Why Brighton clash is important for £12.7m Wolves star who has faded recently.

Wolves return to Carabao Cup action tonight against Brighton – and it’s a big game for one Molineux star.

After the 2-1 defeat to Newcastle United on Sunday, Gary O’Neil could do with masterminding a win ahead of the game with Aston Villa at the weekend.

Wolves were decent against Newcastle and unlucky to lose the game.

Two long-range strikes were their undoing, the first deflecting in off Craig Dawson.

O’Neil has said there will be wholesale changes for tonight’s game, and one man we could well be seeing is summer signing Rodrigo Gomes – and it’s a big opportunity for him at the Amex Stadium.

Rodrigo Gomes is not in favour at Wolves right now

Rodrigo was Wolves’ first new signing of the summer (not counting Tommy Doyle turning his loan move permanent), joining from Braga.

The winger had shone on loan at Estoril, and Wolves forked out around £12.7 million to land him.

Rodrigo made a bright start to life as a Wolves player, scoring a couple of goals for the club in a pre-season friendly against West Ham United.

But it’s all gone rather quiet with Rodrigo since then.

He was handed a start at Arsenal in the opening game. But it was tricky for him to have an impact at the Emirates.

Since then, Rodrigo got 22 minutes against Chelsea, and has been an unused substitute against Nottingham Forest and Newcastle United.

He also did not feature in the Carabao Cup second-round match against Burnley.

So it’s clear that right now, after zero minutes in the last three games, Rodrigo isn’t in favour with O’Neil – but he is likely to get minutes tonight against Brighton and he must take his chance.

Rodrigo needs to shine

It has been a bit of a shame to see Rodrigo remain on the Wolves bench in recent weeks, especially after his lively pre-season.

Clearly, he must not quite be doing enough for O’Neil to call on him right now, with the likes of Matheus Cunha, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Hwang Hee-chan and Jean-Ricner Bellegarde all preferred in the wide areas.

Against Newcastle, Goncalo Guedes and Carlos Forbs also featured off the bench.

Rodrigo could do with a convincing display tonight if he is called upon.

At the moment, O’Neil is shoehorning players into the wide areas. He even had Mario Lemina operating wide on the right against Newcastle at times. Life would be much easier if he had one of his natural wingers in form, and tonight is a chance for Rodrigo to build momentum.

We have already seen glimpses of his talent, and hopefully he can do well this evening.