£3M tug-of-war over Rangers striker

With the breaking reports that Cardiff and Burnley are said to be looking at a £3M (and counting) bidding war over the services of Josh Windass, the sale is an absolute no-brainer.

While it took him a long time to get going, when Windass was on form he was on fire – the guy could not stop scoring or assisting.

When you look at those stats, and the intensity of his form periods, £3M in fact seems well below market value for a 24-year old English attacker in the prime period of his career.

And yet, as a £2.95M profit on what we paid, it would go down as an outstanding piece of business.

Of course there’s the downside of him – he often plays for himself, forgetting he has team mates – think Alfredo Morelos inside the box, and you’ve got the idea.

But he is not like Morelos outside the box – the Colombian is two players, the selfish and uncool striker who lately often makes a hash of things in the area, and a tank-like work horse who brings his team mates in, grafts for them, and holds the ball up outside it.

Windass doesn’t have the latter to his game – he is about attacking attacking attacking. Which is theoretically fine but he’s a man down if the team is up against it and if he is to become a fully-rounded player he needs to stand up to his defensive responsibilities.

But regardless of his merits or otherwise, Windass is a valuable asset. We on the site were derided recently for pointing out we could raise £15-£20M through a dozen sales of players. Only a few sensible replies backed us up (we saw you SWH) and saw sense – well, guys like Windass going for £3M or more is a hefty chunk of those funds and two or three more like that and Steven Gerrard’s budget soars.

Do we advocate the sale? Yes. It’s a no brainer. Windass is not the future of the club because he doesn’t fight like Gerrard needs.

That’s money better spent on players more in line with the new manager’s vision.