Another key position ticked off for the Terriers. Ben Wiles has come in from Rotherham United to fill the midfield vacancy that Neil Warnock has been talking about for the past few weeks.
The transfer fee Huddersfield Town have paid for Wiles’ services has been left undisclosed, as is the way of these things, but given that Burnley had several bids rejected last summer – the last of which was reported to be north of £2m – it would be fair to assume that Rotherham have commanded a seven-figure fee for his services.
It’s not for us to tell you what to think of that as a show of ambition, but it does represent the first major transfer investment made by Kevin Nagle even as he admits that the club remain a loss-making concern. If the intent was purely to balance the books, it’s unlikely Town would be going out and spending in the millions, significantly offsetting the money received from their only major sale, of Etienne Camara to Udinese.
The message throughout the summer – even before Camara was sold – was that Town had a certain budget to spend on the right candidates, but that they would be patient to be as sure as you can ever be that that money would be well-invested, rather than splashing it on the first shiny thing an agent trotted in front of them
Usually, we would do a scouting piece on any new signings, but that has proven difficult in this case through no fault of Wiles’ own. We don’t mean this disparagingly, because we have nothing but respect for the way Rotherham have repeatedly bounced back into the Championship and, last season, finally stayed up against all odds – but their rather direct style of play does mean that getting a fair judgement of their midfielders’ talents in the second tier from the stats alone can be difficult.
But perhaps it doesn’t actually matter on this occasion: that link to Turf Moor last summer is a better endorsement than we could ever give through numbers alone. What we do know about Wiles, both from asking around and from looking at the video, is that he is a talented all-round midfielder. It’s hard to tell without seeing him over 90 minutes, but from what we have seen, Wiles seems to have a particularly good eye for where to find dangerous spaces and the willingness to make runs accordingly – including into the opposition penalty box.
Of course, as with any signing, the real test comes not in what Wiles has done before, but what he does in a Town shirt from here. Warnock – and the fans – will be hoping he was worth the wait.
