Our protagonist, Joe Rothwell, was born on a cool winter’s day in the year 1995, precisely on the 11th of January for those of you with a penchant for precision. While you and I were rightly sipping tea and eating Digestive biscuits on that day, Mr Rothwell was busy being born. Today, he plays his trade as a central midfielder, primarily because that's what his job description as a midfielder dictates and not because he has a fondness for the middle of a football pitch. He does his thing for Rangers in Scotland, not Celtic but we can’t all make good life choices, can we? Right, moving on. In terms of the old height/weight ratio, the lad stands tall at about 6ft (or 1.85m for those of you who prefer a more continental approach to measurements) and weighs a respectable 12st 1lb (or a more civilised 77kg in the metric world).
If you're one for numbers, our boy Joe allegedly clocks in a market value of around £1.3m, or so says the good folks at Transfermarkt. Of course, this could just be a figure plucked out of the clear blue sky, but who are we to argue with the internet?
Cast your mind back to July 2001, a time when Rothwell was just a wee lad trying to make it in that big, scary football world. It was in this month that our good friend Joe joined Manchester United as a trainee. Must have been quite the learning experience, one can only assume. After training and suchlike, he eventually moved onto Blackpool for a loan spell in January 2015, where he made all of three appearances. A monumental achievement indeed. Following a rather uneventful spell at Barnsley, he transferred permanently to Championship club Oxford United in July 2016.
Then, after bouncing around clubs like a desperate pinball, Rothwell found himself at Blackburn Rovers in July 2018 - transferred for an undisclosed fee no less. This cryptic fee saw him playing his socks off across multiple seasons, scoring a rather unremarkable 10 goals across 149 matches all up. Quite the feat, or perhaps not.
The year 2022 brought about new pastures for our lad Rothwell, as he transferred to Bournemouth for a while, made a smattering of appearances, then took a leisurely loan to Southampton, and then another to Leeds United, for good measure you understand. During his time at Southampton, Rothwell appeared to rediscover some semblance of his scoring ability, netting four goals in 16 appearances - a veritable goalscoring frenzy by his standards.
And finally, here we are in 2025, where Rothwell has seemingly landed at Rangers for an "undisclosed fee." A phrase which I suspect is code for 'a fee we'd rather not disclose, lest people question our judgement.' So far, he's made a total of eight appearances for Rangers, a tally that I'm sure is set to skyrocket at any moment. Really, any moment now.
Our dear Rothwell wasn’t just twiddling his thumbs at Rangers, he engaged, really engaged I tell you, in League Cup actions, Champions League Qualifiers and even missed out on a couple of Europa League clashes as a substitute. The boy sure gets around.
But there we have it, the thrilling tale of one Joe Rothwell, mediocrity personified in footballing form.
