Why Derby County and Neil Warnock will share serious Aston Villa, Ollie Watkins regret | OneFootball

Both Derby County and Cardiff City missed out on a swoop for the striker

Hindsight can often prove heart-wrenching for football clubs across the land when it comes to transfers they missed out on.

So often can agents and those involved within recruitment reveal deals that so nearly happened, only for things to change at the last minute, ultimately rewriting history in the process.

Such a case involved Ollie Watkins and then-Championship duo Derby County and Cardiff City, who were both interested in acquiring his services back in the summer of 2018.

The now-Aston Villa striker had just completed an excellent season with Exeter City, scoring 16 goals and providing eight assists in all competitions.

This output primarily came from the wing, but Cardiff City boss Neil Warnock had plans to make a 21-year-old Watkins his new star striker.

Derby County were also in the hunt for his services, with Steve McClaren working on a deal for the forward months before the previous campaign had ended.

Both sides had fallen short of the play-off places during the 2016/17 season and were desperate to sign what was clearly going to be one of the EFL’s leading talents in years to come.

However, in a shock twist, neither Derby nor Cardiff would get their hands on Watkins and they have both surely lived to regret that ever since.

Both Derby County and Cardiff City missed out on Ollie Watkins swoop

Warnock has admitted that he asked Cardiff to snap up Watkins, but the club didn’t grant his wish.

The £2 million fee Exeter requested was deemed too much, and they instead decided to focus recruitment on the likes of Lee Tomlin, Danny Ward, and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing.

Tomlin was a marquee acquisition from rivals Bristol City, and Cardiff allocated those funds on the mercurial playmaker instead. The ex-Bournemouth and Middlesbrough attacking midfielder never got going under Warnock, but after being farmed out on multiple loan spells away from South Wales, would thrive during Neil Harris' time in charge and orchestrated an instrumental role in Cardiff's run to the play-offs in the 2019/20 season.

Watkins has gone on record to reveal that he was extremely close to joining Derby County, meanwhile, stating that he wanted to make the move happen but in the end, the transfer just fell through.

Instead, Brentford would be the team to snap up the exciting, young forward, for a fee of just £1.8 million.

The striker immediately began to highlight the massive mistake Derby and Cardiff had made, scoring 20 goals in his first two Championship campaigns at Griffin Park.

He went up another level the following campaign, netting 26 times for Brentford as they reached the play-off final.

Missing out on Ollie Watkins had severe consequences for Derby County and Cardiff City’s future

In the long term, failing to sign Watkins has proven to be a major blunder by these two teams.

Although Cardiff City managed to achieve promotion to the Premier League the season after missing out on the striker, they were quickly relegated back to the second-tier. The Bluebirds did not have a prolific striker until Kieffer Moore rolled around in 2020, and they will always wonder whether Watkins could have helped them to survive and consolidate in the top-flight.

Derby County drifted further and further away from the top of the Championship, soon finding themselves in League One due to a backdrop of financial mismanagement.

Watkins’ goals were crucially important for Brentford, but so was the money they received for selling him on.

After three excellent seasons, the striker was sold to Aston Villa for £30 million.

This allowed the Bees to reinvest in their squad and make the extra push to achieve promotion to the top-flight, which is where they have remained ever since. Watkins, meanwhile, has gone on to become a Premier League star at Aston Villa, where he is closing in on the 100-goal mark in more than 200 appearances and has also been a regular for the England national side.

Cardiff and Derby both would’ve benefited from Watkins’ presence on the pitch, but also the windfall he would’ve brought in following his sale.