Rob Gilbert, from BlogandWhiteHoops, tells LoftforWords exactly what it's been like following this incredible season and its gut wrenching climate from the other side of the Atlantic.
If Hannah Gross ever searches for herself on Google she is probably going to wonder why her name crops up on a QPR site. The reason Hannah (if you’re reading) is because eight and a half years ago I was on the phone to you when my mobile beeped and an official text came through from Loftus Road . It read simply: ‘QPR 1-1 Vauxhall Motors: Vauxhall Motors win 4-3 on Pens.’
The nadir of life as a QPR fan was displayed on a green screen with black text. It may as well have just read: ‘Your club is shit and provide you with no source of pride.’ I made my excuses to Hannah, hung up the phone and sulked. I don’t know what Hannah Gross is doing now, she probably doesn’t care about QPR, but if she wants to give me a call later I doubt I’ll hang up this time.
The Vauxhall Motors defeat in late 2002 was embarrassing, sickening and it hurt. Since 1996 we had been on a steady downward slide through administration and two relegations. There had been nothing to be cheerful about when it came to supporting QPR. We had cried at Coventry and Huddersfield trying to understand how we had fallen from being the top team in London to its biggest joke.
Thankfully that low point proved to be the catalyst for Ian Holloway to build a team to be proud of. A season later we were celebrating promotion. The Championship seemed our rightful home and the name of the game was survival but it soon became clear that the biggest threat to QPR was in fact QPR themselves.
Guns, boardroom unrest, managerial sackings and a surprise appearance by a World Cup winning captain to help oust well regarded QPR supporting board members quickly helped us become a laughing stock once more. We somehow stayed up, often thanks only to those somehow more incompetent than ourselves.
Then our dreams were realised. In 2007 we were rich. Not just rich… fucking rich. It soon became clear to the fans though that the money was cursed, it belonged to the devil and we started going through managers faster than Dean Sturridge picked up injuries. Once more QPR became a by word for ‘joke of a club.’ The fanbase was split and when Paulo Sousa was fired supposedly due to a post on a message board things started to turn ugly.
By February 2010 our team was full of old League 1 standard mercenaries and we were slipping towards a league we had battled to escape whilst looking forlornly at a division above we could only dream of. To top it all off Ian Holloway fulfilled every Rangers fans dream of promotion to the Premiership - but with a different club. QPR were now twentieth in the league and staring relegation in the face. The supposed ‘Richest Club in the World’ was a complete shambles – the only club that got new billionaire owners but got worse. Then Amit Bhatia picked up the phone and called Neil Warnock…
‘Colin’ breezed into Loftus Road and from the off said he would keep us up this season, take us up the following season and build a legacy at QPR. We laughed, it seemed mental. Warnock’s first game in charge was a 3-1 win over promotion candidates West Brom . Hello!? Warnock took stock of his squad and found a moody Moroccan sitting on the bench whilst Marcus Bent ambled about upfront.
Within a week Warnock had Bent out and Taarabt in, thus a beautiful friendship was born. Taarabt tore the division apart during the tail end of the season. His skill combined with Warnock's Championship knowhow seemed to be a winning formula, best exemplified by a 2-0 win at Crystal Palace to all but ensure safety that season. The season finished, Warnock said next season there would be no loan players and a team in his image.
The result was Shaun Derry, Clint Hill, Jamie Mackie, Leon Clarke, Paddy Kenny and roles for Fitz Hall and Heidar Helguson. Really? Really!? This was how our brave new era was going to start? With Championship plodders? Fans groaned and predicted a mid table finish, others urged their fellow Hoops to trust Warnock. The Sheffield man flew out to Morocco to convince Adel Taarabt to sign up. Taarabt never even met with him. A season of consolidation beckoned until finally Taarabt returned Warnock's call.
Warnock had his man - the glorious icing sat atop a good cake and the season begun. QPR 4-0 Barnsley – 'we’re top of the league' everyone joked. Little did we realise what was to come. Taarabt was receiving rave reviews but it was a cheaper signing of Warnock's, Jamie Mackie, scoring the goals. He helped us to a perfect start of three games won none conceded before scoringthe most dramatic of equalisers in the final seconds at Derby after we trailed 2-0 on 90 minutes. Middlesbrough were dispatched with ease and then QPR achieved the rarest of feats, we won back to back away games at Ipswich and Leicester by an aggregate of 5-0. We were top of the league, actually top of the league and to boot we had the division's outstanding talent and most prolific forward. Another late show at Crystal Palace meant that in October we were actually yet to lose a league game.
A run of draws made things tight, very tight. By the end of October we had lost top spot to Cardiff and drawn four in a row. The fans needn’t have panicked though as we reclaimed our position at the league's summit just a week later with an excellent win against Reading and stayed there for the rest of the season.
The first real crunch game of the season came at the end of November at home to Cardiff . International class players on show at Loftus Road . It was a throwback to the giddy days of 1994 when we welcomed them every week. A 2-1 win saw some fans claiming that this side was the real deal. In true Rangers style we lost our next two. The wobble had begun and many feared a post Christmas collapse. They needn’t have worried as seven points from a tricky Christmas schedule meant we started the New Year top. Rangers then embarked on an unbeaten run of 11 games seeing them win at the Madjeski and Riverside for the first time ever and build up a healthy lead at the top. Perhaps the most important Saturday of the season came when Ismael Miller slammed home an eighty eighth minute winner against Leicester as all the other teams around us lost. We suddenly had real daylight at the top.
