Ollie by Ian Holloway

Author:Ian Holloway [Holloway, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906229696
Amazon: 1906229694
Publisher: G2 Entertainment
Published: 2009-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16: Dead Man Walking

I wasn’t a nice man to be around after we’d blown promotion and the house I’d built at Rovers began to fall in around me. Jamie Cureton came to see me moaning about his wages and ended up asking for a transfer. He’d finished one goal behind joint-top scorer with Jason Roberts who had won the Golden Boot for our division and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that he wanted more money, which I couldn’t really hold against him. Then Jason Roberts came round to my house with his girlfriend and we shared a nice bottle of wine. He said thanks for what I’d done for him and the next day he comes into my office, a totally different person and hands in a transfer request telling me he was never going to play for me again. Upset doesn’t quite adequately describe how I felt about that little episode. I’d had meeting after meeting with his dad, his uncle Cyril and his uncle Otis and they were talking about his future and his affairs. Jason had two years to go and Curo had three years left on his contract so Geoff Dunford tells me that he has no intention of giving Curo a rise, but he was prepared to try and sort something out for Roberts. We made him an offer which would have made him easily the best paid player we’d ever had, but he turned it down flat. We had a pre-season trip to Ireland coming up so I called in Curo and Roberts separately and told them they weren’t going on tour with us. I took Nathan Ellington and Bobby Zamora instead and I was fully intending to work with those two because I didn’t want anyone who wanted away near the other lads. Bobby Zamora was tripped in our first friendly, fell awkwardly and – unbeknown to us – he’d broken a bone in his wrist and consequently didn’t do very well because he couldn’t hold people off. On my return, the chairman asked how Bobby had done because he’d heard he was “rubbish”, which annoyed me no end because he’d obviously been fed misleading information by a board member on tour with us. Bobby still wanted more money, too, which the board would never sanction and as he was out of contract, Brighton came back in for him and offered £100,000, which the club predictably accepted. I could see his potential but the chairman was worried about the Bosman ruling and so Bobby was allowed to move on with a 35% sell-on clause.

Two clubs were fighting over Jason Roberts and he was adamant he wouldn’t play for us again to the point of arrogance. It wasn’t the same young man I’d got to know quite well during the previous two years but I felt he was being influenced by outside parties. Eventually he left for West Brom who paid £2m for him. I didn’t feel he was mentally ready to leave us, but he did.

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