QPR looking for a new manager? Must be November again. Allow LFW to run you through a field where inspiration is in short supply.
Age — 53 >>> Current Club — Unattached >>> Previously Managed — Bristol Rovers (P246, WP 36.44%), QPR (P252, 39.68%), Plymouth (P71, 39.44%), Leicester (P32, 28.13%), Blackpool (P161, 38.51%), Palace (P46, 30.43%), MIllwall (P62, 22.58%)
Pros:
- Already a QPR club hero both as a player, where he was a vital member of Gerry Francis’ successful Premier League side of the early 1990s, and as a manager, where he took over a club in administration and subsequently rebuilt it in the Second Division before re-establishing it in the First.
- A well-known bubbly character with plenty of humour rolled into his management, could provide the players with an immediate lift around the training ground.
- Has developed as a manager tactically since he was last at QPR, switching his ‘out ball’ from a long punt in behind full backs to a cross field switch to a winger on the opposite side after studying Robert Martinez’s methods at Swansea. More attacking than when he was last here, and certainly more attacking than Hasselbaink was.
- Has enjoyed his best success when working on tight budgets, at Bristol Rovers, QPR, Plymouth and Blackpool. Made some wonderful signings on the cheap during his last spell here including Danny Shittu, Lee Cook, Marc Bircham, Tony Thorpe, Paul Furlong, Steve Palmer, Lee Camp, Gino Padula and others.
- Imagine the atmosphere at his first game back in charge. It’ll be like a different ground. A much needed boost to the place.
- Would potentially bring Marc Bircham back with him as assistant.
- Given his work with Sky, there can’t have been too many managers out there who’ve seen more Championship football than him this season. He’ll already know our players, reducing any potential bedding in period.
- Not Joey Barton.
Cons:
- Never go back.
- If Les Ferdinand doesn’t escape overly-harsh criticism from QPR fans, don’t think Ian Holloway will either. Are we about to tarnish the legacy of another much-loved son of our club?
- There was a strong feeling during Holloway’s first spell in charge that the brains behind the operation were chief scout Mel Johnson and assistant manager Kenny Jackett, with Olly more a front man and motivator. His results, and the quality of his signings, tailed off when Johnson went to Spurs and Jackett to Swansea.
- Despite his Martinez epiphany, Holloway’s football is still direct and basic stuff at times. He had plenty of critics by the end of his previous spell with the clubm, and even at the height of his success here he still did things like picking Steve Palmer and Matthew Rose together in the centre of midfield.
- Seemed badly effected by his stint at Palace, where he finished off Dougie Fredman’s promotion only for results to go awry in the Premier League. He resigned saying he wasn’t up to it. Subsequently pitched up, with Bircham, looking and sounding like a shell of his former self at Millwall where he ended up sacked and the team relegated. He even fell out with Shittu while there, unthinkable when the pair were together at QPR and the players called the centre back ‘Son of Holloway’.
- That nagging feeling that his time in modern football management has passed by, and a television studio is the ideal place for him.
- May possibly be mates with Les Ferdinand.
Age — 36 >>> Current Club — Unattached >>> Previously Managed — MK Dons (P346, 42.5%)
Pros:
- Exactly the sort of progressive, modern, hungry, up and coming young coach QPR say they’re looking for.
- Adept at building a solid foundation and moving a club and squad forward from a low starting point. MK Dons come with all manner of baggage, a home ground that’s empty and silent on matchdays and were training on council pitches after getting changed at the stadium and being mini-bused there and Robinson got that set-up into the Championship.
- Developed Dele Alli, Patrick Bamford and Bennick Afobe among several other talented youngsters in what is hardly a hotbed for the sport, again exactly the sort of thing QPR say they want to do.
- Prefers an attractive brand of football, with attacking intent and ball on the floor. Scored 117 goals in a single League One season.
- Tends to bring an experienced number two with him — worked with John Gorman and others at MK Dons.
- Good cup record, knocking out Manchester United, and our good selves among other higher division teams.
- Trophies in difficult circumstances - League One promotion, Football League Trophy etc.
- Not mates with Les Ferdinand.
- Not Joey Barton.
Cons:
- Only one previous full time management job, at MK Dons, where he was recently sacked after relegation from the Championship. There’s a lot more to his six years there than that of course, but he’ll need to hit the ground running at QPR or the knives will be out once again. You can almost hear the criticisms about lack of experience and his Scouse accent now and he’s not even got here yet.
- Will never have dealt with all the people and politics that he’ll find above him at QPR.
