Don't believe so, any minor injury or short suspension in the 2nd half of the season would just allow him to refresh. I think he'd benefit from a breather rather than being ground into the dirt every single game we play.
Palmer and Knight should be on loan leaving Mitchell and Sam as understudies - fine for me. There are loads of goals in our attacking midfielders so I think there are other areas to strengthen before bringing in another striker.
Any significant injury would be another story - which team wouldn't be hurt by the loss of its leading scorer?
That, or him being sold, would mean dipping into the market, if only to have another shot of having someone to get the goals we'd need.
We don't have a ready replacement for Wootton in the squad, and the one thing we have learned the hard way over the years is that it's very hard to bring in a good striker on loan during the season (other than Wootton himself, strangely enough).
With all the talk of players being sold in January, the one thing I'd hope is that - barring silly money being offered - we only let one of our main assets go (if they want to go). We might - might - be able to replace Wootton's or Rodrigues' goals, but I can't see us being able to make up for both of them departing midway through the season.
I think with Rodrigues, we’re protected by his contract and that recent article said it has a ‘healthy’ release clause in, so I suspect with him we’ll say we aren’t interested in selling but if someone meets that clause there’s nothing we can do.
Wootton is more complicated because he can walk for free in the summer and seems to have concrete interest from Portsmouth. That’s not just a move back into the league, but a really big club pushing for promotion to the Championship. If they came in with a decent bid (low six figures, probably), we would have to at least think very hard about it.
It could be that Portsmouth want or need someone in January and if Notts play hard ball will look elsewhere. It seems to revolve more around if Notts are happy to suffer a loss of a fee on Wootton by letting his contract run down. I feel sure, especially if he retains some form, there will be other suitors in the summer.
Lose Wootton and you can put any idea's about promotion out of your heads.
Infact either of Wootton or Rodrigues
IF one left in January and IF whoever leaves wasn't adequately replaced with just as good then I'd go along with that summary regarding promotion.
But two big IFs until someone actually goes I'm not too interested let alone concerned.