QPR maintained their Premiership status by the skin of their teeth in 2011/12, but must learn from their mistakes if they’re to avoid similar terror next term.
It was mighty close, but QPR have completed an important second phase of a three step programme towards Premiership consolidation by avoiding relegation this year. Promotion was part one, staying up in the first season is part two, staying up next season is part three and thereafter, by and large, we’d only have ourselves to blame for letting our top flight status slip.
You see while we’ve been gone, the turkeys downstairs have voted for Christmas. The Championship clubs we left behind have, very nobly, approved stringent financial fair play rules that will come into effect next season. They will, as I understand them, place heavy financial penalties on any team winning promotion from the Championship while spending above their annual turnover. Fines will only be levied against sides that break the rules and win promotion, so as not to financially cripple clubs that gamble on reaching the big time and lose, and The Telegraph reports that our club would have been fined £15m for recording a £25.3m loss in our title winning season. Any money accumulated through fines will be redistributed to compliant clubs to spend on youth academies and such like.
This is all very worthy indeed, and long overdue. The problem it creates though is a fairly obvious one: it’s going to severely hamper the promoted clubs until you can get the Premiership to agree to a similar system.
QPR, according to Sporting Intelligence, took home £43m last season in television money alone. Prize money, sponsorships, ticket sales, merchandising etc etc etc all goes on top of that. To go from competing in a Championship league on a Championship turnover, even if you are overspending on it, into one where teams are earning this sort of money is difficult enough as it is – although given all three teams survived this season not as difficult as some would have you believe. To go from being forced to spend within a Championship turnover into a league where teams are given up to £90m a season and can spend over and above that as they wish will be nigh on impossible for most. Teams will either have to budget in the enormous fine and ignore the rules, or yo-yo between the divisions multiple times and accumulate money for a concerted push years down the line.
These rules, if applied strictly, will, in my opinion, create a situation within three years where the three newly promoted teams are almost certain to be relegated immediately each season and within six years people will be seriously discussing abolishing promotion and relegation altogether. This year’s trio – Southampton, Reading and West Ham – will represent the last of the genuinely competitive promoted clubs and Sam Allardyce said as much after the Hammers’ victory at Wembley last week.
Therefore QPR must remain above the dotted line for one more season. They can help themselves in this aim by taking on board the following lessons from the season just gone…
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. This time last year I can recall happily tapping away that QPR had built a Championship team to win the Championship and would now need to completely dismantle it and start all over again with a new set of players for the Premiership. People like Shaun Derry, Clint Hill and Jamie Mackie had surprised me the previous season, contributing to a wonderful success despite few fans being overly enamoured with their signings initially, but I believed the Premiership would definitely be beyond them.
It seemed Neil Warnock agreed. If anybody was going to support the cause of those players - particularly people like Hill, Derry and Paddy Kenny - it was surely Warnock who had signed them on more than one occasion before and knew them inside out. He believed that Kieron Dyer, Danny Gabbidon, Jay Bothroyd, DJ Campbell and Bruno Perone were better bets and then, when new money arrived, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Joey Barton, Anton Ferdinand, Jason Puncheon and others. Initially it seemed he was right, and Rangers quickly recovered from poor defeats against Wigan and Bolton with the old guard in place to record impressive performances and results against Wolves and Newcastle with only really Ale Faurlin and Paddy Kenny holding down regular places. But as the going got tough, the new boys stopped performing and started acting up.
Heidar Helguson was first to come back into the picture. Unbelievably behind even Patrick Agyemang in the pecking order in August, he returned with a goal against Blackburn and quickly notched nine by January when sadly injury curtailed his impact. Clint Hill was loaned out to Nottingham Forest by Warnock and finished up as the QPR Player of the Year. Warnock, in fairness, did have enough faith in Jamie Mackie to include him in the 25-man squad while injured but picked Wright-Phillips ahead of him most of the time. Slowly as the season went on Warnock, and then later Hughes, returned to the old guard that had won the Championship the previous season – Hill, Derry, Mackie, Helguson, Adel Taarabt – and they were the star performers in an unlikely escape bid.
We’d do well to remember that this summer. There is no need for another six or seven new signings, the basis of a very good starting 11 is here already and extremely committed to the cause.
