Before the 2013-14 season began we had agreed to buy Charlie Austin from Burnley for a rumoured 5 mill. before a failed medical caused the deal to fall through when he was already in the building. QPR then nipped in and snapped him up for 4 mill. and his 20 goals took them to promotion to the Premiership. What a huge difference his goals over the past two seasons could have made to our fortunes considering the money we have spent (wasted) trying to find a consistent and prolific striker, none of whom have come close to matching Austin's record. And the search goes on. The attached two BBC Sport reports indicate how close we were to signing him and what might have been. This decision by our medical staff was arguably even worse than their go-ahead to sign Jimmy Bullard who played only a few games before his knees gave out. Does anyone know who on the medical staff was responsible for these two catastrophic mistakes? Austin is still only 26 and presumably has many prolific years ahead of him and is showing no signs as far as I know of a debilitating injury. It'll be interesting to see which Prem club buys him from QPR, who are now reportedly asking 13 mill. for him. http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/33838851 http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/22984455
Bullard was an obvious **** up. There's no way the same can be said of Austin though. He failed a medical, on an underlying shoulder injury I think it was? He might play the rest of his career without it ever being a problem. He might injure it next match and have problems with it until the day he retires. You just can't take those risks. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but there was no guarantees he wouldn't have been crocked in his first game for us
He has a condition in his knee. It's not an injury, it's some sort of disease or something by the sound of what Stevebruce said about it.
please log in to view this image It was absolutely the correct decision. I still stand by the idea that we wouldn't have signed Thudd had we signed Austin.
Considering the crocks we've got in since (and foreign mercenaries even) we may as well have got him for 5 million.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/s/swindon_town/9372956.stm read your links and saw this. he could have been exactly what we needed but what could he have done for this club considering the way things have panned out for them?
Where have I got shoulder injury from then? Could have sworn it was something along those lines? Although his celebration after scoring against us would suggest it was actually his knee
He's had 3 injuries to the same shoulder! But he failed with his knee! Unless the doc was holding the chart the wrong way?
Might have just been the rumour at the time that it was his shoulder and I've got it in my head that that's the reason.
He might have fallen on his shoulder or knee or whatever it was and been forced into early retirement.
Correct. Burnley never argued with us either over it. They just flogged him onto DQPR. People need to get over Austin. FFS.
