DESPITE NOT PLAYING a first-team game for the club in nearly three years, making the grade at Wolverhampton Wanderers remains the objective for Connor Ronan.
The creative midfielder impressed in 2019 while earning nine Republic of Ireland U21 caps under Stephen Kenny.
He also gained valuable competitive experience at club level last season with loan spells at Slovakian club Dunajska Streda, for whom he played in the Europa League, and League One club Blackpool.
The 22-year-old, who’s heading into the final season on his current Wolves deal, recently embarked on another loan stint by moving to Grasshoppers in Switzerland. However, he’s still determined to prove that he has a future with the English Premier League club.
“The ideal situation would have been to break into the Wolves first-team and stay there for as long as possible, but obviously football doesn’t always work like that. You have to kind of have in the back of your mind that it’s likely that it’s not going to work like that,” he said after being named the club’s Loan Player of the Season.
“When loans start to come in, you just kind of have to accept quickly that it’s not going to go as planned all the time and just get your head around it. Once you can get your head around that you can start to worry about just concentrating on football. Once the football starts to look after itself, everything else just comes into place really.”
Ronan, who hasn’t tasted first-team action at Wolves since a League Cup tie against Manchester City in October 2017, signed a new two-year contract in May 2019.
“Being at Wolves and being around the first-team, I’ve made a number of appearances and I think I’ve done pretty well when I have played, so I do feel like I’ve still got a point to prove,” the Rochdale-born playmaker added.
“Every loan that I go on, it’s always with the intention of doing as well as I can for the club that I’ll be playing for and for myself, but the long-term goal is to do well, come back and get back in the manager’s eye, and eventually break back into the Wolves first-team.”
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