QPR had a league record equalling nine red cards this season, two of them going to our captain Joey Barton who also picked up ten yellows along the way. Yet according to Opta QPR were also the most fouled team in the Premiership, and only Newcastle’s Jonas Guttierez (86) was sinned against more than Barton (60). This tells me something I already knew; QPR are a naïve team, rather than a dirty one.
The incident that sticks in my mind on this topic comes from the Manchester City home match when Jamie Mackie burst forwards into the Loft End penalty area past Stefan Savic who was enduring a torrid afternoon at the hands of a high tempo, hard working Rangers attack. Savic lunged out his leg as Mackie skirted past him right under the nose of referee Martin Atkinson. Was it a foul? No. Would it have been given as a penalty had Mackie gone down? Almost certainly. We’d have drawn that game had Helguson converted the spot kick.
Now, personally, this makes me love Jamie Mackie even more than I already do. After the match Warnock told him he should have gone down and Mackie told him “I don’t really know how to boss.” It also makes me proud of our little club, that it stuck it to the big boys and stayed in the league while refusing to engage in the flagrant cheating that blights our top division.
However, I’m getting rather tired of watching our honest team play within the spirit of the game while others flout it to our disadvantage. The circle jerk around Norwich City this season never once stopped spunking for a moment to recognise that people like Grant Holt and Bradley Johnson persistently engage in gamesmanship to win free kicks, penalties and sendings off for the other team. This is something nobody at QPR apart from Taarabt and Helguson seem capable of doing, and even they don’t do it very well.
Let’s take Joey Barton’s two reds for instance. Imagine how different life might have been for QPR, and Barton in particular, had he collapsed to the ground clutching the back of his leg when Johnson ran behind him and deliberately kicked him in the calf muscle during the January meeting between QPR and Norwich at Loftus Road. QPR were on the attack and might have gone onto score, or referee Neil Swarbrick and linesman Dave Richardson may actually have seen it and sent Johnson off. Likewise at Man City on the final day, where Barton could easily have collapsed to the floor holding his head when Carlos Tevez struck him off the ball. QPR could have found themselves 1-0 up and playing ten men against Norwich, and level at 1-1 playing ten very nervous City players at Eastlands. Instead Barton stayed on his feet and retaliated and was sent off himself on both occasions.
Djibril Cisse was sent off against Wolves for getting straight up after a horrendous tackle and grabbing the perpetrator by the throat. Had he stayed down clutching his leg and screaming perhaps Roger Johnson would have been sampling the early bath water instead. We’d have been 1-0 up and dominating against either ten men or 11 men with a notoriously rash centre half on a booking. Instead we were the ones punished and went on to lose to a relegation rival.
Aston Villa and Chelsea have both taken positive results from Loftus Road this season thanks to players diving in our penalty area to win spot kicks. I can only recall Helguson falling theatrically in similar circumstances against Chelsea in the league game and even then he was fouled, whereas Barry Bannan and Daniel Sturridge certainly weren’t.
I’m not, quite, advocating cheating here. Merely suggesting we could do with being a little bit wiser to the darker arts of the Premier League.
Along similar lines, for every lousy penalty decision or Bob Pollock nightmare that went against us this season I can recall at least two gilt edged chances missed by our players. West Brom, Aston Villa and Newcastle at home should all have been comfortable wins and in the away game at Villa Park Rangers were soft in conceding a two goal lead and far too happy with a point having been in such a position against a poor team. That could have been eight extra points which could have had us as high as thirteenth above Sunderland and Stoke and safe long before the last day at any rate.
By contrast I don’t recall too many opponents missing too many sitters against us (lovely, lovely Peter Crouch not included). Extra shooting practice for all, every half chance must be seized and cherished.
The January transfer window is a highway to hell for the terminally stupid. By all means if that game changing player becomes available, or the parent club of your long term target in a position you need to fill suddenly hankers after a bit of extra cash, then write a cheque or two and add a new face. But do not try and rebuild your team in January, and do not base survival hopes on business you can do in that four weeks. QPR did both this season and had they started performing even 15 minutes later than they did (against Liverpool) they’d have paid for it with their Premiership status.
