I’M HAPPY TO STAY, BUT I CAN STILL GET BIG MOVE
Charlie Austin’s vow...
BEFORE Charlie Austin can begin, he wants to apologise. He has arrived a little late for our meeting and feels obliged to offer an explanation.
Had he blamed the slow-moving roads of leafy west London there would have been no need to doubt, but Austin wants to give the true reason: his horse, Cautious Optimism, had finished second in the 2pm at Lingfield and he wanted to watch the race before settling down.
His honesty is admirable but over the next half-hour it becomes apparent that transparency and straight talking are two of his main qualities. No subject is off-limits as he discusses why, after the transfer window closed, he is still a Queens Park Rangers player.
It was widely assumed all summer that Austin would leave Loftus Road. Having scored 18 goals during his first Barclays Premier League campaign and been called up to the England squad, there was plenty of interest in a player QPR valued at £15million.
Yet nothing materialised. Even on deadline day, no club reached an agreement with QPR. By then, Austin had decided he would stay. Surely there must be some sense of regret? The response is blunt.
‘I’m not disappointed,’ says Austin. ‘It’s a decision I’ve taken, with my family and agent. If the move happened it was going to be big, but it wasn’t something I was going to rush into.
‘I spoke to Les Ferdinand (QPR’s director of football) and told him if the move was not right then I wasn’t going. But I also knew he had to do everything to get the best for QPR. I told him if I was here on September 2, I’d be giving 100 per cent to help the club get promotion. That is the goal now.’
Clearly, Austin, who has 12 months remaining on his contract, is content but that hasn’t always been the case recently. The speculation, which even involved the odds on him joining Manchester United being slashed, took a toll, never more so than on August 8. QPR had just suffered a chastening return to life in the Championship, losing 2- 0 to Charlton at The Valley. Austin, feeling the effects of a pre- season disrupted by a minor groin injury, had not played well and the situation was beginning to take its toll. ‘I was thinking, “Do I try and push this move through or do I sit tight?”, so it became very hard,’ he says. ‘ After the Charlton game that was tough. Really tough. I said to my agent and my dad, “I don’t know if I can do this”. I wasn’t at 100 per cent, mentally or physically. I didn’t think I could do it. I was just thinking, “I want to play in the Premier League now”.
‘That is where I wanted to be after that game. It would have been easy for me to say to my agent, “I want out, let’s get the ball rolling”, but I had to be mentally strong and stick to what I wanted to do. I have made the right decision.’
So why not try to force the issue by slapping in a transfer request? If clubs were reluctant to meet QPR’s asking price and a slog in the Championship was initially unappealing, what held him back?
‘I did it at Swindon and I regretted it,’ comes the reply. ‘I got my move (to Burnley in January 2011) but regretted it. I turned all the Swindon fans and everyone on me and I put doubt into my teammates’ minds. I didn’t like that. It was a mistake I have learned from.’
To make matters worse, there were the comments by David Sullivan, West Ham’s chairman, that ‘they say he has no ligaments in his knees’. Austin called it an outrageous slur and his brow furrows as the topic is revisited.
‘It just felt like he was coming for me,’ says Austin, whose only long lay-off in the past four years has been with a dislocated shoulder. ‘I know he said it wasn’t an attack on me but sitting on the other side of the fence that is what it felt like. It hurt.’
Austin married his long-term partner, Bianca, in the summer and off-field stability is showing up in his game. He has scored four goals in five games and has his eye on repeating a feat of three years ago. In November 2012, a header for Burnley against Leeds saw him become the first striker in Europe to reach 20 goals and he wants to do the same again.
Austin knows that staying in the Championship may jeopardise his chances of going to Euro 2016 but should he be as prolific as he has been in recent seasons, the move that never materialised this summer will not be far away.
‘I suppose that is a question everyone would want to ask me but that would not have been in my thinking if I had moved to the Premier League,’ says Austin. ‘It’s got nothing to do with getting on a plane to France.
‘I’ve jumped through brick walls all the way. I would like to think now that I am back in the Championship this is just another hurdle to show where it is at. My dream is getting the right move for me and my family.’