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Goosebumps one minute and wayward thumps the next, Adama Traore is an enigma that none of us will forget.

Spray-on kit, peroxide flash of light and 0-60 speeds like a 911, he was impossible to ignore from the moment he arrived.

He was a Porsche Carrera when motoring from deep and so often a Ford Capri at the vital moment, misfiring unfathomably / unluckily <delete as appropriate> with the onion bag beckoning.

I’m going to miss Adama Traore massively, precisely for that maddening ability to endear and infuriate in equal measure. If he was like Forrest Gump then it wasn’t so much his blistering running, but more the fact you never knew what you were going to get next.

A skill-set like his has surely never been seen in old gold before, nor has a pretty unassuming bloke polarised opinion quite like he, with some of my most placid of friends spewing bile-filled hate whenever his name was mentioned. The genuine anger, in my opinion, was as misplaced as a whole heap of his crosses.

Should he not have been embraced more for fashioning such opportunities in the first place, or ruining regimented formations simply by his presence? For some, that was never enough and on a goals / assists ratio, I understand.

I just loved Adama Traore and I’m going to bloody miss him. His willingness to try things when his confidence must have been low (from constant reminders of his outputs) took repeated levels of bravery / stupidity <delete as appropriate>. And in this safety first world we struggle to make sense of, Traore was the perfect antidote, never opting for the easy option and always doing something to get us out of our seats. For the years of McIndoe, Forde, Saville, Rowe and co, watching our incredible hulk in action was like medicine for my soul.

As cult heroes go, he is etched in my top three, sandwiched between Steve Bull and Chris Iwelumo, precisely because he was never scared to put himself about like those two other heroes of mine either.

I’ve never heard audible gasps quite like the ones when our number 37 either embarked on a run or entered the fray from the bench with those big bursting jumps onto the pitch. It was just a shame his outputs so frequently failed to match the expectation.

With his contract dwindling down and his boyhood club beckoning, it was clearly time to let go. And using a ‘Moneyball’ approach to the game, I get it. His stats just didn’t stack up. But from a gut feel, you sense he might just raise his outputs to ‘half decent’ and there’s a highlights reel thicker than his biceps. I guess that’s the unique weighing scales that so many managers keep putting him on. For the second time in his career, he’s tipping the balance in Barcelona.

I’ve no doubt that a career defining moment is up ahead for Adama Traore and it’s sad we won’t see it in a Wolves shirt. In keeping with the Adama anomaly, a Ronnie Rosenthal miss is as likely as a solo strike in the Maracana. And isn’t that the joy of the Beautiful Game right there?

Either way, life always was a box a chocolates with our Adama and for all those orange cream moments – and occasional peanut cracknell in between – I thank him for tingling the taste buds.

Going for a jog – as Wolverhampton ran to a standstill – wasn’t meant to take me there, but something drew me in.

Music in my ears, Deep Heat in my hamstrings and water in my eyes at a landscape I call home.

The Holloway and Henwood Road come and go to a soundtrack which should have known better (End of a Century – Blur!). Then onto the Tettenhall Road in once-stately pomp, looking like the morning after the night before. The smell of weed pervades and I keep on moving. One foot in front of the other. Plane trees sway, daffodils play and for a split second you’d never know what’s up.

‘Cheer up Chapel Ash’ I thought, ‘it might never happen.’ I then get lost in thought, for better or worse. A question in my mind for every bead of sweat on my brow.

Was beating Man Utd in the cup as good as it gets? What would I do without Dad? Was Bully’s left foot goal against Bolton in Division 3 his best? Does Grandma still see me? Did she know how much I loved her? Was Paul Cook better than Kevin McDonald? Have I failed her? Will my legs stop telling my head to slow down? Is Ruben Neves celestial? Will I ever like myself again? The usual kind of stuff…

…Iggy Pop disrupted with a Lust for Life and there I was, jogging along the Waterloo Road like I’d done a thousand times before.

One time in 1988, me and Dad were late for my third ever game – a 3-3 draw with Port Vale. We missed Robbie Earle score for Vale after 37 seconds. We were running on adrenalin when Bully scored at the South Bank in injury time though. Dad bought me a pin badge for my scarf that day. A little lone wolf on a lustrous gold surround.

Another time, he rushed me home early with a migraine almost 30 years to the day, when Andy Mutch put us ahead against an almighty Leeds United side in blazing sunshine that hurt my head. I lay stricken on the back seat on the way home. A Radio WM goal-horn sounded at 4.50pm as we entered Bewdley’s Catchems End. Dad breathed a profanity. ‘No, no, no’ he whispered.