- Took time to build his MK Dons side, time QPR simply don’t afford managers.
Age — 42 >>> Current Club — Birmingham City >>> Previously Managed — Burton Albion (P142, 44.4%), Birmingham City (P101, 38.6%)
Pros:
- Has worked his way up from the lower leagues since retiring from playing, building the Burton Albion side that Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink subsequently got promoted with. If you feel Hasselbaink got credit for somebody else’s work to land the QPR job, well here’s the somebody else.
- Unlike Hasselbaink, Rowett has since managed in the Championship with great success. He’s also done it at a club that’s been every bit as difficult and crazy as QPR, with the ongoing Carson Yeung situation lingering over Birmingham when he arrived, playing budgets being cut, transfer plans uncertain and permanent takeover talk. Despite it, he’s taken the Blues from a narrow brush with relegation under Lee Clark to successive play-off pushes.
- Sparked prolonged turn arounds in form and results at both Burton and Birmingham with the players he inherited, rather than by insisting on adding a load of new ones.
- In fact, he’s never been in a position to spend buckets of cash on loads of new players so could be the perfect manager to work within QPR’s increasingly restricted means as the end of the parachute payments draw near.
- Not mates with Les Ferdinand. Not Joey Barton.
Cons:
- If you’re expecting a glorious departure from the 4-2-3-1 approach, don’t.
- Why would he leave Birmingham, a club he played for, to come to QPR who he has no connection with, have a worse team and are lower in the league? Apart from the obvious of course.
- Birmingham fans have been critical of his team selections and tactics this season. Overly cautious, faith in favourites and so on. I watched them at Burton Albion last week and they were absolutely shocking.
- Is this a significant enough departure from Hasselbaink for fans to be on his side? Not that we should necessarily be looking for a complete departure of course, but fans are weary of attritional football and it’s hard to see Rowett going for anything else here.
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Age — 47 >>> Current Club — Unattached >>> Previously Managed — Tottenham (P28, 50%), Villa (P28, 35.7%)
Pros:
- The sort of character — strong minded, brash, confident — that wouldn’t be intimidated by one of football’s most difficult jobs. Like a young Neil Warnock in that respect.
- Part of the Tottenham academy set up that brought through Harry Kane and others, with an excellent strike rate for graduating youth players to first team — exactly what QPR say they’re looking for.
- Has a record, particularly at Spurs, of giving youth players first team opportunities rather than leaving them parked in the academy set up. Would bode well for Mide Shodipo, Nico Hamalainen, Osman Kakay and others.
- Has worked successfully with Les Ferdinand, Chris Ramsey and others at QPR before at Spurs.
- Will hopefully have learnt lessons from his chastening experience at Aston Villa.
- Said chastening experience only came after his two best players — Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph — were sold and replaced with a disparate collection from all over the world sourced in part by a newly formed transfer committee above him.
- Nobody succeeds at Villa, it wasn’t just him who failed there. And he’d initially saved them from relegation and taken them to a cup final.
- Plays an attacking style of football with wings and strikers (plural) which will play well to the bored galleries at Loftus Road.
- Takes cup competitions seriously, reaching the final of the FA Cup with Villa two years ago.
- Flammable.
- Not Joey Barton.
Cons:
- Bloke’s an absolute helmet.
- Many of his claims about the young players he brought through into Tottenham’s first team don’t stand up to scrutiny. For instance, he mentions Ryan Mason a lot, who was part of Sherwood’s academy set up, but actually made 0 starts and 0 sub appearances for him as first team manager. Much of the development of the young players there was done by Chris Ramsey, who of course is still at QPR and is wrongly ridiculed by a section of the support.
- His Harry Redknapp-style "football is about footballers not systems” attitude is not only totally outdated but also unhelpful at a club of QPR’s size where our budget is never going to be as big and players never as good as clubs we’ve nevertheless got to find a way to compete with.
- Refusal to drop down and take jobs outside the Premier League, because apparently six months at Spurs means you’re a Premier League manager, means he not only has zero Championship experience but also comes across as an arrogant knob.
- Related point, also likely to be incredibly expensive.
- Touchline behaviour and deliberate attempts to look and sound like a North London letting agent will grate even more than Hasselbaink’s "it is what it is” and in half the time.
- Best mates with Les Ferdinand, which will only further the criticism of the director of football and mean he’ll probably have to fall on his sword next time as well if this appointment went badly.
