"I'd like to think the club can plan two to three years ahead as opposed to just 12 months ahead," Matt Taylor said on BBC Sport as he talked through the money linked to Ollie Watkins and Jayden Wareham. Exeter City could earn as much as £2m from Watkins' move, and Taylor expects that to change the club's sense of what comes next.

Exeter's planning horizon

Taylor's point was about time as much as cash. He said the club had spent the last 12, maybe 24 months with uncertainty over money coming in and what it would look like when it arrived.

That uncertainty has already shaped the way Exeter have operated. They were forced to get loans for about £600,000 last year after an overspend in 2024-25, and several experienced players left in the summer after relegation from League One.

Since then, the message from Taylor has been that the club should be able to think more calmly about recruitment. "I'd like to think that January will look different for this football club. I'd like to think the following window will look different for this football club," he said.

What the Watkins money adds up to

The Watkins story is not just about one payment. Exeter will have earned about £8m in recent years from Watkins through transfer fees, sell-on clauses and add-ons, which is a serious return for a player who joined the academy aged 11 in 2007.

Watkins also played 99 times for Exeter City before moving on. That is the kind of academy outcome clubs try to build around, even if it takes years to show up properly on the balance sheet.

Taylor said he is hopeful the club will be in "a much more stable position than we have been previously," and the football side still matters here. Exeter's recent run has been mixed, with one win, one draw and three losses in their last five across cup competitions. The windfall does not remove that. It does, though, give Exeter City a better chance of making the next two windows feel less like a scramble and more like planning.

Written by Sam Whitfield with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 1 outlet. How we work →