Wolves fans were again subject to a poor performance from Francisco Trincao yesterday.
The winger was named as a started by Bruno Lage, with Daniel Podence dropping to the bench.
Podence has been in fine fettle for Wolves, but had started the last nine games for the club and obviously, Sunday’s game took place just a few days on from the defeat to Arsenal.
Lage made five changes in total. Trincao came in for his first start since the first 1-0 defeat to Arsenal at the beginning of the month.
It was a big opportunity for him in a game of huge significance for Wolves.
Victory against West Ham United yesterday would have taken Wolves up to sixth.
But Wanderers put in a poor performance, with Trincao arguably one of the worst out there for the visitors.
According to Sofascore data, he had just 41 touches yesterday, which was actually fewer than goalkeeper Jose Sa.
He had one shot that was off target and generally struggled to have any kind of influence.
There were a couple of times where he shirked challenges with a West Ham player. He also did not support Fabio Silva very well in the final third. The same can be said of Hwang Hee-chan, who was also poor.
But Hwang has at least chipped in with a few goals this season, whereas fans are still waiting for Trincao to discover any kind of end product.
He’s scored just one goal so far. That came all the way back in August in the 4-0 Carabao Cup win over Nottingham Forest.
At the end of the season, Wolves will make a call on whether to buy Trincao permanently from Barcelona for £25 million (Sky Sports).
As things currently stand, the club would be fools to trigger that clause.
Francisco Trincao now needs a huge turnaround to prompt Wolves to trigger £25 million buy option
Trincao is hugely frustrating to watch.
He does some lovely things on the pitch from time to time. But for whatever reason is just isn’t happening for him. It has become very hard to defend him when is just offering so little.
There was huge excitement when news dropped that he had signed for the club on July 4. It came relatively out of the blue, and many fans could not wait to see what he’d bring to the table.
He’s had plenty of opportunities from Lage so far in 2021/22.
But it has undoubtedly been an underwhelming spell.
One gets the feeling he’ll need a seriously impressive finish to the campaign if he is to get Wolves to spend £25 million on him in the summer.