"Exceptional" - Bristol City lauded for £5m signing over four years later | OneFootball

The striker has been excellent in his time at Ashton Gate, and continues to impress this season.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

Nahki Wells has been a name associated with Bristol City for what feels like a decade, yet he only joined the club in January 2020.

Since then, he has been fantastic, scoring 41 goals in 204 appearances for the Robins.

At 34, however, there will be some concerns surrounding just how much longer he can produce in the Championship, and whether this season could be his last at Ashton Gate.

Nevertheless, four years after his move to the club for a reported £5 million from Burnley, it has led to the question over whether he has been worth the fee, or if it was perhaps too much for a player who joined towards the backend of his career.

Verdict made about 2020 Wells deal

This season has been another good one for Wells, and he has perhaps surprised supporters with his fitness and readiness when called upon off the bench.

It has meant that he has started become one of Liam Manning's starting strikers in recent weeks, when many had probably thought that Sinclair Armstrong would have locked the position down by this point.

With such success early on this season, Football League World asked their Bristol City Fan Pundit, James Skinner, if he believes the fee that the Robins paid for the forward was worth it.

He told FLW: " Nahki Wells signed for us in January 2020, for a fee believed to be around £5m, which is quite a lot for us to pay for one player, to be honest.

"In my opinion, he's been exceptional for us. He's consistently good, and I think he's a good player to have around the dressing room as well, which is vitally important in any football team to have those sorts of characters and I think he's a very good professional.

"This season he's played eight matches and scored three goals, two of them coming in mid-week against Stoke to help us get a draw. So, I think he's been a very good signing for us and I think there's plenty of life left in him as well, to be honest."

James continued: "He seems to be having a bit of a resurgence at the moment. We signed Fally Mayulu and Sinclair Armstrong in the summer and people thought that they would be the two strikers to take all the front positions this season, but Wells works hard at the training ground, and he's getting his reward in starting ahead of those two, and deservedly so.

"He's a good professional, his work rate is phenomenal. It’s just crazy the amount of running he does and the sort of energy that he brings to the team.

"I mean, let's be honest, in today's game £5m for a footballer isn’t a lot of money, although it is a ridiculous amount of money in the real world."

Wells is a great option off the bench

Although he has been featuring more and more in the starting XI, off the bench is where Wells has been the most deadly for Bristol City.

His pace, even now, continues to be a dangerous part of his game, and he has the tenacity to press and put defenders under pressure that has followed him throughout his career.

Wells is the epitome of a fox in the box striker, and his ability to find himself in the perfect place in the box at the perfect moment has been a key part of his game, especially this season, with nine of his first 10 shots of the campaign coming from inside the penalty area.

£5 million is a lot of money for a player who is in his 30s, and a lower price may potentially have been a more reasonable fee to have paid, but he continues to be a key part of the Bristol City team to this day, and therefore it was perhaps warranted.