It's an insignificant amount for a top club ,who could have paid it without any issues.
The comments are "anyone can see it " or "anyone with 2 eyes can see how good he was and we would have got much more in the summer "
He had played 12 months of regular championship football,and had not been called up once,so obviously the people making those decisions didn't fancy him enough. I don't care that you don't care about the England u21, its an indicator of how little or big a young player is rated outside his club ,they obviously didn't rate him highly enough like the top clubs(wrongly so ) but the evidence is there he wasn't picked and the top clubs didn't come in for
And on your first point I don't think Wharton was having a great season with us last season,moments of quality but our midfield was being dominated most games from December onwards.
I'm just of the opinion he needed to prove himself up a level before the fees would have got much much larger.