QPR have bolstered their attack by signing prolific Burnley striker Charlie Austin, but after the player’s move to Hull broke down on medical grounds the R’s faithful would be forgiven for sounding a note of caution.
Charlie Austin is the classic story of the non-league hot shot who hit the big time. Released by Reading as a junior, the striker kicked around the semi-professional game, turning out for his hometown team Hungerford before transferring to Wessex League Premier Division team Poole Town.
His goal scoring exploits there were hugely impressive. He got 46 in 48 appearances in 2008/09 while working part time as a bricklayer and then got 18 goals in the first 11 games of the 2009/10 season. In the intervening period League One side Bournemouth showed interest and would have signed Austin after a successful trial had their financial constraints not placed them under an ill-timed transfer embargo.
So back to the building sites and salubrious surroundings in the Wessex League it was. But his record was always likely to attract attention and when Swindon Town chief scout Ken Ryder pitched up at a match in which Austin scored four times he was immediately invited to the County Ground for a trial. That trial period included a reserve game with Swansea where he hit a hat trick and Swindon manager Danny Wilson subsequently offered the striker a deal through to the end of the 2009/10 season.
He made his senior footballing debut as a late substitute in a JP Trophy game at Exeter and, after three further appearances from the bench, his first start in a 1-0 win at Carlisle at the end of November. He scored the only goal of that game after three minutes which proved the catalyst for an extraordinary run of form that saw him score eight goals in the next eight matches and 13 in 15 in all. Suddenly Austin was hot property and in February, just three months after they’d signed him, Swindon tied him down to a new two and a half year contract. He finished the campaign, his first in senior football, with 20 goals from 32 starts including a crucial play off semi-final strike against Charlton that helped take Swindon to Wembley.
This was no flash in the pan either. Still in League One after a play off final defeat to Millwall, Austin recovered from a dislocated shoulder early in the season to score 17 goals from the first 27 fixtures leading into the January transfer window. Austin handed in a transfer request in an attempt to force through a move to Ipswich Town but couldn’t agree personal terms at Portman Road and so moved to Burnley, now under the management of Eddie Howe who had originally tried to sign Austin when he was in charge at Bournemouth.
Initially it looked like the step up would be too much — injury restricted him to just four appearances and no goals in the second half of the campaign. He hit the ground running in 2011/12 though with five goals in the first six matches and a respectable end of season total of 17 from 46 appearances. Last season there was no stopping him. He became the fastest ever Burnley player to reach the 20 goal mark in a season — doing it against Leeds on November 6 from just 17 appearances. The run included hat tricks against Peterborough and QPR’s opponents this Saturday Sheffield Wednesday.
Another eight goals followed in the remainder of the season leaving him with 28 from 40 appearances. That inevitably sparked interest from elsewhere but a proposed £4.5m deal with newly promoted Hull collapsed at the eleventh hour when a medical examination revealed a long standing knee problem. To compound matters he was fined £1,800 and ordered to pay £1,320 in costs by magistrates after being found guilty of a common assault after an incident in the men’s toilets of a bar in Swindon in October last year.
Nottingham Forest remained keen but it’s QPR who have won the race, securing the striker on a three year deal for an undisclosed fee. He leaves Burnley having averaged a goal every other game during his time there — 45 in 90 appearances.
