REMEMBER Diego Costa? I do. He enjoyed a superb initial spell in the Premier League in the mid-2010s, winning two Premier League titles in three seasons at Chelsea, the first with Jose Mourinho in 2014-15 (to date the last time Mourinho has won a national division) and two years later with Antonio Conte. In both campaigns Costa scored 20 goals – he also registered 12 of them in Chelsea’s unofficial year off in 2015-16 – and both of those managers relished having the abrasive forward in their team. Well, Conte did until the summer of 2017 when he used the popular SMS protocol to deliver Costa a text message telling the striker he was not in his plans for the following season. Even so Costa remains the Chelsea striker with the best goals per game rate in the club’s entire Premier League history.
Shunned by Antonio Conte, Costa duly returned to Atletico Madrid for a few seasons, though not with the same pace of goalscoring he had discovered in London, before returning to Brazil last year to sign for Atlético Mineiro for what turned out to be an unhappy spell that ended with a cancelled contract. A return to Europe was on the cards, then, but a return to the Premier League was not. Costa turns 34 next month and dropping a player with a history of hamstring injuries into the broiling physicality of the Premier League could be an issue, especially as he was signed specifically to alleviate a striker ailment crisis at Wolves, the most acute example being the serious knee injury that Saša Kalajdžić suffered only half a game into his Molineux career. An injured big man – one of the saddest sights in the sport – is being replaced by a man with a big reputation, but is that what Wolves need?
Chelsea strikers in order of goals per PL game (min. 1 goal)
1 Diego Costa
2 Hasselbaink
3 Eto'o
4 Stein
5 Drogba
6 Crespo
7= Abraham
7= Vialli
9 Higuain
10 Spencer
11 Morata
12 Harford
13 Anelka
14 Flo
15 Gudjohnsen
16 Weah
17 Hughes
18 Zola
19 Rémy
20 Kalou
21 Giroud— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) August 8, 2022
It’s fair to say that fans of goals are pretty disappointed with Wolves’ output this season. The club have played six Premier League games in 2022-23 and there have been a total of seven goals (F3 A4). That’s pretty close to Crystal Palace’s top-flight record of five goals in total in their first six games (F3 A2) back in 1970-71, which overall is the lowest scoring season in the history of the First Division/Premier League. I don’t know what Palace did to open up a bit more back in the early 1970s but here in 2022 we have advanced metrics at our fingertips and can see pretty clearly that Wolves have underperformed their xG by 3.46 goals this season. Is that the worst rate in the league? No, West Ham and Everton (3.56 and 3.55 respectively) have performed slightly worse, so it was no surprise to see all three clubs invest in strikers this summer.
A wolf can be deadly in a confined space but so far this season the liminal boundaries of the six-yard box and penalty area have been problematic for Wolves. No goals have been scored from close range, despite some excellent opportunities presenting themselves and the club’s historic tradition of shooting from range and seeing if Ruben Neves can bang one in. The midfielder has played 148 Premier League games, has scored eight times from outside the box while having only 34 touches inside the penalty area, five of which have come from the penalty box. Quite simply Wolves need someone to finish off moves closer to their opponent’s goal, and, theoretically, Diego Costa can be that man.
Costa’s previous Premier League work at Chelsea saw him score the bulk of his goals from prime positions, close in and central; the corridor of productivity. The goals he scores in the game against Southampton shown in the Premier League’s tweet below are both classic Costa and classic-What-Wolves-Need-Right-Now. His first is a close-range header, the second a more intricately worked goal with some nice title-winning combinations. Costa only ever scored one more Premier League goal for Chelsea after this brace, and this all took place five and a half years ago, yet somewhere deep in his locker this service is still available. Probably.
Diego Costa was at the double as @ChelseaFC closed in on a fifth #PL title #OnThisDay in 2017… pic.twitter.com/nBStZtkzM8
— Premier League (@premierleague) April 25, 2019
More exciting for neutrals is the return of Diego Costa the Crown Prince of Antics to the Premier League. Able to wind up teams, especially Arsenal, beyond breaking point, Costa is one of those players you cannot believe has never been sent off in the Premier League. The same applies to Luis Suarez (both men have served retrospective bans of course) and then you remember that players like Juan Mata and Darren Anderton have been shown red cards. Sometimes things don’t make much sense but you simply have to deal with it, just like defenders facing Wolves will have to deal with Diego Costa in the coming weeks. Whether his time in the West Midlands ends in a handshake or with another text message, let’s just hope that as winter approaches we can all enjoy the return of one of the finest pantomime villains in modern football. Both games between Wolves and Arsenal had some needle to them in 2021-22. How about adding a little dash of Diego Costa to proceedings.
