My view is the complete opposite of being short term. Say we paid 1.3 million for him, he plays for 4 months and we get promoted and never plays again because he's not good enough for the Premier league. Would he have been worth a punt then? I'm not sure what length of contract he signed at Huddersfield, but I assume it was at least 3 years. Didn't we go down this road before signing players on long contracts who were nowhere near good enough for the PL? The likes of Hulse and Agyemang spring to mind, and they just sit on the pay-roll draining resources. Now don't get me wrong, Wells could, and probably will prove to be an absolute star, in which case we will have missed out, but my whole point is that at this stage of this season we need to err on the side of caution.
So who is out there that we have a cat in hells chance of signing? The proven player who will step up to the PL or has already succeeded there and who would be prepared to sign for us on a short-term deal at a realistic wage? Wells will not have been signed for the silly sort of money demanded by the players who match the above criteria. It is Redknapp's inability to find raw talent and develop it that is the problem. They are out there. Lambert manages to do so. So we take a chance rather than being the club which rolls out the sign that we offer the biggest last pay day. Coma and join us.
Too early to say whether we will regret not signing the lad. He does however have a great record and 2 from 2 for Huddersfield is what he is employed to do, lightweight or not. A strikers job is to score goals. He does that and at £1.3m wasn't exactly an expensive gamble I would prefer to see us try the likes of Hitchcock & Wells rather than the likes of Carlton Cole
I'm not sure it's HR ability or lack of in trying to identify players for us, I believe it is the fact we already have players earning loads of money sitting in reserves: SWP, Cesar are two that readily spring to mind. With the financial fair play rules coming into effect, it could be this that is potentially holding us back - unless HR already knows who he wants and there is talks going on that none of us are aware of.
If you want to know if Wells is any good, or has the potential to be good, ask Clint Hill or Dunne, Dunne, Dunne, Dunne. They spent most of yesterday afternoon giving him a few acres of space so they could stand back and observe. Looks like a goal poacher who offers nothing else to me. Nothing wrong with that, but if we are looking for a partner/sometime stand in for the increasingly awesome Charlie Austin, I don't think this is the type of player we need.
Benteke is certainly one he brought in, not sure about Grant Holt, but he obviously believes in him? please log in to view this image Aston Villa's Grant Holt plans to "shove it" to critics of his loan move from Wigan
To be fair to Lambert, he was not a PL forward in the same way that Mackie wasn't. However he got there by sheer hard work and over-achieved in every League on his way up. He cost Norwich absolutely peanuts so on any measure you would have to say he has massively repaid the faith invested in him and yes Lambert found him. Harry wouldn't know where to begin to look. Ian Holloway had the knack in his early days and let's not forget put together a team that got us into the playoffs having barely anything at all to spend for 3 years. I'm not saying every purchase was a success but again I doubt whether Redknapp has that ability.
