As said he had to bring him in as he didn’t fancy sheaf,soon as Kelly got injured everyone was calling for a replacement CDM that’s what robins done it just left not much budget for a striker hence why we got Gyo in,sheaf at £750k in my opinion is a waste of budget we haven’t got the luxury of bringing players in for development at that kind of money,if he doesn’t sort out how much time he wants on the ball & getting caught on the ball he won’t be above league 1 level
It was more to do with Kelly's experience and organising, as well as getting in the ref's ear, that people felt we'd miss and it was those we wanted replaced more than just 'a CDM'. Those are mainly why James was brought in.
Sheaf needs to improve but this year will have given him valuable lessons regarding the amount of time he'll get on the ball and with a pre-season under his belt as well as familiarity with the surroundings he may well kick on next season. Meanwhile James' wage demands would likely be far in excess of Sheaf's and negate that transfer fee, with his age working against the likelihood of getting a decent return in terms of a transfer fee.
He hasn't been brought in as a 'development player' but a first team squad member we hope will develop further, which is the same for pretty much all our signings. He's played in 28 games this season so it's not like he's barely featured. Do I think he's worth the rumoured £750k? At this stage probably not but teams like Arsenal, Liverpool, Man U etc also seem to get inflated prices for their youngsters just because of their name.
People were(are) more than willing for the club to spend more than that (plus a decent wedge on wages if rumours are true) on Walsh, who wasn't featuring for a club at this level, has only shown us what he can do at L1 level (and even then it took him a fair few games to find his feet and cost us a few goals losing the ball cos he wanted too much time) and has since been injured for the best part of a year.