‘Late drama at St Andrew’s!’, bellowed Franksy, thank fuck.

Some days were meant to be, weren’t they? David Batty slipped on his arse and Mutchy rounded Mervyn Day back then. Did the daffodils know any different?

In today’s age, me and my boy have skipped back down the same square inches of pavement I was now plodding along in my trainers. Not so much an eight-minute mile, but a suspended snapshot of a better place which had gone before I’d blinked. We’d get to the ring road island from the Billy Wright Stand and we wouldn’t have come up for air, relaying each moment of a top-flight conquest with the veracity of October ’88 – when I wore that pin badge with pride. We’d laugh and cheer together in unison and in that moment, my boy’s beaming smile would look so pure, I wish I could press pause.

‘While we’re living, the dreams we have as children fade away.’

On another day, me and Dad would cover the same 800 footsteps without saying a word. It was hard to know what to say in 2002. Harder still when he’s thinking of mum and I can only fumble a line about Colin Cameron scoring in 47 seconds – 10 more than Robbie Earle in 1988. ‘Do you remember that one Dad?’

‘Thinkin’ ’bout thinkin’ of you; Summertime think it was June. Yeah, I think it was June?’

I did a lap of the Molineux without thinking; without seeing a soul. I got to the South Bank and amid the dead of night, I saw a smiling Sir Jack taking guard. His thumbs up high, looking at a place I couldn’t quite reach.

I didn’t know the place I was heading when I stepped foot outside the door, truth be told. I don’t think I ever do these days.

But virus or no virus, the Molineux will be there when I do, just like it’s always been.

Not so long ago rumours about the fastest winger on the planet signing for Wolves would have been met with universal fanfare.

It’s perhaps a sign of the times then that there isn’t such unanimous joy over Adama Traore’s imminent club-record arrival from Middlesbrough. 

The naysayers point to a lack of end product, despite the 22 year-old clocking up 10 assists and 5 goals from just 24 starts and 8 sub appearances last season. 

Others suggest he’s too raw and unpredictable to be successful in Nuno’s meticulous setup where the focus is on intelligent use of the ball and precise positioning out of possession.

Perhaps it’s right to have those concerns, but I myself am just excited by the potential.

Nobody believes we’re buying the finished product, but to me this just feels like the right moment, the right coach and the right team to extract the maximum out of such a prodigious talent.

Having come through at Barcelona and adjusted to English football over a punishing three season apprenticeship in the Premier League and the Championship, he shouldn’t need to acclimatise. He knows what to expect.

And surrounded by so many technicians in a well drilled Wolves side, he’ll get the ball in the areas of the pitch where he wants to operate.

If you look at the hundreds of YouTube clips of Traore it’s immediately clear that one defender can’t cope with his pace (we saw it ourselves in that famous ‘9 man win’ at the Riverside last season) and that in itself opens up the delicious possibility of freeing others like Jota and Costa to occupy the spaces in behind.

Equally, those searching diagonal passes we saw from Coady and Neves last season can get him isolated against retreating full-backs, which is another frightening prospect.

To get the general vibe from his current club, I spoke to Boro fan Matt Strachan from OneBoro and he told me the following:

“Very sad to see Traore Leaving. I was hoping we’d be able to tempt him into one more year for a promotion push, but unfortunately, the money and Premier League football is simply too good for all parties to turn down.”

“End product is still an issue. His delivery is getting better and he’s managed to get himself some goals for the first time last season. But, his decision making, in general, does need a little bit of work. Rather than give a simple pass to keep the play ticking over he’ll sometimes drive down closed alleys and lose the ball, I’m not too sure Moutinho and Neves will be best pleased if he does that!”

“Before this season, I was actually unsure if he could actually strike a shot properly as many times he’d toe punt or not make a great connection. This piece of footage sums up what I mean.”

“I think success at Wolves depends where he plays this season. If he’s played as a right winger I can’t foresee any issues but if deployed in Wolves preferred system last year as a wing back I think that would limit his potential.”

It’s interesting to hear Matt suggest that Traore could be deployed as a wingback at Wolves, which is something worth consideration given Nuno’s well established thirst for versatility and track record in converting players to suit his requirements.

His explosive pace up and down the wing makes him a good fit for the role on face value and even if it’s an idea only explored when chasing the game, it’s a nice weapon to have in the arsenal.

In his primary position, we’re already well stocked with Costa, Jota and Cavaleiro all viable options and it would be sad to see the latter make way if that turns out to be the trade off.

Either way though, the reported £18 million fee is a huge outlay for Wolves making Traore perhaps the greatest gamble in their history.

I just suspect though, it’s one worth taking.