As injury-hit QPR start to struggle in the league for the first time, chairman Tony Fernandes Tweets that he’s given manager Harry Redknapp everything he asked for. But isn’t that the problem?
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God bless the Twitter, pandering to the vacuous society in which we now live. A society that, apparently, wants Cara Delevingne to appear in the main London evening newspaper every night of the week — Cara has ambitions to be Prime Minister, Cara smokes a joint, Cara wears Gucci, Cara went to a nightclub, Cara walked along the street. News.
Once upon a time there were intelligent and important people, and then there was the rest of us, and we listened to the intelligent and important people because they had intelligent and important things to say. Now, on The Twitter at least, everybody is equal, which sounds wonderful and just as God intended and all that, until it turns out there are some right fuckwits out there.
Now some beered up oik from Swansea telling whichever black person is in the news today to go and "pick some cotton” gets just as much coverage — in fact a lot more coverage — than the latest Nobel prize winners. Some chav from Bournemouth abusing Tom Daley over the death of his father and sexuality can spark a police investigation amid mass media hysteria and retorts from somebody pretending to be Roy Cropper from Coronation Street. Over the meagre course of 140 characters, everybody is equal, however worthless they are in what remains of the real world.
For QPR, The Twitter has brought little but hassle. I mean, it’s bad enough signing Joey Barton at the eleventh hour of a transfer window as some sort of ill-advised marquee purchase, designed to show intention from a newly installed board but really only ever likely to come to QPR because everybody else had turned him down — because he’s bad news — and because Rangers were offering him stupid amounts of money. Back in the day such failed luxuries — Ned Zelic — slunk off quietly into the shadows only to appear years later in an obscure UEFA Cup game. These days they Tweet, about Nietzsche, about Mark Hughes, about QPR, about Marseille, about everything they can think of and more. There’s no escape from them and their giant wage packet and their wildly fluctuating on-field performances and their constant, never ending omnipresent suspensions for yellow card accumulations. "One Joey Barton” people sing, presumably after having the front lobe of their brains surgically removed.
But Joey, and his Twitter, are relatively harmless. Sure, he’s going to cost the club a lot of money, and waste little opportunity to heap embarrassment on it judging by his two and a half years so far, but ultimately football players come and go and Barton will do as they all have done before and disappear eventually.
Tony Fernandes, on the other hand, is really quite crucial. If he and his consortium of investors pulled their funding from QPR tomorrow with no obvious replacement then the club would go exactly the way it did when Chris Wright suddenly decided that he wanted out — down in a hurry. And having climbed so high, wage payments wise, it’s a much steeper, sterner drop that awaits QPR this time if the Malaysian owners decide to cut their losses and head for the hills.
Which is why Tony Fernandes and his Twitter are a source of some terror. Firstly, because even when things are going well at QPR his "feed” is besieged with mouth-breathing cretins demanding this signing or that signing, this player or that player never to turn out for QPR again, this badge or that badge to be adopted, this kit or that kit to always be worn or never be worn, this free ticket or that free shirt to be handed out, this person or that person to be flown in from Kuala Lumpur or Miami and so on. Honestly, even when things are going brilliantly, Tony Fernandes’ Twitter feed is enough to make you ashamed of the club we support. Endless streams of idiots pausing from licking their windows clean just long enough to try and freeload off the chairman or tell him exactly where he’s going wrong. This is, of course, his fault for engaging in the hateful medium in the first place, but being bombarded with such sludge on a daily basis must occasionally provoke the odd "do I really need this?” thought process.
Secondly, because when talking about such developments as a new training ground or new stadium — crucial ventures that the club will have to live with, however brilliant or dreadful they are, for the next 100 years or more — Tony Fernandes always cites social media as an effective method of consultation. The club tell you we have the most accessible chairman in football, and he’ll kindly agree to appear on the unofficial podcast saying that he’s had some Tweets suggesting that 40,000 might be too big for a new stadium and he might consider 35,000 instead, as if the whole thing is simply a level on the old Super Nintendo classic Sim City. Somebody who has been going to QPR for 50 years, has grown up in the area, loves the club, understands the club, knows the merits and drawbacks of a stadium move, has concerns about atmosphere, worries about corporate influence, wants the character of the club retained in a new stadium, worries about feeling disconnected, wants to sit with the people they’ve always sat with, wonders about the potential of safe standing, hates the idea of playing in a concert venue — this person cannot be consulted in 140 characters amidst the tidal wave of warm, sloppy, meaningless, mostly offensive diarrhoea that Tony Fernandes gets from supposed QPR fans on a daily basis.
But, most pertinently today, thirdly, Twitter often shows Tony Fernandes up for what he is.
