It’s easy to overlook Jordan Rhodes, despite his six-foot-one frame.
Born in Oldham, he has spent his young career toiling in the lower-tiers of English soccer, and for the most part gone unnoticed.
The 23 year-old became the most expensive transfer in England outside of the Premiership last summer, when Blackburn paid Huddersfield Town eight million pounds for the striker.
The Scottish international was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps, English footballer Andy Rhodes, a goalkeeper with Oldham before spending a good part of his career in Scotland. It was those early years of schooling in Scotland which opened the door for the younger Rhodes to represent the Tartan Army. He joined the youth setup at Ipswich Town at 2005, where Rhodes Sr. was a goalkeeping coach.
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Fast forward to last summer.
The substantial outlay of cash led to many doubters around Ewood Park, while others saw it as a rare moment of sanity by their clueless owners, whose decision making has angered supporters. For the first time in 10 years, the club started this season outside the top-flight, and a managerial merry-go-round almost resulted in successive relegations – Blackburn this season barely avoided the drop from the Championship to the third-tier (four points safe in 17th place).
Rhodes scored a team leading 29 goals in his debut campaign for Blackburn — Ruben Rochina finished second with five — and only one goal shy of winning the division’s golden boot. All things considered, playing under four separate managers, the year was extremely successful.
A steady influx of foreign imports has made the Premiership the most lucrative league in the world, but it’s come at a cost to domestic players. Patience is a virtue absent from most Premier League clubs, with the necessity for an immediate return on investment mandatory. Expectations are extremely high, given the money involved in the modern game. Owners are quick to look abroad –almost to a fault at times — placing substantially less merit on the quality and standard of the domestic pyramid below.
Rhodes barely causes a blip on the radar, despite finishing the 2011-12 campaign as the top goal-scorer in all of England with Huddersfield Town (37 goals in League One), and earned his first international call-up from Scotland. But only West Ham showed some interest last summer, before apparently being priced out by Blackburn’s eventual winning bid. Instead, the Hammers decided to grab Andy Carroll on loan from Liverpool and pay his high wages in full for the season.
Grant Holt and Rickie Lambert –both in their early thirties — are only now playing in the top-flight, with Norwich City and Southampton respectively, after having bagged over 100 goals in the second and third tiers. Rhodes has notched similar numbers in the lower divisions, scoring his first as a professional in April 2008 for Ipswich, following a short loan spell with Oxford United in the Conference. Another couple of loan stints followed with Rochdale and Brentford — where he scored his first hat-trick at 18 to become the youngest Bees player to achieve this feat — before a permanent move to Huddersfield Town in the summer of 2009 for £880,000.
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In his first two seasons in West Yorkshire, Rhodes scored an impressive 45 goals and 11 assists in 101 appearances for the Terriers. He was also instrumental in Hudderfield’s promotion to the Championship a year later through a playoff final victory at Wembley against Sheffield United, scoring almost a goal-a-game (39 goals in 42 games).
The next step is an obvious one, having proved his consistency and scoring prowess. A move to the Premiership is expected this summer, and a bid in the range of £10-12 million should be enough to trigger the sale of ultimately the brightest spot in Rovers difficult season. Rhodes has clearly outgrown the Championship and deserves an opportunity to compete with the best in the world on the biggest stage. However, history is littered with more disappointment than success stories: Michael Chopra and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake are just recent examples of strikers whose goals dried up once they made the step up.
Three top-flight clubs desperately seeking added goal production for next season are Norwich City (36), Sunderland (40) and West Ham (41). West Bromwich, Fulham and Aston Villa could also be viable options for Rhodes, with all three possibly needing replacements for their current front-men (Romelu Lukaku, Dimitar Berbatov and Christian Benteke).
The ideal move at this point in his career would be to Villa Park, as Paul Lambert has a solid reputation in development and acclimatizing young inexperienced players. Even Liverpool and Tottenham could get into the mix, both needing to strengthen their forward options.
Time will tell, but the signs look promising for Rhodes.
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