Shaun Derry was initially brought to QPR as cover for the 2010/11 season. His appointment as the new Notts County manager draws an end what turned out to be a unique three year stint with the club.
There was a moment towards the end of QPR's recent match at Wigan where Andy Johnson, on as a substitute, pushed a loose ball wide of onrushing home goalkeeper Lee Nicholls to set up Rangers' only decent goal scoring chance of a dreadful football match.
There was no guarantee the incident would end in a goal despite the absence of the keeper, given how far out Johnson was and how wide he'd nudged the ball with his touch, but a striker of his experience and ability would surely have stood a very decent chance of winning the game for his team from the position he was in. Nicholls knew that as well, so he clattered into Johnson and sent him sprawling to the ground, more confident of his chances with the referee than he was with the former Palace man’s ability to finish.
It was certainly a foul, and the only debating point was colour of the card. Referee Michael Naylor, in his second QPR appointment of the season, was ten yards away from the incident and waved play on.
It was one of those moments of pure mystery that officials can conjure up in sport every now and again. The only possible explanation is that Naylor was thinking about something else at the time and had mentally clocked off for the crucial moment, waking with a start to find a QPR player on the floor and all eyes turned to him for a decision. Referees are only human at the end of the day, and the human mind can wander. A long suffering girlfriend of mine once brought me — loudly and rudely it should be said - back into a room I'd mentally exited sometime before into a world of Les Ferdinand's goals from the 1992/93 season to inform me that a conversation had taken place in my 'absence' about the end of our relationship. By the time I'd switched back on she'd already packed. Les was pretty formidable that season though, and she used to leave her underwear scattered around the place.
Nothing burns quite like an injustice, particularly one you can do nothing about. Standing at the back of the away end at the DW Stadium, soaked to the skin after a walk through an industrial estate in the teeming rain, tired after a long day of travelling to the north west for a poxy league game on a Wednesday night, somewhat the worse for drink, fast running out of money and mentally weary from a forced conversation with a tattooed Scouse troll on the Manchester train, this foul on Andy Johnson felt like a final straw sort of a moment. I took a ten yard run at the empty seat on the end of our row and delivered a powerful volley to the fold down half of it with my right foot. The pain was immediate and indescribable. Later that evening I found myself wringing blood from a sock in a sink at the Wigan Premier Inn and 24 hours later I had to complete an hour of seven a side goalkeeping with one bare foot because I could no longer get my right football boot on.
Dealing with injustice, even silly little ones in football games — even in my twisted universe Andy Johnson being deprived of a free kick at Wigan isn't quite on a Birmingham Six scale — in a calm and rational manner is beyond some of us. QPR's own Joey Barton is at his most dangerous when he feels he's been unjustly treated. His infamous meltdown at Manchester City came through a red mist that descended when Carlos Tevez elbowed him deliberately during open play and neither referee Mike Dean, nor his assistant, saw it happen. The unfairness of it all took hold, and Barton erupted. Four months prior to that he'd done something similar when Norwich's detestable midfield toad Bradley Johnson concluded half an hour of flicks and wind ups with a kick to the back of Barton's legs as play broke down field. Same result: officials missed it, Barton lost his temper, Barton got sent off.
In many ways how we deal with unfairness and injustice is a mark of our character.
Imagine, for one moment, you're captaining QPR for a match against Manchester United at Old Trafford. Imagine the pride as you walk out of that tunnel, in that hooped kit, with that armband on. Imagine how you'd feel if, after just 12 minutes of the match, Ashley Young received a ball in the penalty area while standing four yards offside and then threw himself to the floor as you brushed past. Imagine how you’d respond if you looked up and saw not only a linesman with his flag down but a referee striding across to award a penalty and send you straight off. If your first thought isn't some form Cumbrian taxi driver rampage then you're a better man than me.
