Five shock January moves you didn’t expect

Grant Holt – Wigan Athletic to Aston Villa (season-long loan)

Aston Villa’s goalscoring problems in the first half of the season – at least until Christian Benteke awoke from a slumber stretching back to September – were well documented, with the rangy Belgian, Andreas Weimann and Gabby Agbonlahor have netted just 13 between them in the league.

Factor in the broken leg injury which halted Libor Kozak’s maiden campaign in English football and the need for a frontman becomes all the more pressing for a Villa side who are neither here nor there in the Premier League standings, sitting with some degree of comfort away from the danger zone but not posing any real threat to what has become a nine-team hegemony in the top flight.

The answer, according to Lambert, was a loan move for Grant Holt. The same Grant Holt who had struggled to break into a Wigan Athletic side who found themselves in the lower echelons of the Championship as they struggled to juggle Europa League football with their domestic campaign.

Holt has scored on just two occasions since his move to the DW Stadium and must now navigate a way through to the Villa team to rediscover any kind of touch in front of goal, one that has sadly deserted him for large spells of this term.

Holt Pass Accuracy (Wigan) – Championship 2013/14

A shot accuracy of 47% is trumped by both Benteke (57%) and Agbonlahor (48%) but is ahead of Weimann’s 39%. Despite this, each of the forward triumvirate are in credit compared to Holt’s 13 chances created, with the Cumbrian-born striker also the worst passer by some way with 56%.

Benteke hardly excels at just 59%, whereas Weimann and Agonlahor come into their own in this category given the wide positions they take up.

It must be stressed that Holt was brought in solely as cover, a role Kozak often found himself playing before sustaining injury but the jury is most certainly out on whether Holt is an upgrade on the young striker Nicklas Helenius who has not had a look-in so far in the league despite scoring in the FA Cup third-round defeat to Sheffield United.

The personal ties between Lambert and Holt from their spell together at Norwich City goes partially towards vindicating the decision to bring in the 32-year-old but it looks a strange fit for a club aiming upwards. For Holt personally, there must have been a fair sense of incredulity on his behalf when hearing the news. He certainly owes his agent one.