I’m going to blow my own trumpet here. It’s bad form but nobody else is going to do it. I posted the following on Feb 1 last year when Wednesday were in the process of signing Rhodes:
“It's a lot of money to pay for a striker lacking in pace at whom every single Premier League manager outside the top six for the past four or five years, some of them in desperate straits and worrying about relegation and/or their jobs, has had a long look. But none of them - not one - has thought it worth taking a punt on him. He turns 27 this weekend and some of the lustre has come off him during his stint at Middlesbrough. The manager there clearly doesn't rate him and while we all know managers can develop blind spots where individual players are concerned Rhodes has had several starts this season in the Premier League without pulling up any trees at all. It might be that Karanka is wrong but it might also be that all those managers were right and he's just not up to that standard. Doesn't mean he can't do well back down in the Championship, of course, but he clearly has his limitations and it's not at all clear how he's going to fit in. They've just signed Winnall as well and Forestieri, Fletcher and Hooper are all in the mix as well. Carvalhal's other massively expensive signings this season have flopped - Abdi can't get a game and it's clear they've overpaid for Reach by a factor of about five - and he gives the impression of someone flailing around, chucking money at the problem and just shoehorning players in without any real idea/plan as to how it's going to work. And it's only Wednesday, anyway. One of our local rivals. If they go up, they go up. It's no big deal. And if they're building a team round the likes of Jordan Rhodes, they'll struggle.”
