We signed him as we needed someone desperately to fill the squad with the injuries we had.
Why he played today I don't know. M'Vila, Chalobah, Reach - none of them should be near the squad if we're serious about the play offs.
He's one of those kind of signings where its difficult to believe we don't have some academy player capable of filling in the minimal minutes required of him. It's the kind of signing we've made repeatedly since relegation and they've all been complete wastes of money.
I'm not saying we have some great academy player waiting to fill in, but M'Vila isn't good enough for this level either, and it shouldn't be a suprise that he's not because he's a 33, nearly 34 year old who hadn't played for a year. Can someone like Whitwell really be THAT much worse? Other teams seem to manage ok with their academies playing these bit part roles without destroying the team, we seem pretty unique in consistently needing to sign the likes of M'Vila to play a few minutes here or there.
This is the list of free transers we've made out of window or deadline day since relegation in 2018: M'Vila, Kelly, Rogic, Pieters, Chalobah, Bryan, Peltier, Mears, Hoolahan, Sako.
How much money did we waste there? Hard to believe that Caleb Taylor, who at minimum is proven as a very good league one centre back, would have been worse than Kelly, or certainly Pieters this season.