Shaun Derry said nothing. The decision was made and would not be changed. He turned away and walked calmly with his head held high back to the tunnel he'd emerged from just a quarter of an hour before. Amid the mind ripping frustration and fierce sense of unfairness that raged within everybody in the away end that afternoon there was also pride. On that very pitch a decade before, referee Andy D'Urso made the mistake of daring to award a penalty to the away team — Middlesbrough as it goes — and was literally chased across the field by Roy Keane, Gary Neville and several others who cornered him by the side stand and screamed blue murder into his face. That was how people held up as some of the finest, most successful examples of men in our sport felt it was appropriate to behave. Shaun Derry, ridiculed throughout QPR's time in the Premier League by fans of other clubs and written off as an old clogger by most, did not.
A year later Derry was back at Old Trafford and midway through the first half Ashley Young tried his trick again. This time the referee, Lee Probert, was wise to it and awarded nothing. Derry bent over, grasped Young warmly by the throat, picked him up, placed him back on his wobbly, unstable feet and told him at very close quarters and in no uncertain terms exactly what had been on his mind for the previous seven months. It became an iconic image of QPR's brief spell in the top flight, celebrated by football fans everywhere.
At a time when QPR were seemingly intent on inflicting as many rank examples of everything that's wrong with the modern sport on themselves, Shaun Derry stood out in many wonderful ways.
Shaun Derry was referred to by this website on the day he signed for QPR as the "anti-footballer".
During his Leeds days, when he grew his hair long down his back and looked like a dog you find roaming down by the canal, he was involved in an incident at Loftus Road in a 1-1 draw which saw him red carded. Shortly before moving to Loftus Road he'd been made to look rather foolish by Adel Taarabt and Akos Buzsaky in QPR's crucial 2-0 win at Crystal Palace. He looked like a mediocre player coming to the end of his time, bullying referees into sending off more talented opponents to avoid further embarrassment.
Neil Warnock's highly anticipated QPR revolution had got off to an intriguing start. Big Fat Useless Lazy Leon Clarke was first through the door — which had to be removed from its hinges so he could fit — and Clint Hill had been preferred to Dusko Tosic who had won friends and influenced admirers during a loan stint the season before. Throw in Paddy Kenny fresh from a one year drug ban and Jamie Mackie, worker dog in a poor Plymouth team, and it wasn't exactly screaming promotion. But Derry , Hill, Kenny, Mackie and Heidar Helguson would form a solid base of a championship side — a strong tree onto which Adel Taarabt and Wayne Routledge trinkets could be added to wonderful aesthetic affect.
Derry ended up playing a bigger role than even Neil Warnock had intended. The manager freely admitted he thought Derry 's legs had gone some 18 months previous and he was brought in as a steadying influence around the dressing room and training ground more than a mainstay for the midfield. Rangers had been due to line up with Akos Buzsaky and Ale Faurlin at the base of their midfield for the opening day fixture with Barnsley but, typically, the Hungarian dropped out late with an injury and Derry moved in instead. Rangers won 4-0, and 3-0 at Sheffield United a week later. They also crashed out of the League Cup at the first possible opportunity, meaning there was far less Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday about their campaign than that of their rivals at the top of the table and was ideal for the ageing ‘Grey Peacock’. Had Buzsaky stayed fit, had Rangers stayed in the cup, Derry may never have cemented his place in the team in the first place.
But he did, they did, and he did. It turned out to be a beautifully balanced midfield set up, with Faurlin adding the vision that Derry lacked, and Derry adding the discipline and defensive ability that Adel Taarabt was born without. His presence freed Taarabt to wreak havoc, everybody safe in the knowledge that, when it all went tits up for the Moroccan, Derry would quickly swoop in with a well timed interception or, on occasions, cynical foul. He was far from merely an enforcing clogger, rarely wasting a ball or a pass. He was the epitome of a player who knew his own strengths and limitations, and played to both with absolute perfection.
