Finally, some transfer news to convey with City, seemingly, on the brink of announcing the arrival of two players, both of whom I’d rate at a higher level than I was expecting from us this summer.
The first one to emerge was QPR forward Chris Willock who was strongly linked with City on Wednesday. The rumour gathered pace an hour or two later when QPR confirmed that Willock had left the club after his contract had expired and talks about him renewing his deal had failed to reach a positive conclusion.
After that, the links with City only grew stronger and major outlets like the BBC were soon reporting that it was, to all intents and purposes, a done deal. Given that Erol Bulut has also talked about what he thought Willock can bring to his team, it’s clear that the deal is definitely on, but, surprisingly, it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
Willock is twenty six and can play on both wings or as an attacking central midfielder. As is the case with most signings City, as a Championship club, make, there is an element of risk involved in the transfer. Willock has a patchy fitness record and his figures in terms of goals scored and created have not been as good as they were in the first half of his four years with the Shepherd’s Bush club.
However, this drop in output came from a very high peak. In 21/22, Willock scored seven times and provided an assist for another eleven in his thirty five appearances for QPR and he and Ilias Chair were regarded as being among the Championship’s most creative attacking midfield pairings.
Willock started his career with Arsenal and gained some first team experience with them when playing in the League Cup – also making an impression on Arsene Wenger to the extent that the former Gunners manager described him as a “very interesting” player. Willock signed for Benfica after leaving Arsenal, but played only B team football for the Portuguese team over the next three seasons, while also being kept waiting for a first team start while with West Brom on loan. Ironically, when Willock did play some senior football during another loan spell, at Huddersfield, one of the two goals he scored for the Yorkshire team came against the Baggies.
Willock signed for QPR for a reported fee of £750,000 in October 2020 and his first goal came against us in a 1-0 win for QPR at Cardiff City Stadium three months later in what was Neil Harris’ last game as City manager. Willock played a total of 144 games for QPR (40 of them as a sub) in all competitions and scored 20 times for them.
The obligatory highlights video for Willock is impressive and, notwithstanding that injury record and his drop in output recently, I think it’s fair to say that, this time at least, the talk that City have beaten a few other interested clubs to capture a player’s signature has some truth in it.
Back in 2014, Calum Chambers was 19 years old and winning his 3 England caps while also earning a big money move from Southampton to Arsenal. Obviously, the fact that he looks to be signing for a Championship side before he has turned 30 suggests that things have not quite gone as predicted for Chambers since then, but, if he does sign for us (he was reportedly taking a medical yesterday), it will be the first time he has played outside the Premier League in his career.
Chambers started out with Southampton, but only played just over twenty matches for them before signing for Arsenal where he played around 120 times in all competitions over a period of eight years. There were a couple of loan moves for him during this time, both for seasons with sides that ended up being relegated -Middlesbrough in 17/18 and then he spent the next season at Fulham.
It was during his spell at Craven Cottage that the game i remember most from his career was played. Chambers started at right back at Cardiff City Stadium in October 2018 and Josh Murphy gave him a very torrid afternoon in a match which we ended up winning 4-2 – I say a torrid afternoon, but in. fact it only lasted twenty six minutes for him as he was withdrawn. The early change was described as being down to injury at the time, but there were plenty present that day, who will always believe that it was down to Fulham throwing the towel in so to speak in that particular contest.
I should say here that, even if Chambers’ withdrawal that afternoon was tactical, he recovered to the extent that, while best known for playing centreback or right back, his switch to a central midfield role for the rest of that season saw him winning Fulham’s Player of the Season award for a side that finished below as both teams dropped back into the Championship.
Chambers left Arsenal in January 2022 to sign for Aston Villa on a free transfer and had played for them thirty times by the end of 23/24. Back in January, Villa manager Unai Emery said Chambers was free to leave the club and, apparently, we were interested in taking him on then, only for him to opt to stay and fight for a first team place – an injury crisis meant that Chambers was able to get back into first team contention at Villa for the closing games of the season.
Again, there are questions which arise with a signing like this, because it seems pretty clear now that Chambers will never hit the sort of heights that were being predicted for him a decade ago, but I go back to that stat about him having played all of his career in the Premier League – for me, it’s a compelling argument when it comes to this signing. While the fact Chambers only made five appearances for Villa last season suggests that now is the right time fot that proud record to end, you’d like to think that, even if he is not the player he once was, he would still fall into the category of a good Championship performer.
It seems that there could be a third newcomer announced in the next day ro two, but, sticking with the two that would appear to be signing for us, a common connection between them is Arsenal – Aaron Ramsey may not have had the hoped for impact on the pitch last season and, at the moment, it’s hard to see him doing so in 24/25 either, but I wonder if he has played a part in attracting Chris Willock and Calum Chambers to the club?
Meanwhile, the first team have begun their warm up games. Bath City were beaten 5-1 in a behind closed doors game last Saturday with Kion Etete (2), Yakou Meite, David Turnbull with a penalty and Dimitri Goutas scoring the goals, but there was a 1-0 defeat at Leckwith to Kidderminster Harriers in the first open to the public match on Wednesday evening.
Ramsey (who was at Wimbledon), Horvarth, Ng, Romeo, Collins, O’Dowda, King and Etete were among the players missing for various reasons from the Kidderminster game which, like so many early pre season friendly encounters, was in reality two matches of forty five minutes with both teams making eleven changes at half time.
In many ways, the game(s) was like so many we’ve seen at Cardiff City Stadium in the last four years with the away side scoring before half time and then hanging on to their 1-0 lead in the face of not very effective Cardiff pressure through the second period. City had their best attacking moments while it was still 0-0, but, Isaak Davies missed the sort of chance I’d back him to score from 8 times out of 10 because of a poor first touch after being put through by Rubin Colwill and it was the full Wales international who came closest to scoring with a shot from 18 yards which hit the upright.
The only goal came in the minute before half time when Jak Alnwick made a good save to keep out a close range Kidderminster header and the ball then rebounded off Joel Colwill (who made a decent first of playing at right back overall) and trickled into the net.
On the balance of play, City were unlucky to lose. They probably deserved to win actually and I’m not going to get too worked up about the outcome, but what I would say is that, no matter what the excuses, we should really be beating a team from four levels below ua and the lack of an any real sort of end product for the vast majority of the ninety minutes was disappointing given who we were playing against.
I’ll finish by noting that there are two more matches being played on the trip to Austria which will start in just under a week’s time – on 25 July we’ll be playing another Bundesliga 2 team in Hertha Berlin and two days before that, we’ll face Mamelodi Sundowns, the South African Champions on the 23rd.
