Wolves landed their first new signing of the summer last week, with Fer Lopez joining from Celta Vigo.
Vitor Pereira has his first addition with the club paying £19.5 million to the Spanish club, which makes Lopez Wolves’ ninth most expensive incoming ever.
Fer Lopez is the first of hopefully two number 10s to come in this summer at Molineux.
The feeling is that he will play mainly from the right side, so he is not really a replacement for Matheus Cunha.
The club have also been keen to play down those suggestions, and Steve Bull has also rejected the notion Lopez could be Cunha’s replacement and urged patience over him.
With that said, it is probably unlikely that Lopez will take the Brazilian’s old number 10 shirt – but here are some others that he could pick.
The shirt numbers available to Fer Lopez
It would be very surprising to see Lopez pick the number #10 shirt.
Ultimately, even though Wolves have paid a lot of money for him and he will arrive as a first-team player, he is still inexperienced and hasn’t been playing senior football for very long.
The club are probably keen to avoid putting any kind of additional pressure on him.
The #3 shirt is vacant after Rayan Ait-Nouri left, but that is not really a number attacking players go for.
After #3 and #10, the numbers available to Lopez going up to #30 are:
- #13
- #15
- #16
- #17 (could be reclaimed by Hugo Bueno if he stays)
- #21
- #23
- #26
- #28
At Celta, Lopez wore the number 28 shirt, so perhaps that it is the one he’ll choose to wear for Wolves.
The number 21 shirt might be one Lopez opts for, given that is the number that Pablo Sarabia was wearing.
Lopez will be tasked with providing creativity for Wolves, and Lopez’s fellow countryman Sarabia was certainly a dab hand at that.
More numbers could become available to Lopez
Of course at the moment, speculation is rife about the futures of several players at Wolves.
The likes of Boubacar Traore, Hwang Hee-chan, Sasa Kalajdzic, Tommy Doyle, Nelson Semedo and Goncalo Guedes have all been linked with exits from Wolves this summer.
So potentially there could be even more choice for Lopez, with those players sporting the #6, #11, #18, #20, #22 and number 29 shirts.
Ultimately of course, it isn’t going to matter too much what he goes for. Wolves fans simply hope that he will turn out to be another fantastic young talent.
Given Lopez has been likened to Jude Bellingham, there is certainly optimism he can do just that.