We could but no brainer for Burnley to use him as leverage to get a "fee" for him as against nowt in the summer
That's a smart suggestion but, under the accounting rules, I think if we made a firm commitment to buy Wells at the end of your mooted loan period, at least part of the purchase price might have to count in this season's figures as an accrued cost. Plus the salary might have caused us problems in the medium term vis-à-vis other squad members. Hoos is smart, he knows his way around the accounting and if it could have been levered into place, I reckon he would have known the way to do it. Would have been nice to understand how it failed to pass muster though, wouldn't it? In any case, as much as a Wells purchase would have been tempting, I'd prefer to spend our limited money on young, up-and-coming talent that has a sell-on value, even though identifying such talent is fraught with risk.
This. I can imagine a lot of Bristol City fans will end up questioning why they spent £4m on Wells. He's definitely a solid championship player, but not good enough to make the step up to the PL by a long way, and goes missing for long stretches of a season. Throw in his age and length of contract left with Burnley and it's not a great price for City. Don't get me wrong, he's been decent this year and we will miss him, but we've got to be really careful with our resource now. I'd much rather us take a chance on the young Scottish lad for £1.5m with additional milestone payments or look at League 1 talents doing well under the age of 25. PS - The other thing we need to learn from this is that competition from buying clubs is key to driving up value. It's why having one suitor for Smithies and Austin was so detrimental, and really does dictate what we can get for our players.
When will ever be done with bashing Hughes? Warnock signed SWP...! As well as Barton, Young, Traore, Ferdinand and Puncheon...! What a shower! Arry signed, Samba and Jenas...!!!! Alright Hughes didnt exactly get it right but he did sign Cesar, Hoilett, Nelsen, Onouha and Zamora! What would we give to have Ned and Ryan equivalents as CB's today!
I think Hughes cops a lot of the criticism in my opinion because we never had a better chance of becoming a sustainable Premier League team with financial backing. He proceeded to make an absurd statement on the final day of avoiding relegation stating we'd 'never be in this position again' under him with no basis behind it, and then goes on a run of 16 games of no wins. We had that one season to get it right, either spend conservatively like Burnley and bounce back up, or invest in players that wanted to be here. Hughes did neither.
It's the whole Warnock, Hughes, Redknapp era that's got us where we are today.....plus Beard and Fernandes..... It will still take a while to fully recover but we are and we're ahead of the like a of forest, derby, Sheff wed, Brum who are only now beginning to feel the bite of ffp....
Wells would have cost us 4-5 million. He would have probably been our top salary earner. He is 30 He has had really fallow patches in scoring ( with us too). No sell on value. If we have money to spend , we can spend it better on Scottish forward or cd, if we can get them. Or save it for the summer. I would have a different view, if we were in with a real shout of the playoffs, but we are not. So get some leeway with ffp, and focus on some youngsters for next summer. Let's hope in a few years ...we will be like Bristol City and Brentford. Ps . I do not think City would play Wells on Saturday. It would be stupid thing to do.
Looks like Spurs will not let Parrott go out on loan either Plus the tweet from Das Bild that Cologne have put a bid in for Leistner. It is turning into an odd window Who would have thought at Christmas we would not be talking about Eze or Manning going. We would lose Nakhi and Scowen And actually be worried that BOS and Leistner will go. Incidentally Wells is actually part makeweight to get the City midfielder to go to Burnley, he too is having a medical at the current time. We were never in the hunt, it is nothing to do with us not offering enough. There was a "underlying" plan
A Blind man with no arms and legs could have put some of Well's goals away this season, he ain't that great. Certainly not worth 5 million. Thank BOS Eze and Chair for his goals. Losing Scowan was worse Get over losing a player who was not even ours.