Hull City made £3.5m loss on Wolves transfer - his Molineux exploits were a distant memory | OneFootball

Nouha Dicko failed to live up to his price tag at the MKM Stadium

The summer of 2017 was a hectic one at Hull City, with the Tigers coming into the campaign off the back of an equally chaotic season in the Premier League.

After appointing former Russia manager, Leonid Slutsky, following Marco Silva's exit to Watford, City's squad underwent a major summer of change, with plenty of mainstays departing the club such as Andrew Robertson, Harry Maguire, Sam Clucas, Ahmed Elmohamady, Curtis Davies and Tom Huddlestone among those who sought new challenges.

Meanwhile, amid a backdrop of fan disillusionment and anger towards the Allam family, Slutsky still added 12 new bodies to the ranks which represented a blend of experience and youth, with the likes of Frazier Campbell and Sebastian Larsson at polar opposite ends of the spectrum to the likes of Ola Aina and Fikayo Tomori - who have both gone on to enjoy successful careers on English and Italian shores.

In his solitary transfer window, the former CSKA Moscow boss also developed a small, but intriguing, trend of signing players who had recently struck against the Tigers, with Jackson Irvine and Nouha Dicko doing just that, before moving to East Yorkshire from the Midlands, previously donning the colours of Burton Albion and Wolves.

However, after putting £3.5m on the table to sign the Malian forward, City would never see the striker live up to his price tag.

Dicko's time at Molineux was extremely mixed to say the least.

Initially joining on loan from Wigan Athletic in a bid to aid Wanderers' fight against back-to-back relegations under Dean Saunders after a relatively impressive stint at Blackpool, the striker wouldn't be successful in those aims as Wolves dropped into League One for the first time since 1989, although he would score one goal in just five appearances.

And, after a run of five games at Rotherham United which yielded five goals and two assists, Kenny Jackett would pay a £300,000 sum for the Paris-born frontman and was rewarded with a return of 13 goals as the West Midlands side romped to a third-tier record total of 103 points.

After an initially reasonable return to the Championship, Dicko would end up with a total of 14 goals in 37 games as Wolves just missed out on the play-offs, with the striker forming one-third of a 'magic' front three alongside Benik Afobe and Bakary Sako.

The following season would prove tough for the striker, missing 40 games of the campaign after suffering an ACL tear, before struggling to find any form of consistency under Walter Zenga and Paul Lambert in his final full season at Molineux.

Despite a changing of the guard in the boardroom in WV1, Dicko played a part in all of Wolves' first seven games of the season and, as previously mentioned, netted the last of his 35 strikes in Old Gold at the MKM, before the Tigers fought off interest from QPR to secure his signature on a three-year deal.

"It's a move that has been on the cards for a couple of weeks, ever since Wolves played Hull up here," he said via the BBC.

Hull City would make £3.5m loss on Nouha Dicko after underwhelming MKM Stadium period

Despite just being relegated from the Premier League, the entirety of Hull's first season back in the Championship was marred by inconsistency and a backdrop of uncertainty, as proven by a record of 70 goals scored and conceded.

It took Dicko seven games to break his duck, netting in a 1-1 draw against Norwich City in October 2017, before slotting home his first in East Yorkshire with a composed finish against Ipswich Town a month later.

The experienced frontman found a regular run in the side much harder to come by under Nigel Adkins as previous second-tier hotshot Abel Hernandez returned to full fitness, with two notable moments of the Malian's spell in HU3 coming in the early weeks of 2018 through a horrendous miss against Leeds United in a 0-0 draw, before scoring the winner in another 'Yorkshire Derby' against Sheffield United in front of the Sky Cameras.

Dicko's second season saw gametime reduced even further, with his solitary goal of the campaign coming in a 6-0 rout against Bolton Wanderers on New Year's Day amid interest from Dinamo Moscow and Alanyaspor, although no formal bids would come City's way.

After yet another summer of change which saw Adkins depart following a 13th-place finish and an extremely brief run at the play-offs, Grant McCann would take the reins after moving from Doncaster Rovers, with the three-time international making four appearances, with the last of his 54 for the club coming in an EFL Cup defeat to Preston North End on penalties.

Dicko would then reunite with Slutsky at Vitesse Arnhem on a season-long loan, which would be put into jeopardy as the Russian resigned just three months after taking up the post, with all of the attacker's five goals coming before the turn of a new decade.

It was then reported that Hull were looking into the possibility of recalling the 27-year-old and making some form of cash for his services.

“I know there’s a lot of interest in Nouha and he’ll probably be another one that’ll move on to another club,” McCann said.

However, City were unable to garner any funds, and what would prove to be a disastrous first-half of 2020 as the club sank without trace from eighth place to the bottom of the Championship and a first League One stint in 15 years, was only echoed in a financial state as Dicko's exit on a free transfer was a damning indictment of the club's transfer policy at the time.