To me it looks increasingly likely that he will sign for us. Clearly Stoke don’t want him and are keen to get him off their payroll. We paid half of his £30k a week for all of last season so there seems to be no reason why we shouldn’t sign him up for £15k a week next season. He seemed to like playing for us, he struck up a decent partnership with Bradshaw and scored a reasonable number of goals and, as a striker that is what you want to do every week. If he stuck with us there is every chance that might happen. What are his options?
If he goes back to Stoke the first thing they will do is to loan him out again. There might not be a queue to sign him so his options could be limited. There are two sticking points. The first is that Stoke might want a fee for him and we might not be keen to pay any money for him. The second is that he might stick out for £30k a week from us and that would be out of the question. The ball is very much is in Benik's court. Watch this space!