Back in the days when Mick McCarthy was manager and Jez Moxey was Chief Executive, Wolves laid £1.5m on the table to sign Sylvan Ebanks-Blake from Plymouth Argyle in January 2008.
The Cambridge-born striker had netted 11 Championship goals for Plymouth in the first half of that campaign before making the switch to Molineux, where he rewarded Wolves’ faith in him by smashing home 12 goals in just 20 appearances.
As far as first impressions go, Ebanks-Blake didn’t make a bad one.
In the next campaign – his first full season as a Wolves player – things got even better for the attacker.
Ebanks-Blake netted 24 Championship goals to fire the Midlands-based club back into the Premier League, finishing as the division’s top scorer for the second season running – all while making that £1.5m transfer fee look like a bargain.
The 1-cap England U21 international stayed with Wolves until the summer of 2013, by which time he had added to his excellent Championship tally for the club with 10 Premier League goals and 13 more in the Championship following relegation under Terry Connor.
In total, Ebanks-Blake scored 62 goals in 193 appearances for Wolves, meaning that the signing by McCarthy and Moxey cost the club £24.19k per goal – he was an astoundingly good value-for-money purchase.
If you were to take inflation into account using the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, you would discover that Ebanks-Blake’s fee from 2008 would be worth £2,016,460.18 in today’s money, which is still a bargain given his accomplishments.
He ended his Wolves career with a Championship title and two Championship Golden Boot awards under his belt, before leaving for Ipswich.
For true Wolves fans only: How much did each of these players cost?
He may not have carried his fine goalscoring form into the Premier League as some may have expected him to, but he still turned out to be a fine purchase for Wolves in a financial sense – fair play to McCarthy and Moxey.
In other news, this Kenny Jackett signing worth just £9.96k per game has become the pillar of Wolves…