All that said, few saw a role for Derry in the higher division. In early defeats at Fulham (6-0) and Tottenham (3-1) he was substituted at half time. Supporters at other clubs would often hold up Derry and Clint Hill as examples of why QPR couldn't possibly survive in the Premier League — how can a team fielding players like that compete in a league where Juan Mata and Luis Suarez roam the range? But what they missed is that QPR were almost always a better team with Hill and Derry in it than they were without. He scored his first professional goal in five years — a thumping Loft End header — to begin a late comeback from 2-0 down to win 3-2 against Liverpool , a result that turned the club's season around. Nobody deserved it more.
For the 2012/13 season things were supposed to be different. QPR offered big wages to attract Esteban Granero, Ji-Sung Park , Stephane Mbia and Samba Diakite to strengthen the midfield. Some of the more optimistic Rangers fans started a thread on the LFW message board wondering whether a push for European football, even the top four, was really that out of the question. Derry played 27 minutes spread across three substitute appearances through to the end of November — he looked like somebody's dad, drafted in because one of the teams was short. He spoke about maybe going out on loan to find some regular first team football. As far as QPR were concerned, Derry was done.
Problem was, things had got worse for Rangers rather than better, and the R's were still, always, a far better team with Derry in it than without him. Mark Hughes fell on his sword after failing to win any of his first 14 matches and in the first game without him, at Old Trafford where he'd suffered the heartbreaking Ashley Young incident the year before, Derry was recalled by the caretaker manager Mark Bowen. Even Mark Hughes' own coaching staff could see it.
QPR collapsed into relegation, winning just four league matches all season. The team was populated with big name players on colossal salaries putting in half as much effort and producing half as much positive input as the likes of Derry and Hill. Derry, as he gladly did regularly, spoke to the Open All R's podcast and openly questioned the attitude and commitment of the newcomers, who'd systematically destroyed everything that was good about the team that worked so hard for its place in the Premier League in the first place. All these modern day footballers and their £60,000 a week pay packets, shown up on and off the field by one of the last remaining old fashioned pros in the game.
Ultimately that anti-footballer jibe was entirely accurate, but not at all in the way initially intended.
The obvious conclusion is that Shaun Derry is ideal managerial material, and will hopefully come back to Loftus Road at some point in the future in that role. However and whenever he returns to W12, the reception from the QPR fans who doubted him so much when he arrived will lift the roof off the place in a manner few other players from the club's recent past could command.
It's a shame, firstly, that Derry has rather snuck out of the back door, appointed as the Notts County manager while out on loan at Millwall, preventing any kind of send-off at Loftus Road. Secondly, it's a concern that he's starting life as a number one at Meadow Lane. His connection with the club, which he supported as a boy having been born in the city and played for early in his career, will buy him more time than most would get, but time for managers at Notts County is measured in hours and days rather than weeks and months. You would think it might have occurred to the League One club, after working through 20 managers since 2000, that the managers aren't necessarily the problem, and sacking them so often has brought about zero progress, but apparently not.
Derry replaces another former R Chris Kiwomya, who had far greater coaching experience, but lasted just the first three months of the current campaign. A 5-1 defeat at Oldham at the weekend was quite a baptism. He’s inherited a team low on quality and confidence and already starting to come adrift at the foot of the table.
In the British game managers are sacked far more regularly, and after far less time, than they ever used to be. There is also an attitude towards bosses who have a failure on their CV that isn't prevalent elsewhere in Europe: fail in your first job at a League One club and you'll be lucky to get a job at any kind of level again, whereas in Italy a manager can sustain three or four sackings and failures early in his career and still find work — look at the early days of our own mercurial Luigi De Canio for instance. It will be interesting to see what becomes of Kiwomya, who will almost certainly have to return to work in a youth set up somewhere and start rebuilding his reputation all over again.
It makes this a risky step for Derry to take this early, and potentially one where his heart ruled his head and the lure of his boyhood club proved stronger than the logic of building more coaching experience before taking the plunge.
But then Shaun Derry has been written off too soon plenty of times before.
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