Here are the five most underrated Wolverhampton Wanderers players from 2010 to 2019.
LW Matthew Jarvis
Matthew Jarvis’ peak for Wolves was around the tail end of the 2000s and the start of the 2010s, and he was a darn good player for Wolverhampton. Jarvis scored 4 goals with 6 assists in the 2010/11 season and then 8 goals with 4 assists a season later.
He was the one saving grace for Wolves, and it says something that he played that well in 2011/12. only for Wolves to finish dead last in the Premiership anyway. And without him, they would have definitely been relegated a season earlier than that anyway.
Jarvis was unplayable at times when he was in his peak, though that peak sadly only lasted for a few seasons. His trickery and skill ranked among the best wingers in England, with Jarvis fizzling out upon his move to West Ham after Wolves’ relegation to the Championship.
Forgotten to history, Jarvis was a pure baller for Wolves at that time and was legitimately one of the best wide playmakers in English football and even Europe as a whole in those two seasons at the start of the 2010s.
CB Willy Boly
In general, Wolverhampton have produced a lot of underrated center backs over the years, such as current Leicester City man Conor Coady, but my favorite out of all of them has to be Willy Boly.
The Ivorian has since moved on to Nottingham Forest at the age of 33 in the 2024/25 season, but in the late 2010s when he was in his prime, he was legitimately one of the best center backs in the Premier League for Wolves despite receiving a fraction of the recognition.
Boly joined Wolves in the 2017/18 season in the Championship and averaged 2.3 tackles and 2.0 interceptions per game, and then he averaged 2.4 tackles and 2.0 interceptions per match the following season when they made it back to the Premier League after about seven years away.
So basically, he went from being in the Team of the Season in the Championship to producing effectively the same defensive numbers in the Premiership a year later to help Wolves finish seventh and qualify for Europe in that first season back in the top flight.
Boly deserves a lot more credit for Wolves’ back-to-back seventh-placed finishes than he got. He was solid in the Europa League in the 2019/20 season, too. I bet there’s a lot of young fans who have never heard of this guy, but if you watched the Premier League religiously from 2018 to 2021, then you know how good Boly was for Wolves.
RB Matt Doherty
Matt Doherty joined Wolves in 2010 after being a youth player in Dublin for Bohemians, and he would go on to become one of the best players in the history of Wolverhampton, later joining clubs as big as Tottenham and Atletico Madrid.
But there’s no doubt that Doherty’s best days were with Wolves to start the 2010s, and he actually returned to the club in 2023 to try and recapture his past glory now that he’s above the age of 30.
Doherty was one of the best all-around wide players and fullbacks in the Premier League at his best, a model of consistency and leadership for Wolverhampton with four seasons of at least four goals and six seasons of at least three assists.
He was a solid defensive presence for Wolves, too, even shining the season that the club made it to the Europa League. He rarely had a bad game and often brought his best in the most important matches.
CB Romain Saiss
Another solid Wolverhampton defender from the mid and late 2010s, Romain Saiss was an immediate difference-maker for Wolves in the Championship in the 2016/17 season after joining from Angers.
It was a huge coup for Wolverhampton to bring one of the top-performing centre backs in Ligue 1 to the second division of England, and Saiss’ consistency and no-nonsense defending ended up being crucial in helping Wolves return to the Premiership.
From there, his intelligent reading of the game and emerging leadership helped keep Wolves afloat in the first division, with Saiss forming a very strong partnership with Boly when the two were on the pitch.
ST Steven Fletcher
Wolves don’t have an extensive history of great strikers, and while most passing Premier League fans have at least heard of the star that is Raul Jimenez, who remains in the top flight with rivals Fulham, fewer likely remember Steven Fletcher.
But at the start of the 2010s, Fletcher was a solid striker for Wolves and, like Jarvis, key to their best survival efforts. Fletcher scored 22 goals in his only two seasons with the club in 2010/11 and 2011/12, as he was the one depositing the chances that Jarvis created from the wing.
A solid finisher who could create his own chances when needed, Fletcher even ended up playing for a club as big as Marseille before returning to his usual 10-15 goal range in the Championship with Stoke.
Now 37, Fletcher is still playing for cult club Wrexham, but there’s no doubt that his best work was done in the Premier League more than a decade ago as the starting striker for Wolves.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. His work has been featured in ESPN, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NBC Sports, and other major outlets. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.