“We’re now not shopping in that market, we’re trying to find ones that can help the club in the future and maybe give us a little bit now. But as I’ve found in the Premier League, it’s a ruthless league, and we’re doing everything we can to get up to speed but we are being tested.”
Wolves summer transfer window explains sad decline
In the summer, Wolves cashed in on captain Max Kilman and star winger Pedro Neto, as they received almost £100 million for those two players alone.
What followed was a disaster class from the Wolves board, who never signed a centre-back to replace Kilman, or a winger to fill Neto’s void.
Instead, the club captured several youngsters who aren’t ready to play regular first-team football, most notably Bastien Meupiyou and Pedro Lima.
In fact, the only two success stories from the previous transfer window were the captures of Andre and Jorgen Strand Larsen; the rest have either rarely played or failed to impress.
It comes back to O’Neil’s telling point that Wolves are no longer challenging clubs for Premier League-proven stars and are instead hedging their bets on youngsters with big potential.
If they continue to operate in such a way, relegation could be on the cards, whether that is this season or in the near future.