It's not about wages but the overall cost of the player. As a free transfer he will have got a signing-on fee that was then added to his wages to make up the £100k a week. He will have cost us £10m come the end of his contract in June considerably less than has been spent on Nketiah and Johnson and Pino etc. I don't rave over him as he has had a number of poor performances but not as many as some like to think. Part of his skillset is knowing how to block the channels, something he does well but it's not often recognized by fans.
I was one of the 27% who voted him player of the match last night as along with Wharton I thought he bossed the game in the first half and he made crucial contributions to our 2nd and 3rd goals.
Given how much PL players cost I think we've had our money's worth out of him.
All true. Kamada is far from top of the list when it comes to questionable value for money, partly because so many more expensive players have played as poorly or noticeably worse, and partly because we've paid so little (£10m) for his services.
Where I disagree with some, however, is that where they think we've got a top player for a bargain price, I think Kamada looks very much like the low budget fill-in player that the costs suggest.
His performance on Thursday stood out by a mile because he so rarely even attempts expansive or forward passes. He has provided little in that respect. I get the importance of doing the simple things well, but that doesn't mean someone who can only do the simple things over and again is a good player. Kamada is very average with the ball. Almost all of his passing is short, sideways, and (most significantly) slow. He takes one too many touches and a second too long almost all the time. Any advantage we would get from him keeping the ball moving is often lost by how long he takes to do it, and how predictable his use of the ball generally is.
I also appreciate that positioning and screening the back three is important, and that sometimes it will dissuade a forward pass that would otherwise have hurt us. That doesn't mean though that overall we are less likely to concede with Kamada playing. He not only lacks physicality, but also physical courage. Some of Whartons bookings have come about after he's run past Kamada to go and press the ball. He offers little when defending set plays or long balls. His way of defending seems to stem from the limited things he is capable of rather than a higher understanding on his part.
We will always need to be creative in the market, and Kamada has not been a bad signing n terms of value. He just isn't a particularly good player.
Ultimately, top flight clubs have wall to wall scouting and transfer teams, and they all knew that Kamada had one year left on his contract last summer. He had just played on the big stage at Wembley, and done well on the day. Yet all summer long not only were no bids reported, there seemed no interest of note in him. If he was a top class player available for very little or free, you'd think there would be. You'd think he'd at least have been snapped up on a precontract in January. Those are the hallmarks of a player the market recognises as valuable. But yet, no.
There is very little suggestion even that palace have pushed him to sign new terms. None of this suggests that people whose job it is to strengthen top flight sides within a budget see Kamada in a very positive light. That seems telling.
I appreciate we don't know what offers he's had. Perhaps in fact a Europa League level side or higher wants him, and palace want him to stay, and somehow all of that has stayed out of the press, and they are all prepared to risk letting him sign a precontract with someone else because they trust a verbal agreement they've made with him so much. It would be very unusual, though. What seems more likely is that they all see him as OK but no more than that, even by mid table standards.
In other words, that the market doesn't rate him all that highly, and are prepared to risk leaving him on the shelf until later on. Given that he is so inexpensive overall, that really doesn't say much for his quality.
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