We started to sweep everyone aside - Sheffield United, Doncaster and Barnsley to name a few - and now promotion seemed a formality. Yet in true Rangers style we appeared to be running out of steam. At Cardiff we drew 2-2, Taarabt twice, to leave the Premiership within touching distance. A disappointing 1-1 at home to Hull followed before we did it. Fifteen years after we dropped out of the top flight and eight and a half years after Vauxhall Motors beat us on penalties QPR reclaimed their seat at the biggest table of them all. To do it at Watford seemed apt, a ground where Rangers fans always travel in large numbers and always see us lose whilst turning in a shoddy display. It was poetic, it was life affirming. But it wasn't all over yet.
There are points in your life when you realize that QPR is in your blood. No matter how hard you try, no matter how useless the team, your mood will still be affected by the actions of eleven men wearing blue and white hoops come Saturday afternoon. That crystallizing moment of realization that I will forever be an R hit me on Saturday morning. Despite living in New York I had been lucky enough to plan a trip home to coincide with three Rangers games: Cardiff , Hull and Watford . From the cauldron of Cardiff to the ecstasy of Watford via the premature celebrations versus Hull all three had been glorious days to be QPR fan. But now I was back, back in New York where nobody cared that we were up, back where we belonged. It was a little frustrating that nobody shared my joy, it was even worse that nobody shared my pain.
The week of the FA hearing will surely go down as one of the most stressful and emotionally draining in QPR’s history. As Twitter and NewsNow vomited more terrible stories about our precious club it felt like it was us against the world. By the time Friday came around and we were going to have no result ahead of the Leeds game it felt like most had given up.
The five hour time difference between London and New York can be a bitch - especially for a football fanatic. One needs to adjust their clock accordingly. Games are played at 7.45am, 10am and 2.45pm which means that the average football fan manages a limited amount of sleep every weekend. Until this season the times had been but a minor hindrance. Often I’d slowly wake up as the game was starting and receive text updates from my dad and sister at the game. This season all that changed: Arabic streams, Radio London and more often than not a Sunday morning fixture on Fox Soccer Plus meant that I was able, through a mixture of physically being there and the joys of the internet, watch 17 QPR games. Saturday was to be another of those days. I’d gone to sleep reading Smudge’s Twitter page for the umpteenth time that night and convinced myself to enjoy the Leeds game because lifting a trophy is somewhat of a rarity at Loftus Road .
My alarm was set for 7:30am. I had planned to wake up, grab a coffee and a bagel before waltzing down to the always disgusting Nevada Smiths in the hope that there would be other QPR fans around to drink champagne with. The plan was to forget that The FA might take it all away in a heartbeat.
I didn’t wake up at 7:30am though. I rolled over at 6:44 A.M New York time and questioned not only my sanity at watching a game that could all mean nothing should The FA take on the role of the Child Catcher, but I had missed out on 45 minutes worth of sleep because I was so sodding worried about it all. Why on earth had I woken up at 6:45!? It was only 11:45 in England , I’d usually still be asleep if this was GMT and I’d had a heavy night drinking before.
Then it happened. Of course I wasn’t aware it had happened because Football Focus would have about five viewers if they showed it here at 6:45am, but back home it had been announced there would be no points deduction. At this exact moment in time I had rolled over to check my phone, flicked through a couple of spam emails informing me about Penis enlargement and Nigerian Banking and then logged into Twitter. Five Tweets in a row simply said ‘Yyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssss.’ I had no idea what it meant but I could pretty much guess. My heart started to beat just a little faster. Then I saw it, at 6:45 in the morning, in my bed in New York I saw a sign that said ’One New Tweet,’ it was from QPR…. no points deduction.
I have supported QPR my whole life, have seen us relegated twice, lose a play off final and win promotion at Watford , and I was still able to be a part of this glorious moment. It was as if The FA Panel themselves were just about to deliver the verdict when someone stopped them and said: "Shouldn’t you wake up Rob in New York , I’m sure he’d like to know," before someone scuttled off and telephoned my brain so that I could wake up as the news was breaking. QPR - it’s in my blood.
Nevada Smiths was it’s usual dreary self, no place for a Championship Party. So I threw my own party. Sitting there nursing a beer in my apartment at nine in the morning. The game itself was pretty poor from a Rangers point of view, it was perhaps exemplified best by my dad who text me saying he was bored and just wanted to watch the end. And then finally that end arrived, although it was ruined by pitch invaders.
Fox Soccer Plus had a Premier League game starting at 10am. The final whistle at Loftus Road blew at 9:45am, those dickheads ran on the pitch and were cleared at 9:55am. Amit Bhatia walked the trophy out onto the Loftus Road turf and I stood up and started to well up, it was all a bit much really especially seeing as it wasn’t even ten yet and I was on my third beer. The trophy was placed on a plinth and then…. Live from Villa Park it’s Aston Villa versus Wigan . Noooooooooooo! Stupid pitch invaders, had you stayed off the pitch then every ex-pat R would have seen us lift that glorious trophy, alas we didn’t get to see it live. I called my Dad and I bemoaned the Premier League bias of foreign T.V, then I laughed because it didn’t matter anymore…. we were Premier League.
It took Neil Warnock just 13 and a half months to take us from relegation fodder into Champions. We’ve waited 15 years to feel how we do today. The man should have the freedom of Loftus Road and deserves to sit alongside Les, Stan, Rodney, Terry, Gerry and Ollie in the legends row.
The team is one of the best to grace Loftus Road - a combination of heart, will, skill, pace and passion have given Rangers fans something to be proud of. Amazing to think that the Vauxhall Motors debacle was just eight and a half years ago.
Rob Gilbert is writer of blogandwhitehoops, a recently launched QPR blog that aims to take a lighter look at all things QPR. Click on the banner to visit the site.