"Harry spoke to me at length about the ambition of the club and the desire to return to the Premier League and that’s where I want to be as well with QPR. This is a really exciting time for me and I can’t wait to pull on the QPR shirt for the first time. I’ll come in, give my all and hopefully score the goals that ensure we have a memorable season.” — Charlie Austin
"Charlie’s an out-and-out goal scorer and we’re delighted to have him here. He’s scored goals wherever he’s played throughout his career and I’m very confident he’ll take his game to the next level with us. I’ve got no doubt that if we give him the right service he will score a lot of goals for us. He’s young, he’s hungry and he’s up for the challenge of helping us get out of this division.” — Harry Redknapp
"We worked very hard to keep Charlie at Burnley and we are sorry to see him go. However, we were unable to compete with the package on offer from Queens Park Rangers, a club in receipt of the largest parachute payments in history and able to offer what are effectively Premier League wages in the Championship. Charlie has been the subject of a lot of attention from a lot of clubs, but has handled himself in an extremely professional manner in his dealings with us in what has been a difficult time for both him and the club." -Lee Hoos, Burnley CEO
"I'm doubling my bet on #QPR coming straight back up. QPR fans, save this tweet. Charlie Austin will score the winning goal in minimum six games. Worth 18 points. Excellent signing.” — Rodney Marsh
"Providing the club have done a proper medical and/or there's something in the contract protecting us re his shoulder giving up, this is an excellent signing. The bloke scores goals. He wants to score goals. He is involved in the game. Then there's the longer term look that he's young, career on the up and we are now the biggest club he's played for...we're his gateway to success so he should give everything he's got.” Hunter Hoop
Very happy with this signing. Like Simpson, he is another party animal so not sure how he fits the "good lads" ethos that Harry bleats on about but I don’t actually care because, like Simpson, he is a very good player at this level. I'm convinced he will go on to score lots of goals and am sure that after all of our transfer mistakes, we would be very happy with the medical. I suddenly feel all positive and feel like we have a chance of having the division’s top scorer. Ranger78
An oft-used phrase on LFW during QPR’s most recent ill-fated stint in the Premier League was that Rangers weren’t very good, and weren’t very lucky. Rarely did they reach the standard necessary to win games in the top flight — four times in 2012/13 and only ten the year before — but on odd occasions they managed it only to be conned out of matches.
Shaun Wright-Phillips had a perfectly good goal disallowed against West Brom that would have given the R’s a win had it been awarded. Joey Barton was sent off while the R’s were leading a home game with Norwich for an incident neither the referee nor the linesman had actually seen. Victory in either and perhaps Neil Warnock wouldn’t have been sacked when he was. Perhaps he’d have strengthened the team sufficiently in January as he promised. Perhaps we’d have been spared the horrors of Mark Hughes’ reign altogether. Then there was Clint Hill’s ghost goal at Bolton and Shaun Derry’s scandalous sending off at Old Trafford.
What QPR have done by completing the signing of Charlie Austin today is dip their toe back in the water to see if their luck is back in.
The situation is similar in many ways to the transfer of Demba Ba from West Ham to Newcastle two summers ago. Ba had scored 37 goals in 97 appearances for Bundesliga outfit Hoffenheim but infamously failed medicals with both Stuttgart and Stoke City as he attempted to move on. West Ham, relegation haunted, took a chance and were repaid with seven league goals in ten starts and two sub appearances. Stoke, facing a backlash from their own supporters, made out publicly that Ba’s knee was a ticking time bomb, held together by elastic bands and chewing gum, and capable of falling apart at any moment.
West Ham were relegated anyway freeing Ba up to move at the end of the season for no transfer fee. QPR, newly minted after Tony Fernandes’ takeover, were linked with a move. And here’s the annoying thing: Ba, as we know, went to Newcastle and scored 19 goals in 43 appearances in his first season as the Magpies almost qualified for the Champions League. Had he come to QPR they’d probably have been zipping him up in a body bag before half time in his first game.
Rangers have a dire recent history in such matters. In 1998, after a prolonged pursuit of Leicester City centre half Gerry Taggert had come to nothing, they spent the best part of £1m on Sunderland defender Richard Ord who has admitted himself since that he was very surprised to pass the medical at Loftus Road and subsequently suffered a career ending injury in a pre-season friendly at Aylesbury. Taggert meanwhile excelled up at Stoke.
Then there was Dean Sturridge. A veteran striker plagued by hamstring injuries, Sturridge was signed on a free transfer by QPR in March 2005. His former manager Jim Smith had advised the R’s to only offer a six month deal or risk the player resting on his laurels. Not only did they ignore that, but they also signed him without a medical examination at all according to chairman at the time Gianni Paladini in an interview with this website. A note from the physio at Wolves — who were desperate to be rid of the player — was as far as the checks went. He started just six games in a year and a half.
