Cheers for the reply.
I'm pleased to hear he's fitted into the team. As I alluded to he had kind of hit a point with us where he'd plateaued and despite being committed also seemed to have lost his way. He had gone from a player who we were rating at £1m (when we knocked back Appleton's offer a few years ago) to someone who we didn't seem to know what his best position was. He was part of our team that reached 2 cup finals and a comfortable mid-table finish that season and the result was record turnover and record profit so keeping him around had its value in that respect.
I noticed a post on here talking about him potentially being a Championship level player - that's what we thought as well.
Aside from a stall in form after his breakthrough season his issue last season was that he picked up a serious injury in our 7-1 loss to Rangers in November. He admitted himself that he felt the injury but decided to play on and presumably aggravated it (so not only were we down to 10 men at the time we were unknowingly carrying a severely injured player - cheers for that Chris). His contract was up at the end of the season and he missed around 4 months with a knee injury, training compensation would have meant he'd have cost a certain level of club around £500k-£600k so given the relative lack of form, a recent serious injury and a relatively high price bracket in training compensation it's not a huge surprise his options were limited (through no real fault of his own).
Our fan produced podcast had an interview with our assistant manager that went up last night and he talks a bit about Cadden. The gist is that while we were keen to keep him he simply wanted a change of scene. Which is totally understandable.
In honesty his crossing has always been a weak point. Overhit, under-hit or simply shanked out the park, there were probably plenty fans sitting in the Cooper stand behind the goal who were quietly pleased to see him go if it meant not getting scudded by his wayward crosses. His plus points always centred on his dynamism, energy and his ability to get up and down the park so the knock on was that he often lacked a bit of composure. If he could take a beat and get his head up he'd be on his way to being a far more rounded player.
Having said that, the Scottish Fitba' Advanced Stats guys always used to look favourably on him when it came to chance creation so hopefully the move will see him develop a bit further and you guys can get the best out him - there's definitely the potential for a very decent player there.