Pedro Neto’s Initial Comments After Chelsea Move Amid Wolves’ Injury Caution
3 min readPedro Neto has joined Chelsea in a £54million deal from Wolves despite enduring a wretched past two years which have been wrecked by a succession of injury issues
Pedro Neto has insisted he has worked his whole career to reach Chelsea after completing a £54million move to Stamford Bridge.
Neto has spent the past five years at Wolves, winning the club’s Players’ Player of the Season and Supporters’ Player of the Season in 2021. He has now signed a seven-year deal with the Blues.
The 24-year-old will be expected to make his debut in their Premier League opener against Manchester City next Saturday. He becomes Chelsea’s ninth signing of the summer, as well as their most expensive so far this year.
The attacker joined Wolves following spells with Braga and Lazio, where he won the Coppa Italia in 2019. And he is now making what he perceives to be a step up by joining Chelsea despite their difficult pre-season.
“I feel really grateful to have joined this club,” Neto said after his move was confirmed on Sunday. “I have worked really hard in my career to be here and I’m looking forward to getting on the pitch with this shirt.”
Chelsea confirmed that Neto will link up with Enzo Maresca’s squad in the coming days. The Blues had won just one game in pre-season heading into Sunday’s clash with Inter Milan, making Neto’s arrival a welcome boost.
The club said in a statement: “Chelsea is delighted to announce the signing of Portugal international Pedro Neto from Wolverhampton Wanderers. Pedro has signed a seven-year contract and will begin training with his new teammates at Cobham in the coming days.”
For their part, Wolves wished their former star well. But sporting director Matt Hobbs did insist the deal was a good one for the Midlands side as he sent a warning over the injury issues Neto has suffered in recent seasons.
“Everyone knows the player Pedro is – he’s a world class winger who has been so unlucky with injuries, so we’ll miss him on the pitch obviously, but also around the training ground with his energy and the relationship he had with so many people,” he said.
“The deal is one that works for us and Pedro, but by no means does it make it any easier. The reason we get players like Pedro is because this is our model and not everyone will love that. For the club, it’s the right deal at the right time.
“It’s hard when it’s someone who everyone has so much affinity for as a person to look at it as a business, but football is a business and it was the right timing and the right deal, so from that perspective, the football club are happy.
“We’ve been working on options and on targets and that work keeps going. Me and Gary [O’Neil] have sat down several times since, but we were sitting down beforehand and talking about it because I think we thought there was a good chance this would happen this summer.”