Just because he’ll have been on low wages by their standards & was a free agent. They probably saw him as a low cost squad player.
This might be controversial but I don’t think any of Cole, McAtee & Norwood were that good. I think all three were pretty average league one forwards. McAtee was a younger lad so has the potential to develop more but I didn’t watch any of them & think I was watching a quality player. They all scored goals but I believe they had an excellent midfield & wing backs supplying them & that most half decent league one strikers would have scored a relatively similar amount of goals with Williams, Phillips, Connell, Kane & Cadden supplying them. During that period I definitely felt like our forwards were the weakest part of the side (at least until Anderson & Kitching were sold).