15. Jamie Cureton

Jamie Cureton joined QPR for a fee of around £30,000 in January 2004.

Cureton had been a long term target of Ian Holloway after the Rangers manager worked with Cureton at Bristol Rovers.

Cureton was the main goalscorer at Bristol Rovers as his home town club after a spell at Norwich in the Premiership. Cureton scored 71 goals for Rovers whilst Holloway was manager and he went close to promotion back to division one before he left to join Reading.

He continued to flourish at Reading scoring over 50 goals as he helped Reading to the first division. Jamie scored in the playoff final defeat against Walsall before helping the team to promotion the following year. His goal with just eight minutes left at Brentford on the last day of the season was the clinching goal to send Reading into division one.

First team opportunities became limited at Reading so he was linked with a move to QPR for most of 2003.

As his contract ended last summer he held talks with Ian Holloway and seemed certain to link up with his old manager after turning down deals at Reading and Bristol City. Cureton though made the bizarre move to go to Korea and play for Busan in the Korean league.

It was a good move financially for him but he filed to settle and came back to England before Christmas looking for a new club.After a trial at Sunderland Ian Holloway again attempted to sign him man but the financial problems at QPR made the deal impossible.

A move to Peterborough looked likely until the Our QPR fund came in to offer the club the money raised to pay for the transfer. Holloway was ecstatic and after some long negotiating by David Davies the deal was competed before the end of the January transfer window.

Cureton got a handful of chances after his signing and grabbed a couple of goals in dramatic fashion against Port Vale. he came off the bench to give us a 2-1 lead before Vale equalised in injury time and Cureton scored seconds before the end to give us a 3-2 win.

He made several substitute appearances towards the end of the season including fifteen minutes of action in the game which promoted QPR against Sheffield Wednesday.

Much more was expected of him now when QPR gained promotion to the Coca Cola Championship but unfortunately things didn’t quit work out. An injury in pre season again kept him out of the side but some impressive displays from the bench earned him a start against Aston Villa.

Cureton was finally looking the part and grabbed a hat trick against Coventry. It has to be one of the best hat tricks I’ve seen in a long time with three brilliantly taken goals.

This should have been the cue for Cureton to show us what he can do but another injury picked up against West Ham saw him miss a couple of games. When he returned he never recaptured the form or promise he has shown that night and a red card against his old club Reading just summed up his miserable spell in West London.

His next goal came again against Coventry which had fans hoping we could play the Sky Blues every week. Sadly we couldn’t so Cureton’s goals soon dried up again.

Cureton left QPR at the end of the 2004/05 season on a free transfer.

Jamie Cureton Image Gallery