Guest Blog: What next for QPR?

Welcome to the first of our Guest Blogs.

With just a week since the match that’s worth £1m a minute we’ve turned our attention to the “Richest Club in the World“, QPR. What’s next for the club? Where will its owners take it and who will be in charge, in the long-term? QPR fan, Mark Perkins, reports.

What next for QPR?

The most beautiful three words in the language are not ‘I love you’, but, as anyone in W12 will tell you, ‘No points deduction’. The delivery of those three words confirmed QPR’s promotion to the Premier League, provoked tears and hysteria from Shepherds Bush to as far afield as Neasden and ended a painful saga that didn’t begin with the Faurlin affair but some 15 years before.

When QPR bowed out of the Premier League in May 1996, Ray Wilkins was still in the starting line-up, John Major was Prime Minister, the Spice Girls had yet to break into the pop charts, and the club vowed to swiftly return.

That swift return has taken 15 years and along the way included: spells of administration; winding up petitions from the HMRC; fans with collection buckets on match days to raise funds to save the club; an aborted merger with Wimbledon; a ditched move to Milton Keynes (a fate that befell the latter); relegation and several wilderness seasons in League One; and being knocked out of the FA Cup 1^st Round at home to Vauxhall Motors, as part of a whole heap of steaming ignominy along the way.

After the takeover by Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone with investment from Lakshmi Mittal in 2007, QPR suddenly found themselves going from the imminent threat of liquidation to ‘the world’s richest club’ and, after 13 managers and a relegation scare the previous season, have now returned to the promised land. Yet after a couple of weeks basking in the glory of promotion as champions, many fans remain gloomy about the long-term prospects for the club. Below, I explore a few reasons why…

The Manager

When Neil Warnock took on the job in March 2010 he came to a club in a mess: QPR were 20^th in the Championship; the team had won 1 in 15 matches; players on big salaries played with body language suggesting they’d rather be elsewhere; the fans were on their backs; Adel Taarabt (then on loan from Spurs) had been written off by each of that season’s three previous managers (Jim Magilton, Paul Hart and Mick Harford) as a self-indulgent show pony and benched. The atmosphere was grim.

Warnock has worked nothing short of a miracle. Yet this wasn’t a miracle, it was old-school Yorkshire management: everyone got a rollocking, a kick up the backside, was told to pull their weight and those who didn’t were quickly shipped out. In their place came thirtysomething journeymen players such as Paddy Kenny, Clint Hill and Sean Derry. Yet there was another, unexpected side to Warnock when it came to what to do with the Moroccan prima-donna on the bench. Warnock signed Taarabt for £1m against everyone’s advice, got inside his head, put his arm round him, indulged him, made him captain, turned him into the Championship’s Player of the Season worth £10m, and QPR went up as Champions.

The fans love Warnock for what he has achieved, yet with Flavio Briatore having re-asserted his considerable girth in the boardroom, his position is always going to be in doubt. Briatore likes to have his say in team affairs so conflict is inevitable. Furthermore Warnock’s face, quite literally, doesn’t fit with Flavio’s ideal of a ‘boutique’ football club. Briatore wants a ‘name’ and a ‘face’ that everyone knows to bring glamour to W12. Already there are rumours of Marcello Lippi or Carlo Ancelloti, but should these figures not be tempted, I wouldn’t rule out Peter Andre getting the job by Christmas.

The Squad

The squad in its current form is simply not good enough to stay up without major investment. The players have been a credit to Warnock, the Championship and to the club, but the squad is desperately short of Premier League experience and, to be blunt, quality. QPR fans agree that only Taarabt, Faurlin, Kenny and possibly Derry – who will be 33 next season – can do the business week in week out.

With the finish line in sight Rangers limped over. In an away game at a Scunthorpe team that’d been on a dreadful goalless, losing run, a full-strength QPR minus Taarabt lost 4-1 – and that’s where part of the problem lies. The entire team and formation revolves around Taarabt, ably supported by the excellent Faurlin and Derry to mop up and get the ball to the Moroccan maestro. If Taarabt is having an off day, however, which can invariably lead to a petulant sulk, everything tends to fall apart.

This is not to say QPR are a one man team. Keeper Paddy Kenny kept a record 24 clean sheets, ably supported by a committed defence. A worry though in the second half of the season was how individual defenders suffered massive losses of form (and in some cases confidence) that have raised questions about their suitability for the Premier League.

The other problem is firepower. The team is crying out for a proven goal scorer or two and it’s unlikely that any of our three strikers who finished the season – Helguson, Agyemeng and Hulse – will be offered new contracts, given their injuries, ages and scoring form.  Jamie Mackie, signed for a nominal fee from Plymouth, had a spectacular burst of goals at the beginning of the season, went through a long barren spell, then broke a leg, so it remains to be seen what he can do up against the likes of Vidic and Terry.

How we’ll add to the squad remains to be seen and comes down to Warnock’s nous and Bernie and Flavio opening the chequebook, now that the Mittals have withdrawn their financial support (if not their holding). Current names bandied about include Bassong, Jenas and Keane from Spurs and Danny Graham from Watford. The News of the World has linked us with Nick Montgomery from Sheffield United. This writer expects that this prediction is more in line with the budget Warnock will be given than is Jenas.

The Fans

In ‘1984’ George Orwell presented a vision of the future as ‘a jack boot stamping on a human face for all eternity’. That was mostly what going to QPR was like every other Saturday. As the opposition celebrated another away goal the silence in the home end would only be punctured by the sounds of small children pleading to their dad to taken home and the occasional erupting psychopath. A punch-up between two home fans was not an uncommon spectacle. A loser of one such punch up landed in my lap once.

That was until Amit Bhatia became Chairman, immediately appointed Warnock and then this season happened. Suddenly going to games was now like going to Woodstock with no one touching the brown acid. The fans were as one, delirious, often shaking their heads and embracing, and eyes moistened in disbelief at the change of events. It was our moment.  We were winning and we were stable for the first time in decades.

The truth of any football club these days is that the mood and optimism of the fans is inextricably linked to the people running that club. The warm glow of going up as Champions and the club celebrating in a mass of blue and white on live TV was wiped out by the fallout over an inexplicable 40% increase in season ticket prices as well a boardroom war, with the Mittals withdrawing their considerable financial support in protest, having been rebuffed in their attempt to take the club off Bernie and Flavio’s hands.

Normal service was resumed on the radio phone-ins with ‘John the Cabbie’ in White City and Nodge from Acton complaining about how we were a laughing stock again and the fans treated with contempt. In Amit Bhatia, Mittal’s son-in-law and now ex-Chairman, we had a young man who backed the manager, attended away matches with the fans, led and participated in numerous community and charity projects and had a long-term vision shared with the supporters. It was a club, not a ‘brand’, nor that most loathsome word du jour: ‘project’.

To give Briatore and Ecclestone their credit they’ve never even pretended to court the fans or lowered themselves to any PR efforts to do so. Ecclestone recently said he was a Chelsea fan and couldn’t name a single QPR player apart from Taarabt, and Briatore says he doesn’t care what the fans think. The brief chat on message boards about going to Old Trafford and Anfield has swiftly been replaced by woe and how to get Amit back. As usual at QPR, the focus this summer will remain firmly off the pitch.

A cracking first Guest Blog but what do you think of the above? What’s best for QPR next season and the next and the next? Let us know your thoughts below or you can tweet at our first guest blogger @normanmonkey.

George – Editor-in-Chief – Villa Fan – @gwoffer