Wolves boss confirms Raúl Jiménez will miss derby with knee injury

Late morning, the training ground corridor at Wolves was quieter than usual. Reporters huddled outside the press room, waiting for a definitive answer on Raúl Jiménez's condition. When the head coach stepped out, his face lacked its usual calm. He said it directly: the Mexican striker will not play in this weekend's derby. "It is not that he cannot play, it is that he will not be at 100 percent. At one hundred percent, he will not play," he stressed. The room seemed to sink. The biggest question now was not just the severity of the injury, but why a fitness issue had become the centre of a media battle ahead of the derby. It all started with doubts raised by the opposing manager in the West Midlands derby. He publicly suggested that Jiménez's injury might not be genuine, a mind game to create disruption before kick-off. That suspicion forced the Wolves boss to respond forcefully: "I do not lie or play with anyone's mind." He tried to reassure by calling it a "fairly simple injury" and "good news" for the team. But almost in the same breath, he admitted that Jiménez's absence is an "important setback for the attack." The two statements side by side left a large information gap. Jiménez is 34, no longer at his peak from his early Wolves days. But he remains a pillar of the team's system, the reference point around which his teammates build play. The coach admitted: "We will continue to be competitive, and of course we are stronger with Raúl." A simple sentence that exposed the truth about dependency. Without Jiménez, Wolves lose not just a goalscoring centre-forward, but a player who can win aerial duels, hold up play and link with midfielders. From the training ground to the empty stands, I count a team's heartbeat in muddy boots. Watching recent sessions, it is clear the staff are still searching for a replacement. Notably, Jiménez withdrew from the Mexican national team squad during the FIFA window. If the injury is only "fairly simple," why rest him at international level? It could be a precaution, but it could also mean the recovery period will be longer than the public thinks. This ambiguity only fuels speculation. I do not write about football; I write about people in shirts. For a 34-year-old striker, a knee problem carries a high risk of recurrence. The "simple injury" narrative might be a way to protect the player's commercial value, or simple optimism from the staff. It could also be true. Only time will tell. In the garage, football does not need big screens; it whispers through car horns and cigarette smoke. Conversations near the stadium all revolve around one question: how will Wolves function without their attacking lighthouse? The derby will be the first test of Wolves' adaptability. But more important are the signals from the medical staff in the coming days. If Jiménez returns early, the story will close cleanly. If not, Wolves may face a small crisis at a key stage of the season, where every promise of competitiveness must be judged by results on the pitch.