This is an interesting one.
Centre Back (and defence in general) is a position, where I don't feel we are over-blessed with cover. Fry and Hall both seem a bit injury prone (which isn't their fault, it is just a reality), as does Dijksteel. We have a converted midfielder and a miraculous 36 year old who wasn't really expected to play given his medical history. If the sports science team unearth reasons whey we seem to be picking up so many injuries, this might help, but I wouldn't have thought weakening our options in that area by getting rid of Fry would be necessarily a great plan. Bringing Wood and Spence back would, on the face of it seem a much better plan.
Much depends on how wedded he is to the overlapping CB system he had at Sheff Utd and we simply don't know what his plans will be on this front. He might try and replicate it, or he might not if he thinks we don't have the personnel to make it work quickly. Alternatively, he might think that having the right players in place to make that system work is crucial to the wider development of the team and that he is willing or obliged to break a few eggs to make a better omelette. I always think Fry carries the ball pretty well, but maybe lacks the fitness to recover his defensive position quickly, or is that just me? Or might Wilder see him as as the 'sweeper' in that system with McNair plus A N Other as the overlappers?
Chris Wilder strikes me as a very pragmatic sort of manager. He may take a view that he just wants to build and strengthen on what we already have in defence (joint 5th tightest in the Championship), rather than completely re-invent things mid season and focus his efforts on getting the most out of our forward line. One interesting thing that came out of training yesterday was a focus on pressing, which is a bit different from what he did at Sheff Utd on a regular basis. Might this suggest we are going to defend more aggressively from the front and keep disruption at the back to a minimum?
One thing we know is having a plan to make big changes in January and actually implementing that plan are two very different things.
Oh, and at least £15m