i've seen many examples of sales people selling amplifiers with more power than the speakers can handle. one of my customers kept bringing the same pair of very expensive speakers in with melted voice coils. the manufacturer's policy was to void the warranty for burned out speakers. i asked the customer what they had for an amp. it turned out to be a 250W/channel (rms), and the speakers were rated at 100Wrms. the speakers cost more than the amplifier. i asked the customer whether or not it really mattered to him that he had these nice pieces of expensive furniture, or he wanted speakers that could handle the power of his amp. i also explained that his expensive speakers had a sensitivity of 80db@1m@1W, which meant to get a SPL of 100db required 100W. i showed him a pair of professional stage monitors rated at 800Wrms with a sensitivity of 95db@1m@1W..... at 40% the cost of the nice cherry wood towers (and which would provide a 105db SPL at 10W). he was very happy with the new speakers (i don't know for sure, but i suspect he got his money back on the expensive speakers because the store salesperson "created" the mismatch to begin with).
good pro-audio speakers are the best kept secret of the audio business. they are more efficient than home audio speakers, and so can be operated at lower power levels and get the same amount of sound. the efficiency is as important as the power handling.
as far as wharfedales go, what he SHOULD have got with his system is this model **broken link removed**