Lee Cook, Fitz Hall and Matthew Rose all passed medical examinations at Rangers despite having obvious injury issues. Even Heidar Helguson, who became a cult hero in Shepherds Bush, initially had his signing forced through against medical advice. Manager at the time Paulo Sousa was subsequently dismissed for revealing details of the medical problems Cook and Helguson both had when they arrived at the club to supporters who posted the comments onto message boards. More recently Kieron Dyer and Andy Johnson have both been signed despite long standing medical problems, and both broke down with long term injuries almost immediately. You’d think QPR would be taking less chances in this field, not more.
Nevertheless, here’s Charlie Austin, a player who would have signed for newly promoted Premier League side Hull City last month had he not failed a medical examination at the KC Stadium. The problem was initially thought to be Austin’s shoulder — three times dislocated but not a problem since the end of 2011 — but City boss Steve Bruce confirmed the issue was actually a long standing knee injury. Austin had an operation on his knee as a child — something he had forgotten about himself until it was raised by the medical staff at the KC Stadium. Hull, burnt previously by agreeing a four year £50,000 a week deal with crocked Jimmy Bullard, pulled the plug.
So how can a player fail a medical at Hull but pass one at QPR? It remains to be seen whether it’s City’s loss and Rangers’ gain, or another Johnson or Dyer-type situation where the R’s take a gamble on a player with a known issue and swiftly pay a heavy price. If he does get injured no doubt the QPR fans currently rejoicing in the signing will start slating the club and asking why they don’t do things more thoroughly when signing a player.
It’s a gamble, but then something else I find myself writing a lot on here is that if a player didn’t have something wrong with him then why would they come to QPR? Austin is just 24 and has scored prolifically, consistently for Swindon and Burnley for the last four years. Different kinds of goals — headers, long range strikes, poacher efforts — in
different situations — promotion pushes, relegation battles, midtable doss abouts.
Questions have been raised about his extra-curricular activities following a conviction for assault in a Swindon nightclub when he was found guilty of punching a Swindon fan who disturbed him in a cubicle, hunched over a toilet bowl, and accused him of taking drugs —Austin denied the drug taking allegations. And now there’s an apparent problem with his knee.
But if these problems didn’t exist then, like Gary Hooper earlier this summer, he’d have got a Premier League move and not come to QPR at all. If QPR want to sign somebody with the talent of Adel Taarabt, or somebody with Charlie Austin’s record, while they’re not in the Premier League then they have to either pay over the odds wages wise or accept the player is coming with some excess baggage. In Austin’s case it would appear to be both and while his addition, along with fellow social butterfly Danny Simpson, further discredits Harry Redknapp’s assertion that the club would be looking for the "right sort” this summer the club doesn’t really have a choice but to take such chances.
If the Hull medical issue is simply a case of the Tigers being extra cautious after the Bullard debacle then Rangers have snared a striker that should have been going to the Premier League to lead their attack in the Championship. It could be a masterstroke.
If Austin stays fit, and he behaves himself, then QPR have made a potentially very exciting signing here. He scored 28 goals in 40 appearances in a mediocre side at this level last season and unlike the last time Rangers spent big money on the second tier’s outstanding marksmen from the season before — Mike Sheron for £2.3m in July 1997 — he has been scoring consistently over a number of seasons rather than just having one hot streak.
Hopefully the only problem Rangers will have is the one Redknapp hinted at in his interviews today — supplying him with chances. If the QPR manager is as determined to ignore both Ale Faurlin and Adel Taarabt as he presently seems then it doesn’t matter if it’s Austin or anybody else playing up front. Karl Henry showed signs at Southend last week that he may have it in his locker to find a striker with a decent hold up and lay game consistently, but neither he nor any of the other midfielders in QPR’s vast collection have a glittering recent history of leading the assists charts. As it stands, the pressure is now on Shaun Wright-Phillips and Junior Hoilett to deliver from wide areas because if Austin and Johnson can be paired together in attack regularly the R’s have the ability to blow teams off the park at this level.
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Pictures — Action Images