Tony Fernandes is not a malicious football club owner. Keith Haslam was a malicious football club owner — taking over struggling Mansfield Town in the Third Division, paying himself a dividend of £2.6m from the cash strapped club, using £1.9m of the money to buy the stadium from them so he could then charge the destitute club a crippling rent paid directly to himself. Ken Richardson was a malicious football club owner — running Doncaster Rovers into the ground then hiring a couple of goons to burn down the main stand for the insurance money. Alex Hamilton, who wanted to run Wrexham into the ground so he could sell the Racecourse Ground for a giant B&Q, and Bill Archer, who succeeded in doing exactly that to Brighton and Hove Albion back in the Goldstone Ground days. These are malicious football club owners.
Tony Fernandes comes across as a football supporter who, like the rest of us, watched all of those situations and others unfold and was just as appalled as we all were. He has come in and done exactly what every supporter would want of the owner — spent big on players, kept ticket prices down, given football managers money to spend on the players they want, not got involved in the team selection, sat in the home ends, turned up in the home pubs. He looks like the dream owner. Undoubtedly here for the potential a purpose built sports and music venue in West London could offer — potential QPR could help unlock at Old Oak Common — rather than for the good of his health, but apparently keen to do his best by the club in the meantime.
And yet today’s "It's a big few weeks for QPR. Time for Harry and the boys to stand up and be counted. As owners we have done all that was asked” Tweet tells you everything you need to know. For all the talk of learnt lessons, for all the talk of long term plans, for all the talk of importance of youth players, for everything that’s said — he’s still not quite sure what he’s doing, and it’s to the detriment of the club. He has good reason to look at the outlay and wonder why the return is so poor, but he remains wondering rather than realising.
QPR did very well last summer to shift on Stephane Mbia, Esteban Granero, Loic Remy, Chris Samba, Ji-Sung Park, Jose Bosingwa and most of the other expensive mistakes they made in the Premier League. They also added reasonably intelligently, with the division’s best striker Charlie Austin and outstanding winger Matt Phillips joined by other sensible purchases like Gary O’Neil and Danny Simpson.
But they have slowly, over the course of the season, reverted to type. You could perhaps — if you’re the forgiving type — understand adding 100-caps worth of veteran international talent in Oguchi Onyewu and Javier Chevanton to the squad on a short term basis and using neither of them, even though it says little for the futures of decent young players like Max Ehmer and Michael Harriman. But then Yossi Benayoun turned up, played a couple of times (badly) and was cast aside. And then the loans began, and came in a constant flow, including Ravel Morrison this week, to the point where Rangers now have eight in a league where you can only use five. Having worked so hard to clear out the expensive dead wood, Rangers have simply layered another new load of it on top. And the more they’ve arrived, the worse the team has got. Last week, after falling 3-1 down at home to Reading, one of the loanees, Benoit Assou-Ekotto, tried to fight with one of his team mates on the field — the second time in as many months the Cameroon full back has done so.
Fernandes says lessons have been learnt, but really he seems to just be making the same mistakes again. Previously he trusted Mark Hughes as his football man, and he was advised to hire a shed load of coaching staff and Mike Rigg at great expense — throughout that recruitment process the team got progressively worse and more expensive to pay every week. But when your expertise is in airlines and hotels, and you’ve hired a chief executive whose expertise is in venue management and has zero football experience, then you’re entirely at the mercy of the football manager for your input. His current football manager uses his weekly press conference and friends at Sky Sports News to lobby for more signings and suggest potential names.
So of course the owners have done everything that has been asked — because all Harry Redknapp will ever do is ask for two more players, and QPR love signing two more players — and of course it isn’t working, because short term fixes are not what QPR need. But you don’t appoint Harry Redknapp if your focus is on youth and long term, as Fernandes likes to say it is, you appoint Harry Redknapp to sign a load of players and try to sling them together into a decent team. He did well at that, until four of the better ones got injured. Unlucky, but entire clubs should not be derailed by four medium term injuries.
If they’d had somebody looking long term they may have asked the club to cut its wage bill, invest in its facilities, build up its youth set up, get the training ground fast tracked. But they have Harry, and therefore all they ever get asked for is another loanee, or another Yossi Benayoun, and because they think that person knows the game they oblige, and then they’re surprised when it goes wrong. Not only surprised, but telling Twitter they’re surprised, while Harry feeds lines to the press — does anybody at QPR actually sit and speak to each other through an adult medium like conversation any more?
When you’ve been as naïve and daft as Tony Fernandes has in his running of the football side of QPR, ideally you want to retreat to a quiet corner of your house and hope nobody noticed. But in the modern London, and at QPR in particular, the stupidity is always recorded there for prosperity, in 140 characters.
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Team News: The headline team news for QPR is Joey Barton’s latest suspension — two matches for accumulating ten yellow cards — but of more pressing concern for Harry Redknapp is how he juggles his eight loan signings into the team given league regulations only permit five in a matchday squad. Three from Will Keane, Kevin Doyle, Ravel Morrison, Little Tom Carroll, Niko Kranjcar, Mobido Maiga, Dellatorre and Benoit Assou-Ekotto must sit out here with Keane or Maiga, Dellatorre and Carroll probably the favourites. An absolute farce entirely of the club’s own making. Ale Faurlin is a long term injury absentee along with Danny Simpson, Charlie Austin and Matt Phillips — Rangers can justifiably claim bad luck in losing their four outstanding players to bad injuries all at the same time.
