We did want Ferdinand

Last updated : 13 January 2005 By Tony Scholes

Name after name has been mentioned and provided a player has scored a few goals at any level of the Football League in the last two or three years then he has probably been included.

Some have been a nonsense, some intriguing, and some where you just thought there might be something in it. One that fell into the latter group was Les Ferdinand who had landed in the north west at Bolton during the summer.

The former international had worked with Steve Cotterill during last season and had been linked with us even before he moved to Horwich and the Reebok Stadium. That speculation continued when he didn’t win a place in Sam Allardyce’s team and only seemed to die down when it looked as though he was going to sign for QPR (his first league club) on loan just before we played them in October.

The player seemed keen and intimated that he would like to move back down south and that is exactly what he did recently and signed for Reading until the end of the season and he will make his league debut for them at the Turf this weekend.

That was one name we could cross off the list, as another dozen or so get added, but in his case it wasn’t just speculation with Steve Cotterill finally confirming today that he tried to sign him.

There was little chance of getting him though as Steve confirmed, “I spoke to Les but I think we would certainly not have been able to offer him what Reading could and the other thing was, I know he wanted to get back down south.

“I spoke to him three or four times after speaking to Big Sam, but if we had started to get into the financial situation we would have been blown out of the water. It will be good to see him on Saturday though, but we don’t want him to be too lively.”