Everything is about the summer; it sets the entire tone and ethos for the season. By the end of August you need to have a strong starting 11 that has, by and large, done a full pre-season together and is fully in tune with each other’s game, the manager and his wishes, the system and style of play and the spirit of the club. Major additions to the team or changes to management thereafter are highly risky and, as we’ve seen with Wigan this season, you’re just as likely to survive by sticking with what you have no matter how bleak things get than tearing everything up and starting again.
Last season Neil Warnock wasted far too many point winning opportunities in November and December and then wrote it off as “wait until I get more players in January” which undermined confidence in the squad and turned key players against him. Then when Rangers went for a complete overhaul of the squad and management in January it took until March for things to begin to click and even then, as I say, they only clicked with about 15 minutes to spare against Liverpool. Any later and we’d have been down.
Last summer was beset with takeover talk, differing budgets and ultimately panic buying of some players we didn’t need and others who didn’t fit well with the club. In amongst it all we lost crucial games to Bolton and Wigan. This summer has to be meticulously planned and executed.
Alan Pardew, deservedly, took the League Manager’s Association award for the Premiership Manager of the Season after leading unfancied Newcastle into fifth place this season. Back in September when they came to Loftus Road I asked regular guest columnist and Magpies fan James Harrison whether his club were deliberately trying to get relegated, placing their faith in unheard of foreign players and allowing the backbone of the side – Kevin Nolan, Andy Carroll, Joey Barton – to leave. He told me to wait and see, and that people in the north east were confident of a top half finish, and he was dead right.
Newcastle, and chief scout Graham Carr, unearthed absolute gems like Yohann Cabaye, Hatem Ben Arfa, Papiss Cisse and Cheik Tiote on the continent while Carroll, Nolan, Barton and others struggled elsewhere.
Pardew’s closest competition for the top LMA prize came from Brendan Rodgers at Swansea and Paul Lambert at Norwich. Both showed the value of sticking with the nucleus of the squad that achieved the promotion in the first place, as discussed already, but also added intelligently to this squad with unheralded names. Lambert took Anthony Pilkington from League One Huddersfield, Steve Morrison and Jonny Howson from Championship sides Millwall and Leeds, and excelled. Rodgers meanwhile replaced influential departing goalkeeper Dorus De Vries with Dutchman Michel Vorm who was many pundits’ pick as the keeper of the season in the top flight while De Vries was relegated as second choice at Wolves.
QPR, in a mad post-takeover panic and in an attempt to conduct a summer of transfer activity in ten days, plumped for players everybody had heard of who ultimately cost the club millions and delivered next to nothing in return; of the summer transfers only Armand Traore and, possibly, Anton Ferdinand look like reasonable investments. The rest – Dyer, Gabbidon, Wright-Phillips, Barton, Young, Bothroyd, Campbell – have made very little positive contribution.
The signing of the season was, arguably, Samba Diakite who nobody had heard of prior to his arrival once again showing the value of good scouting over and above reputations and favoured agents. Thankfully Diakite is by no means a one off for Mark Hughes who previously picked up Chris Samba at Blackburn and Moussa Dembele at Fulham in similar circumstances.
QPR used 35 players this season, two shy of Middlesbrough’s league record of 37. This clearly cannot happen again but just to reemphasise that point let’s consider this. Between October 24 and April 11 QPR played 23 times with a variety of back fours and two different goalkeepers without keeping a clean sheet in the league. When Mark Hughes then settled on a back four of Taye Taiwo, Clint Hill, Anton Ferdinand and Nedum Onuoha in front of Paddy Kenny the R’s recorded shut outs in three of their final six games.
Hughes clearly bought Onuoha as a centre half - and he may well end up there - and probably intended to use Luke Young and Armand Traore far more than he did. But the value of keeping a settled team, particularly at the back, was there for all to see in those closing home games. Understandings were built, partnerships formed, and QPR looked like a team rather than a rabble just thrown together at the last minute.
The atmosphere at Loftus Road for the final four home games after the Liverpool victory was outstanding – probably the best I’ve ever known over a prolonged period of time. I have loved seeing the molly coddled Premiership darlings out of their comfort zone in our cave, but for too many games through the winter the place was flat and quiet. We’ve seen the impact we can have from the stands so let’s keep up the good work.
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Pictures – Action Images