Gary O’Neil stands by decision to loan out Wolves attacking duo

Despite the tiny squad, some were arguing that Wolves do not need to sign a striker in January and instead wait for the perfect transfer in the summer.

However, the club’s need for forward additions intensified when Fabio Silva and Sasa Kalajdzic were allowed to leave on loan in January and an already small squad was made even smaller, before injuries decimated what was left.

O’Neil has made it clear that signings were lined up to come in but the financial restrictions meant they proved to be too expensive in the end.

So does he regret allowing Silva and Kalajdzic to leave?

“Both of them were desperate to play and start football matches,” O’Neil said.

“From the club’s point of view, both of them needed to play football matches, especially Sasa after such a significant injury.

“He needed to be able to play regularly and for both of them it was about finding the appropriate level for them to be able to play regularly.

“The Premier League is the best league in the world and coming back from a significant injury and being thrust into that, would be difficult.

“At the time when we let them go, we had a lot of time left in the transfer window and we all thought that we would be adding one or two, and we weren’t able to.

“That doesn’t change what’s right for Fabio and Sasa. Of course, if they were here now they’d add to the senior players that we have available, but it has provided opportunities for younger players to get minutes.

“It has allowed Fabio to play more minutes at Rangers and unfortunately for Sasa, the injury cut short his loan spell, but it would have been a really good one for him to come back and rejoin the group in the summer. I can only tell you the plan was, if we let them leave early enough we were in a great position to be able to do something as soon as it comes up, because you wouldn’t want something to come available and not be able to do it until you shift some.

“One of the side effects of the financial situation of the club means that we can’t hold on to ours and sign one, and then hope one leaves. We needed to move one first to open up spaces.

“It was an unfortunate sequence of events. We didn’t get any strikers, then suffered loads of injuries and now people saying we should have kept those two strikers is the obvious thing. But it’s definitely not as simple as that and I still stand by the decision.”

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and after a string of unlucky injuries to attacking personnel, Wolves were left high and dry.

Ironically, if Silva or Kalajdzic stayed at the club and were fit, they’d have started most games in the last few months.

Forecasts at the time of the January window had Wolves falling just £2.7million under the profit and sustainability threshold and in the end, the deals they were ready to do proved too expensive for the club.

The injuries were desperately unlucky, but the lesson to be learned for Wolves is around the squad size.

Moving forward they must address that, even if it means selling one asset to reinvest in the squad.

“The club had options available and then the financial restrictions, which are real and are there, prevented us from doing all of them,” O’Neil added when asked about January.

“There wasn’t a lack of willingness or a lack of work. Some were more expensive than we thought and those sort of things happen in football.

“Normally, you would realise it’s more expensive but still do it because we let two strikers go, but we couldn’t do that. We had to stick by the financial restrictions because we’ve seen from other clubs how serious and significant the penalties can be. We’ve ended up in an unfortunate situation that needs to be learned from and not be repeated because we want the team to be successful.”