Ricardo Vaz Te on his way back to the North West?

Former Bolton Wanderers forward Ricardo 'this could be his year' Vaz Te is currently training at local minnows Bury FC, with a view to earning a move to the League One club.

Bucket shakers manager David Flitcroft, who worked with the Portuguese attacker at Barnsley told the Bury Times:

"We will give him as much help as we can and see where that is at, but this is really about helping someone who did fantastic for me."

Surely I can't be alone in thinking that we should be looking at him? Hear me out...

I've always had a soft spot for Vaz Te, ever since he broke into the Bolton first team when I was about nine or ten years old. Although he was clumsy, I always enjoyed his direct style of play and his 6'2 frame did cause Premier League defences problems in the air, scoring something like three goals in four games at the end of the 2005/06 season.  Plus who can forget that goal against Vitoria Guimaraes in the UEFA Cup

Injuries and maybe attitude problems stunted his progress over the next few years, becoming somewhat of a journeyman but at Barnsley in the 2011-12 he really came alive. He scored 10 goals in 22 appearances for the struggling team in the first half of the season before earning a £500,000 move to West Ham United.

Vaz Te became a pivotal player in earning their promotion scoring a very impressive 12 goals in 18 appearances with three of those coming in the Play-offs, even scoring the goal that sealed promotion for the Hammers in the final.

In total Vaz Te scored 22 goals in 40 appearances that season, only being bettered by Rickie Lambert and beating the likes of Ross McCormack, Charlie Austin and Jay Rodriguez. Once West Ham got to the Premier League, Vaz Te seemed to be out of his depth once again and slowly faded back into obscurity.

The point I'm trying to make though, is that we are currently lacking goals, we're lacking pace, we're lacking physical presence (Gary Madine aside). We could do much worse than a fully fit, fully firing Ricardo Vaz Te at this level; that's for sure, especially on a free.