Wolves news: Opinion – ‘We need to talk more about Jorgen Strand Larsen’

How many strikers would describe scoring a Premier League goal as an “off day”? Jorgen Strand Larsen would.

Understandably Matheus Cunha grabbed a lot of the headlines following Wolves’ victory over Spurs, not only for his goal from off the bench as he returned from a four-game suspension, but doing so a day on from a deleted social media post where the Brazilian appeared to once again suggest his future lies away from the club.

However, for me, we need to talk more about Strand Larsen.

The Norwegian’s tap-in in front of the Sir Jack Hayward Stand was his 12th goal of the season and leaves him on track to become the first Wolves player to score in a fifth consecutive Premier League appearance when they head to Manchester United on Sunday.

Since the days of peak Raul Jimenez, the club have struggled to find an out-and-out striker capable of scoring regularly. There was hope Fabio Silva would become the main man, especially given a then club record fee of £35m was paid to secure the teenage prodigy back in 2020. He looks set to depart Molineux this summer having not been seen in the gold and black for almost 18 months, and with a derisory tally of five goals in 74 appearances.

Alan Shearer’s analysis of Strand Larsen’s performance during last weekend’s victory at Ipswich was as follows: “His hold-up play was excellent, his touch and control were superb.” It was an assessment which you could easily copy and paste into Sunday’s match report. Erling Haaland was more concise with his appraisal: “Mannnn” followed by two fire emojis when responding to his international team-mate’s social media post.

When speaking to Strand Larsen afterwards, rather than indulge in praise regarding his individual contribution, I found him to be admirably self-deprecating. Form of five goals in his past four games he says is down to “my team-mates”, and he said it was “nice to be close to such a legend” when I pointed out he was just one shy of Jimenez’s club record for the total scored by a Wolves player during a debut Premier League season.

In what was a largely jovial post-match press conference with boss Vitor Pereira, he could not have been more steely when refusing to answer questions about Wolves now being safe from relegation: “If I start to speak about being safe then I am not being ambitious. I did not come to England, to the Premier League, to work just to avoid relegation. I am not this kind of coach.”

Given only eight other clubs have players who have currently scored more Premier League goals than Strand Larsen this season, I feel he has already proven himself more than capable of helping Pereira target those desired loftier ambitions in the future.