Sporting director Matt Hobbs believes new arrival Enso Gonzalez has the perfect attitude and personality to be a success at Wolves.
The 18-year-old joined Wolves from Libertad in Paraguay during the final week of the transfer window, after catching the eye of the recruitment team earlier this year for his full-blooded performances, as well as work rate off the ball and ability on it.
Bringing a different element and versatility to Wolves’ front line, the Paraguayan will hope to follow in the footsteps of fellow South American Joao Gomes at Molineux, and Hobbs is excited to see him flourish in his new surroundings.
On bringing Gonzalez to the club
“It’s one we’ve worked on now for a while. At one point it didn’t look like it was going to be possible, but his club have been great, and we’ve managed to get to a situation where it works for everyone, and we’re excited to have him here.
“He’s an exciting player – he’s a young boy, coming from South America with little English, but our dressing room will help with that because of both the South Americans and Spanish speakers we have, so if he was going to adapt quickly anywhere, it’d be here.
“We have to give him time to adjust because the Premier League’s completely different, but I think what we’ve seen with Joao Gomes coming from South America, and other Premier League teams who’ve taken players from similar countries, if you give them time, allow them to grow and support them, they can turn out to be special players.”
On the recruitment process
“Ben [Wrigglesworth], El [Sutcliffe] and the team, like they always are, were very diligent and thorough in the work done on Enso, and a big part of that is finding people with connections to players and coaches who have worked with him before. This means we know a lot about the boy we’re getting as much as the player.
“The job of the recruitment team is to have players ready for every position because you never know what is going to happen, and we always have to be ready to go on our next target. It has to be a working list because players get injured, players move, and I always know who our top target is. We’ve been working towards a certain profile of player for the last 18 months and one of the reasons we like Gary is because his view on players is the same as ours.
“He wanted a front player who can play across the line, create and score goals, and the team only put Enso forward – they had other options, but Enso was the one, in their opinion, that we had to do. Me and Gary watched him, then we got the information behind it to make sure we were getting the right person and got the deal done.”
On the stand outs in his game
“Creativity, playing forward, being aggressive in possession and doing his work out of possession, but for me it was more what he does offensively. Most players do the other side of the work if you’re getting the right sort of people, but with Enso I’m excited to see what he gives us going forward.
“His personality will be important for us, and we’ve seen from Joao the type of grit a lot of South American players have. It’s our job to find the ones who fit in with the culture we’re trying to create, and that Gary wants to enhance in the dressing room. The other players will buy into him because he’ll buy into what they expect from him.
“We’re excited, but conscious you have to give these players time to adapt to a new country. I imagine Tettenhall is a bit different to Paraguay, and the football will be completely different, but there’s a boy with a lot of talent there and we’re excited to see him.”
On Gomes being a good example
“It’s a fair argument that the Brazilian league is a higher level than Paraguay, so customisation is a bit easier, but personality wise he’s the same nuggety, aggressive little character which will work well within our group and the Premier League, with how aggressive teams are with and without the ball.
“He’s different to Joao, from a different league, but there are certain characteristics that you see in them and Pedro [Neto], which we like to think going forward will be part of our DNA.”
On being ready to compete instantly
“We expect him to come in and compete, challenge and play first-team football. He’s not going out on loan, we’ve brought him in to make a difference now, so he’ll be part of the first-team group and be available to Gary when he’s ready.
“He’s match fit. Whether he’s match fit for Palace, after two days of travelling, we’ll see. We need to allow him to get over a whirlwind three days for him – it was done, and he was on a plane seven hours after we agreed. We have to be patient and an international break after it nice timing for him. He’s ready to go and when Gary thinks he’s ready, he’ll use him.”
