Charlie Austin: one great season, and the long road home

The season that announced him

Austin's breakthrough came in 2014–15, his first full season of Premier League football after QPR won promotion through the play-offs. He scored 18 goals that term, finishing as the fourth-highest scorer in the entire division, a remarkable return for a club that ultimately finished bottom and went straight back down. In December 2014 alone he scored five goals in five games, a run of form that earned him the Premier League Player of the Month award, only the second QPR player ever to win it. A month earlier he'd scored his first Premier League hat-trick, in a 3–2 win over West Bromwich Albion, becoming the first QPR player in over a decade to manage one. On the back of that form, England came calling: Austin was named in the senior squad in May 2015 for a friendly against the Republic of Ireland and a Euro 2016 qualifier against Slovenia, called up alongside Jamie Vardy as cover while other forwards were away at the European Under-21 Championship. He didn't play in either match, and that solitary call-up remains the high point of his international recognition.

It wasn't a fluke built on nothing, Austin had already scored 58 goals in 113 Championship appearances for Burnley and QPR before his top-flight debut, and at Burnley he'd broken club scoring records dating back to before the First World War. But 2014–15 was the season everything aligned: the goals, the form, the stage, the recognition.

What came after

QPR's relegation meant Austin needed a platform to kick on, and in January 2016 Southampton paid £4 million for him. He marked his debut with a stoppage-time winner against Manchester United, and the following season he strung together a run of four goals in a week. But an injury-hit spell at Southampton, including a hamstring problem sustained against Huddersfield that also led to a three-match violent conduct ban, meant he never became a fixture there in the way that 2014–15 season had promised.

From there, the career gradually wound backwards down the divisions rather than forwards. He moved to West Bromwich Albion in 2019, top-scoring for them as they won promotion back to the Premier League, then returned to QPR on loan and later permanently, but couldn't hold down enough appearances to extend his contract. In 2022 he tried Australia, signing for Brisbane Roar, only to leave after six months citing family reasons, having scored four goals in 11 appearances. He went back to Swindon Town, the club that gave him his professional start, for an injury-interrupted spell including a four-goal game against Rochdale, before being released in 2024.

Since then, Austin has returned to the non-league football he came from: a season at AFC Totton, a short and injury-ended stint at Basingstoke Town, and now, as of November 2025, Hungerford Town, the club in his home town where his career as a teenager once stalled before it had properly begun. The circle, in effect, has closed.