Charlton are likely to recall goalkeeper Ben Hamer after an ankle injury at the expense of Yohann Thuram-Ulien. Full back Rhoys Wiggins is back from a hamstring injury but Chris Solly and Leon Cort (both knee) remain sidelined.
Elsewhere: Let’s address this quickly and efficiently, because frankly it’s late and I’m losing the will to breathe. We’re only about 10 weeks and another 700 rounds of this nonsense away from the games actually starting to matter, but even this distance from the finish line Burnley v Nottingham Trees looks reasonably intriguing and important. Leicester v Ipswich looks like a home win. Schteve McClaren’s Derby will surely win at home to Bournemouth while Resurgent Reading (recently re-named) host Blackburn.
What’s that coming over the hill? It’s Uwe Rosler. It’s Uwe Rosler. The Globetrotters are now seventh and travel to eighth placed Brighton this weekend as part of their world tour.
At the other end it’s Yeovil v Doncaster and Barnsley v Millwall. My word. I’ve got the stomach lining of a 54 year old air traffic controller as it is, how will I cope with all of this?
Huddersfield and Sheffield Wednesday engage in a Yorkshire-off Saturday at 15.00. Some other shit is happened too, including Middlesbrough v Leeds in front of 20,000 empty seats and Champions Elect Bolton v Watford. Blackpool v Birmingham is also happening apparently.
Referee: Well Rangers will certainly be hoping for a change of fortunes with referee Eddie Ilderton this weekend — his last two QPR appointments have ended in a 4-1 win for Scunthorpe at Glanford Park and a 5-0 win for Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. His last Charlton fixture was their 1-0 win at Brentford during their League One promotion season in November 2011 — six yellow cards were shown. For his full QPR case history and recent stats please click here.
Charlton: The Addicks are in trouble. Four points adrift in the relegation zone and on a four-match losing run, they do have three games in hand thanks to a prolonged FA Cup run and a lousy Valley pitch but with a squad reduced in size by January departures they could be a curse as well as a blessing. With an away trip to runaway leaders Leicester next they’ll be looking at this home match against a vulnerable looking QPR side as a crucial opportunity. They have won one of their last 12, a 3-2 home win against Brighton on Boxing Day, and have scored just 23 goals all season — the fewest in the league. That Brighton win is their only success in five attempts at The Valley.
QPR: Rangers’ lousy record against teams in the top six continued with two defeats and a draw from their last three matches against Burnley (second), Derby (third) and Reading (sixth). The R’s have now won just one (against Derby at Loftus Road) of eight matches against the current top six in the division, losing five of the others. Against the rest of the division the record remains tight though, which bodes well for this game against relegation haunted Charlton — only Doncaster Rovers have beaten Harry Redknapp’s team outside the top six all season in 22 attempts. The R’s are now four points away from second placed Burnley, with a game in hand, and just a point ahead of in form Forest in fifth, but have a comfortable ten point margin back to Wigan in seventh.
Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding tells us…
"Short and sweet this week- I'm sick of second guessing Harry's line-up only to be seriously concerned at kick off. However I have seen a lot of Charlton this season and their league position isn't a lie. They are a poor outfit with little pace and a manager who spends more time in the stands than the on the touch line. If we can't win against teams like this then we certainly don't deserve to stay up. Prices of 23/20 on QPR represent a little value despite recent performances so that's my recommendation.”
Bet of the Weekend: QPR to win @ 23/20- Betfred
Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Mase, resorting to pessimistic type, tells us…
"On Sunday last Rangers resembled a drunken rabble looking for a dust up but being held off at arms' length while being repeatedly kicked in the balls by a leaner, younger, meaner, fitter side in Reading. It was alarming how readily bickering and slovenliness returned to our side, old habits I had hope this new breed of 'right sort' didn't have in them. For some we appear to be squatters in the top six.
"The opportunity to cross the Thames to face a Charlton team who have struggled all season may well appear a good chance to right a few wrongs and stop our creaking team from its ineffable fall from grace. Yet, having had the benefit of reading Clive's opposition profile, I can detect optimism may be creeping in as they look to secure their future in this league. The exigencies of having to achieve a positive result will be weighing heavily on both sides. I just don't think Rangers will be up for this one enough; by Saturday evening, we may no longer even have the best defence in the league. I am making this prediction hoping that it represents a complete overreaction which our hernia-in-waiting Ravel Morrison and comrades of the Right Sort will prove merely fantastical.”
Mase’s Prediction: Charlton 3-1 QPR Scorer - Kevin Doyle
LFW Prediction: Charlton 0-1 QPR Scorer — Ravel Morrison
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