BUY TAM AND LOAN HIM BACK TO VILLA, WOLVES!

TAMMY Abraham’s proposed £18m switch to Wolves has been thrown into doubt after it emerged that the striker could be ineligible to play for another club this season.

FIFA regulations permit a player to appear for no more than two clubs in a single campaign.

But the 21-year-old – who has scored 16 times on loan at Aston Villa – has also played for parent club Chelsea in a Premier League Two match.

A similar case involving Hatem Ben Arfa saw the French forward spend six months in limbo after joining Nice in 2015 because FIFA ruled that an Under-21 game for Newcastle was a competitive match.

Surely, though, the best of all possible worlds would be for Wolves to sign Abraham now and immediately loan him back to Villa.

Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo clearly sees the England international as a ready-made player who can share the goalscoring burden with Raul Jimenez.

He will get games at Molineux.

Yet Wolves’ system leaves room for only one striker and, barring a drastic loss of form, Abraham cannot expect to displace a player who has notched five goals and four assists in his last 15 games.

Survival is a certainty whilst European football is both unlikely and – as Burnley have demonstrated this season – unhelpful for a side still finding their top-flight feet. Wolves can afford to take a longterm view.

In this case, that means letting Abraham finish the season in a division where he is scoring for fun and has every chance of bagging a confidenceboosting golden boot.

Then, in six months time, he will have a player brimming with belief instead of strangled by frustration.