Ollie Watkins

Jason H said:

Hamer was never ours, of course, but Jones left then too.

I do have to take issue with this somewhat though. Taylor and Harley in particular, as two of the key spine members of the side, were essentially on non-league wages. To replace them adequately with L1-standard players we'd have had to pay L1 wages, which would have decimated our budget. Hence replacing Matt Taylor we had, er, Danny Coles. Yay. Cureton would have been on a decent wage but even then we signed him from L2 Shrewsbury (where he had been an abject failure), and unfortunately also 20 goal strikers don't grow on trees, we'd have had to either sign someone else's cast-offs (and clubs don't "cast off" 20 goal strikers) or spend a hefty fee in getting an untried at league level striker.

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Re the non league wages I would be interested to know when each player signed a contract. Harley was with us for four seasons I believe so would have not have signed his last deal when we were a league club as I didn't think we tended to offer more than two year deals. Ditto for Taylor who was with us for at least the same amount. Jones had been with us for even longer so the same applies, and cureton must have been on something that could have attracted better than we got?

We were getting decent crowds back then, I do agree that 8th in league one would have been probably punching above our weight but don't think we neccesarily should have gone from there to going down so badly. Would have at least expected us to end up around 16th to 20th and if we did go down to battle all the way to the wire. I think it is fair to have some criticism for the recruitment during that season. We may have had some bad luck as well but some of the stuff appeared to be panic and desperation.

Meanwhile back on thread, I hope someone has had the sense to lock Ollie up, somewhere out of the way at the Cat n Fiddle, until this evening !

Mansfield have signed Alex MacDonald from Oxford. Is that the end of their interest in Ollie?

Hants_red said:

Mansfield have signed Alex MacDonald from Oxford. Is that the end of their interest in Ollie?

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Evans said yesterday (presumably) about Ollie.

"We haven’t dropped our interest but I think the big deal is more than we are prepared to pay. And it’s a lot more. Our chairman said to me, let’s establish if it’s more or a lot more, and it’s a lot more"

Grecian O'Grecian said:

Evans said yesterday (presumably) about Ollie.

"We haven’t dropped our interest but I think the big deal is more than we are prepared to pay. And it’s a lot more. Our chairman said to me, let’s establish if it’s more or a lot more, and it’s a lot more"

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To which we replied "You don't say".

Bristol Rovers have (more) cash in the bank and the need for a goalscorer after Matt Taylor jumped ship across Bristol to Ashton Gate.

He will be stuck in traffic, but where is Ollie Watkins - heading up the M5 for a medical?

Exe on Valdez said:

Bristol Rovers have (more) cash in the bank and the need for a goalscorer after Matt Taylor jumped ship across Bristol to Ashton Gate.

He will be stuck in traffic, but where is Ollie Watkins - heading up the M5 for a medical?

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We've already binned that thread.

Rovers will be going **** for **** by signing the irascible Ricky Miller from Dover.

Miller fits the bill with the goalscoring, but then so does Ollie.

But how much have Rovers got, as it's down as undisclosed, and how much are the Rovers board going to release of that for a replacement. A couple of million and not enough to get hold of Ollie is my guess who, let's be honest, has bigger fish keeping an eye on him so why would he want to go only as far as The Gas.

The amount doing the rounds that rovers got was 300K