Ahead of Saturday’s visit from Bolton Wanderers I reached out to the head honcho over at Vital Bolton, Anthony Hart to ask how loan rangers, Yanic Wildschut and Remi Matthews have been getting on with The Trotters.
Yanic Wildschut
“Yanic Wildschut has been a massive disappointment.
I was reasonably excited when we signed him, thinking his pace would add another string to our bow in attack. To be fair, he started life with us well, scoring winning goals in away victories at West Brom and Reading.
Considering we only won once away from home last season, this was brilliant. Unfortunately, he has contributed next to nothing since then, he gives the ball away a lot, and is very much fourth choice out of four when it comes to our wide players. I still don’t think he has played a full 90 minutes for us.”
Remi Matthews
“Remi Matthews has done well. He was signed as a number two to Ben Alnwick, who was our player of the year last season (both the club award and the far more prestigious Vital Bolton award) and has largely had to make do with warming the bench. However, Alnwick missed a few games in late September through to early October due to injury and Matthews was a perfectly capable replacement. In fact, he was between the sticks the last time we won a match, against Derby in September.”
Thanks for your assessments, Anthony. I guess we as Norwich fans always knew that Yanic Wildschut had failed to live up to the hype surrounding his arrival from Wigan in the January of 2017.
He was something of a panic buy after the sale of Robbie Brady to Burnley. To replace a player like Brady with Yanic now seems to have been horrible recruitment although the reported fee of £7m has been played down numerous times with the actual figure believed to be nearer to £4m but even so, it wasn’t great business.
The season long loan to Bolton was supposed to be a chance for both player and club to ease the pressure. Financial pressure from the Canaries’ point of view with a need to lower the wage bill and from the player’s point of view, to get some game time and reignite his career.
It doesn’t sound as though Yanic is currently able to make the most of his chance at Bolton.
In return for Anthony’s thoughts on Yanic and Remi, I provided him with a few answers to some questions that he had about Norwich for a scouting report and you can read that over at Vital Bolton.
OTBC