- Took an Aston Villa side that had £51.2m lavished on it, with 11 new players, and won one of the first 11 games before getting the sack. Picked seven different starting 11s in seven different systems in his final seven games. Villa eventually won only one of their first 20 and were relegated with just four wins to their name all season. This after his infamous "winners” comment in pre-season when he’d said you were about to "find out what a Tim Sherwood team looks like”.
- Much talked about (by him) 50% win percentage at Spurs came with an inherited team and still included absolute shellackings by Liverpool, Chelsea and Man City.
Age — 44 >>> Current Club — Bayern Munich (assistant) >>> Teams Managed — Derby County (P33, 42.42%)
Pros:
- Has worked at some of the biggest clubs, with the most forward-thinking methods in the world.
- Has Championship experience with Derby where he was sacked with the team fifth in the league in a move that brought widespread ridicule for the chairman and a good deal of sympathy for Clement outside the city.
- His late father Dave was a proper QPR legend and his tragic story could provide QPR with a chance to tempt a quality coach they’d never normally be able to attract, and buy Clement more time with the QPR fans than many others would get.
- Not mates with Les Ferdinand.
- Not Joey Barton.
Cons:
- Having spent the majority of his career at places like Real Madrid, Chelsea and Bayern Munich, is scratching around at QPR trying to find lower league gems and reduce the playing budget really his area of expertise?
- Didn’t last long at Derby where there was much rumour and innuendo around the real reasons for his abrupt departure.
- Although he had the Rams fifth in the table when he left, he’d spent the thick end of £25m on the team to get it there and the Derby fans say the football was dull and functional, which sounds much like what QPR are currently trying to get away from.
- Kimmich’s eight goals in 15 games from a wide right defensive position may be difficult to replicate with James Perch.
Age — 53 >>> Current Club — Unattached >>> Previously Managed — Carlisle (P30, 16.7%), Southampton (P14, 21.4%), Leicester (P107, 51.4%), Hull (P64, 35.9%), Leicester (P182, 46.7%), Derby (P14, 21.4%)
Pros:
- An experienced manager at all levels of the English game with early spells saving poor Carlisle and Southampton teams from relegations preceding coaching appointments with West Brom, Newcastle and England U21s. He later won promotion from League One and the Championship in two separate spells with Leicester paving the way for their remarkable title win last season.
- At Leicester in particular he built a world class sports science, medical and training facility infrastructure which QPR have been crying out for.
- Having signed Jamie Vardy, Danny Drinkwater and Riyad Mahrez quietly and relatively cheaply, he knows how to spot a quality player for the sort of money QPR are currently spending.
- Point to prove after disappointing experience at Derby.
- The sort of strong-minded character QPR could probably do with.
- Difficult to sack — Leicester tried several times before finally escorting him off the premises — useful trait in a QPR manager.
- Was once attacked by a pack of wild dogs while on holiday in Romania and won — again, useful skillset when taking over at Loftus Road.
- Not mates with Les Ferdinand.
- Not Joey Barton.
Cons:
- 64 carat mentalist.
- Did not see eye to eye with our current CEO Lee Hoos when the pair worked together during his first stint at Leicester.
- Pearson’s son was involved in the infamous "licky licky bum hole" racist orgy during Leicester’s pre-season tour of Thailand which led to the sacking of him and two team mates, and Pearson departed shortly afterwards. Probably not going to appeal too much to another Asian-owned club like QPR.
- If you thought Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was a bit dull, you aint seen nothing yet. Pearson’s interviews make the speaking clock sound like an episode of Takeshi's Castle.
- Although he got Leicester promoted to the Premier League and built the team that subsequently won the thing, he collapsed fairly spectacularly under the pressure of a top flight relegation struggle — telling a supporter to "fuck off and die”, holding Crystal Palace midfielder James McArther down by the throat during a game, branding a BBC journalist an ostrich during a prolonged, bizarre press conference melt down and so on.
- Despite all his success at Leicester, no team had a sniff of him for over a year after his departure, hinting at stuff we don’t know about.
- Subsequently pitched up at Derby this season only to be suspended two unsuccessful months in, and again subsequently fired, for unspecified behavioural reasons.
- Given his Romanian adventure, could get spooked by Jude the Cat and stab him in the eyes.
