For a 20-year-old, Rúben Neves has broken a good few records. He finished coolly on his debut as a 17-year-old to become Porto’s youngest league scorer. He surpassed Cristiano Ronaldo as the youngest Portuguese player to appear in the Champions League. At 18, he became the youngest captain in the history of the same competition, leading Porto to victory over Maccabi Tel Aviv. On Saturday he looks likely to anchor the midfield for Wolves as they host Middlesbrough in the Championship.

The £15.8m Wolves paid to bring Neves to the Black Country is another record, the biggest transfer fee in the history of the Championship. Since the deal was agreed it has raised questions: about the club’s ambitions under the Chinese owners Fosun (owners closely advised by Neves’s agent, Jorge Mendes), the competitive status of the division and what the transfer says about Neves’s ability.

In his three seasons as a professional, Neves has managed to squeeze in not only a rapid rise but a stark decline. A local boy who had been on Porto’s books since the age of eight, Neves was plucked out of the youth system by Julen Lopetegui, now Spain’s national coach. It is easy to understand why.

An instinctive reader of the game, Neves’s key strength is his ability to make interceptions, backed up with a strong tackle. In his breakthrough season, over-the-top comparisons flew thick and fast but one, describing him as the new Sergio Busquets, carried more weight as it came from his team-mate Cristian Tello, himself a product of Barcelona’s La Masia academy.

Neves has more than that in his locker though. Technically adept, he can break up play as well as drive it back down the other end of the pitch. He can pick out a crossfield pass from either flank. He takes up smart positions in and around the box that make him a great option for long-range shooting opportunities.

But Neves has scored only twice since that goal on his debut. The two full caps he earned as an 18-year-old (in friendlies against Russia and Luxembourg) have not been followed up and his chances to shine at junior level have been and gone. He made six starts in the league last year, a season whose tone was set when Neves burst into tears on the Porto bench after his coach had decided not to use him during a Champions League qualifier with Roma. That coach was Nuno Espírito Santo, now the manager of Wolves.

Nuno has had an itinerant career (he lasted a season at Porto) and is perhaps most famous for being the first client signed to the books of Mendes. The world’s most powerful agent, Mendes is a business associate of the Fosun Group and is believed to have advised it to plump for Wolves when the company was first looking to invest in football to support the Chinese government’s latter-day enthusiasm for the game.

Mendes, through his company Gestifute, represents Neves and four other players on Wolves’ books. Between them they have cost the club about £32m in transfer fees. There are questions as to whether Mendes is directing undue influence over the transfer policy and to whether these players, half of whom were part of the side that finished 15th in the Championship last season, are the right ones to helped Wolves reach the Premier League.

Neves poses the biggest questions of all. He has the raw ability, but does he have the mentality to thrive in the unrelenting and physical environment of the Championship? Is his game even suited to a league where less financially endowed clubs will see no shame in bypassing midfield altogether? Wolves’ pre-season results have been mixed but they will be buoyed by a convincing win over Leicester City last Sunday. Neves, in a midfield two as part of a 3-4-3 formation, pulled the strings.

The long-term motivation behind Neves’s arrival in the Midlands seems clear. He is here to earn a move to a Premier League club. In his precocious years Liverpool and Chelsea were matched against his name and it is surely clubs of that marque Neves and his advisers still have in mind. Neither is the 20-year-old shy of admitting it. In an interview with Wolverhampton’s Express and Star to commemorate his arrival, Neves was asked if he saw this move as a chance to put himself in the shop window. “It will be easier to move to the Premier League from here,” he said. “I’m focused on getting better as a player and this is the right place to do so.”

Neves’s arrival in England’s second tier is not the only sign that the Championship is changing. The takeover of Leeds by the TV sports rights magnate Andrea Radrizzani. The arrivals of Leonid Slutsky at Hull and the Borussia Dortmund II’s backroom staff at Norwich. A transfer window that has resulted in more than £130m being spent with a month still to run. The Championship is not England’s second tier any more, it is the gateway to the Premier League. Expect more players like Neves to be persuaded of that.