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Dandy Town get Wells cash boost

Wells has been generous in his praise for Dandy Town’s role in his development

Western Stars Sports Club once again stand to benefit from former player Nahki Wells’s ascent in English football.

The Pembroke club stand to pocket $12,957.36 after the Bermuda striker’s move from Huddersfield Town to Premier League rivals Burnley this week.

The undisclosed three-year deal is believed to be in the region of £5 million (about $6.5 million), which has subsequently triggered a sell-on clause inserted in Wells’s then record £1.5 million move from Bradford to Huddersfield in January 2014, believed to be 15 per cent of any profit on that fee.

Bradford are believed to have netted about £500,000 from Wells’s most recent move and have banked about £2.3 million in total from him.

As part of an agreement between Wells and Bradford, Stars, under whose auspices Wells’s former local football team Dandy Town fall, pocketed £50,000 in Fifa training compensation when he joined Huddersfield from Bradford.

In 2011, Town selflessly waived a $12,000 compensation package so as not to jeopardise Wells’s move to Bradford.

It is understood that then cash-strapped West Yorkshire club were considering pulling the plug on the deal had Hornets not willingly forfeited their entitled development fee.

“Dandy Town got £50,000, which I am very happy to have played a part in because they played a massive part in my development,” Wells told The Royal Gazette at the time.

“Everyone knows what Dandy Town has done for me and it would be nice to see them use the money to help the youth programme or help develop the club and move forward.”

The 27-year-old Wells scored 49 goals in 153 appearances for Huddersfield and was a key part in the West Yorkshire club’s promotion from the Sky Bet Championship last season.

He was Huddersfield’s leading scorer for two consecutive seasons and also won Players’ Player of the Year and the Hargreaves Memorial Trophy Player of the Year accolades at the club in 2016,

Wells had been looking forward to playing in the top flight for Huddersfield but fell down the pecking order after the arrival of record signing Steve Mounié, the Benin striker, from French side Montpellier, and Laurent Depoitre, the Belgium forward, from Porto.

However, Wells, who is recovering from minor ankle surgery, is again poised to become the third Bermudian to play in the Premier League — after Shaun Goater, with Manchester City, and Kyle Lightbourne, with Coventry City — after completing the move to Burnley.