There are a couple of names mentioned, available at 25/1 generally, who I’m surprised aren’t a bit shorter priced. Dougie Freedman did brilliantly at Crystal Palace before making a couple of bad choices — firstly mistaking Bolton’s shiny stadium and recent Premier League heritage as a better bet than the Eagles and jumping ship, headlong into a financial catastrophe; then secondly taking the first job that subsequently came up at a former club, Nottingham Forest, where he found the chairman from hell in charge. I like that he takes Lennie Lawrence with him, he’d potentially bring best mate Steve Gallen back with him, he has QPR pedigree and he’ll do a good job at this level again in my opinion.
Slightly less inspiring but still worth more consideration than he’s perhaps getting is Chris Powell who’s worked under more difficult circumstances than ours. Not my choice certainly but the concern that he’s not being considered more because the club is reluctant to appoint another black manager, with all the "boy’s club”, "black agenda” and "Les’ mates” bullshit that would see thrown at the director of football, is troubling. Britain in 2016, a thoroughly unpleasant place to live.
There are the usual appeals for Gareth Ainsworth, Shaun Derry and the likes. You can get a price on Kevin Gallen as well. Given that we’re not shy of chewing up our former heroes and spitting them out — see Ferdinand, and Ray Wilkins previously — would we really want to start tarnishing other QPR legendary statuses? While we’re destroying careers why not stick to appointing managers we hate? In all seriousness though, Derry and Ainsworth are both cutting their teeth and learning their trade at lower levels and that’s exactly where they should be left for a few years yet.
Steve Clarke is one of those names that would have been heavily linked even 12 months ago but is hardly mentioned at all at the moment — only BetFair have a price for him. Francesco Guidolin nearly came here during the Briatore era and was recently harshly sacked by Swansea, he’s at 35s.
Joey Barton is 80/1 if you fancy really putting the tin hat on 2016. If you’re tempted by this have you considered perhaps shooting all our players in the shins with a sawn off shotgun before matches? Or setting fire to the stadium with everybody inside it? Or re-signing Ademola Bankole after releasing Alex Smithies to Brentford on a free transfer? All much better ideas than re-engaging with that scumbag.
One thing that worries me in all of this is the QPR players hadn’t downed tools on Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Even on Saturday at Forest, Karl Henry apart, they were having a dig and giving everything they had to try and get something out of the game, with the manager apparently basically sacked the week before after Brentford. So if they liked him, or at least respected him, what’s to say they’re all happy he’s gone? Where’s the extra bit going to come from, to even provide us with a little bounce, if they were already giving everything they had for the cause?
The obvious answer to that is tactical changes, and getting players like Conor Washington, Jordan Cousins and Massimo Luongo into positions that better suit their games. Tony Fernandes said it himself on Saturday night, the board believes this group of players is better than the results suggest and many supporters agree with that. But what if they’re wrong? What if we’re actually not that good? What if these players are giving all they can and the results are the absolute best they can do? Just six points from the relegation zone, this could turn into a free fall as a new man scrambles around trying to not only find the winning combination with somebody else’s players that Hasselbaink couldn’t with his own, but also gets to know all the players in the first place.
A lot of names on this list — Karl Robinson, Paul Clement, Gary Rowett — strike me as ideal appointments for QPR to be making in April or May next year. Not happy with Hasselbaink having given him a full season, part ways towards the end of this campaign and make an appointment ahead of the summer to give them a full tilt at next season. Coming into an already difficult job midway through the season and working with somebody else’s players doesn’t strike me as a good situation for Robinson or Clement certainly and Rowett… I just can’t see why he’d leave Birmingham for QPR.
What we need is somebody to come in and provide a Neil Warnock style lift. How annoying that he’s currently in work. I wouldn’t have gone for him this time last year, even if he was an option at that point which his personal circumstances meant he wasn’t, but I probably would now just because I’m fearful that this season could start to slide the other way quite quickly. It’s also annoying, and somewhat surprising given the situation he’s chosen to walk into, that Kenny Jackett has got a job at the moment, because I’d have liked him as well.
Having prattled on about short termism at QPR for so long, it may seem odd for me to now be talking about looking at the next six months and not a lot beyond that for now. But the medium term aims of Ferdinand and Lee Hoos, the training ground and all of that, would be seriously harmed by a relegation. Would the club ever recover from it? The ground is like a morgue, attendances are dropping steeply, we’ve only won two games at Loftus Road all year — the whole atmosphere is playing into the hands of the opposition.
This is almost certainly heart ruling head but for an immediate boost, both around the training ground and particularly at matches, to try and ensure this season doesn’t fall apart altogether, Ian Holloway and Marc Bircham together, until the end of the season initially, is an increasingly attractive prospect to ensure the medium and long term aims are able to stay on track.
The Twitter @loftforwords
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