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Why are we in a 'tailspin' if the owners don't sell though? New owners will be similarly hamstrung by our egregious fine payments, FFP, and whatever other fiscal configurations now blight - sorry, level - the game. Ruben, Amit and Reilly need to get hold of the reins and steer the club where it needs to go, beginning with a decision on Nourry and the on/off DoF role.
Even in the current climate, there's absolutely no good industrial reason why we can't emulate the likes of Luton (OK, now back in the Champ, bad example), Brentford, Palace, and the like. Bournemouth went up and survived in the Prem with an even smaller ground than ours. The club is dysfunctional, or at best semi-functional, because of a culture of institutionalised complacency and ineptitude, and now an injury list as long, tiresome and media-massaged as a Trump rally speech.
A big problem (for us), as I see it, is our expectations/aspirations as fans have been so corrosively downwardly managed over the years they're in our boots. And I don't know who fixes that, or even cares about it.
I despaired when we sacked (did not extend) Warburton's contract as always saw him as the only adult in the room who had a passion for & knowledge of football and most importantly a ferocious work ethic.
With fan-boy owners like we have, we always needed a blunt no-bullshit workaholic which is what we had in Warburton, who I said at the time could have a Alex Ferguson type impact at our club.
Do you think if Alex Ferguson was a Manager or DoF@ QPR we would have a laughably abysmal ticketing websit or do you think Ferguson would give the Head of IT an early morning summons and tell him to sort it out by the end of the month, no excuses.
Warburton could have been a mini-Ferguson for us, which is why I despaired when those who were mugging off the loyal fans & very generous owners of our club (Austin, Ferdinand, Ramsey, Hall etc) threw him under the bus to maintain their excessive salaries, double jobbing & questionable work ethics.
Too many posters on this site have called this so wrong.
After Warburton I could see this coming and I'm probably in a small minority who is not surprised where we are now with Cifuentes having lost a couple of seasoned Championship players who helped keep us in this division (eg a half-arsed Chris Willock is a more effective Championship team player than Ilias Chair will ever be as he has end product).
I'd join Saxbend and walk to North London in my bare feet to get Mark Warburton back into this club, in whatever capacity (only proviso being I hope I'm right in thinking he's not a George Graham / Neil Warnock fingers in the till type).
Really not singling top-man Brian out but when you see posts such as .. 'I don't think Warburton has the CV to be a DoF'...in our club, really?
And we had Les Ferdinand (top-man too by the way) for how many years who to my knowledge had a City & Guilds in Painting & Decorating, I sometimes think we the fans have been the masters of our own downfall.
Simon Jordan said Warburton was sacked for over-achieving and our owners lost the run of themselves, which I think is a comment that applied to a vast majority of our fans and too many posters on this forum who still can't bring themselves to admit they called it wrong and we yet again committed an act of self-harm.
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Mark Warburton interview on 10:04 - Nov 16 with 2288 views
"Really not singling top-man Brian out but when you see posts such as .. 'I don't think Warburton has the CV to be a DoF'...in our club, really?"
That's not what I said, Parky. What I said was that he only has two years of experience as a DoF. I've also said that, despite that, he may be great at the job nonetheless. I've also said that i'd love if it he was.
Edit - continued below.
[Post edited 16 Nov 10:12]
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
Ferdinand has always spoken of having done his badges, and having done some DoF-related coaching. This article is an example of his claims.
However, our worry about Ferdinand was that he had no experience in the role. I don't believe that my club should be a place where you come to do your apprenticeship. I believe our DoF should have ten years of experience. Twenty. We should be interviewing scores of people. Finding the very best we can afford. Not 'Les' or 'Warbs' because we know them, we like them and they like us. That's amateur-hour in my book.
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
Fair play Brian, did'nt see your comment saying he may be great at the job nonetheless,
But how many years experience did Nourry, Hoos or Ferdinand have?
Warburton has spent his whole life in football, from grass-roots to non-league to somehow managing to break into the closed shop of the pro-ranks while holding down a full-time job in the City going to work at 5am and then coming home coaching late into the evenings.
How unbelievably impressive is that?
I think your right in he's likeable as you know he's committed. You may also be right in that he has a habit of falling out with people but maybe its because they don't have the same work ethic or standards he sets for himself and others?
I'd also argue he's pragmatic as would be fairly sure he wanted to sack Austin on that infamous night and Gray over that New Year but knew he needed them to score goals so bided his time for the good of the club.
I get he was probably too sceptical of a pure stats based model initially and Brentford's owner who comes from that background was proven to be right in that it was the right model for their club, but that's a club with historically measured expectations and Benham had the time to be proven right.
If you don't imitimately understand stats and stats modelling you end up getting sold by the likes of Nourry & Belk and the only way to safeguard against these self-pronoting types is to employ a football man who knows the Dom Balls, the Lee Wallace's etc who are honest hard-working pro's who will represent you and your club with pride.
For Wallace & Ball read Dunne & Field and it will be these types, as last year, who we need to step up for us now and lead this group forward.
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Mark Warburton interview on 10:29 - Nov 16 with 2157 views
I agree that we shouldn’t hire on the basis that we know them. Nostalgia can be a block to progress and new ideas.
I do think we should be a club that gives young and experience free staff a go though. They should be cheaper and hungrier and everyone starts somewhere.
We could be what União de Leiria was to Jose Mourinho for example. The problem is our owners want to sell us a big club, when in reality we have the fourth lowest attendance and third worst win rate of any league club this decade.
It will take a huge culture change, but I would love to see is a football maternity unit not a football retirement home.
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Mark Warburton interview on 10:29 - Nov 16 with 2152 views
“a half-arsed Chris Willock is a more effective Championship team player than Ilias Chair will ever be as he has end product.”
Let’s look at that end product…
Willock 143 games 20 goals 22 assists
Chair 224 games 34 goals 34 assists
…so Willock’s goal involvements = around one every 3.4 games, Chair’s around one every 3.3.
However, Chair’s figures are remarkably consistent. In his 5 seasons as a regular, his goal involvements have been: 10-12-14-14-15 – with the last season, in a relegation struggle, being his highest figure.
In contrast, Willock had 18 in 35 in season 2021-22 (1 in 2), then dropped to 8 in 28 (22-23) and 8 in 39 (1 in 5) last season.
One signed a contract extension option shortly after Bright & Manning refused to do so and made a pointed comment about how much he owed the club. The other ran his contract down and left on a free for a club at the same level as us.
Not wishing to be contrary, but for me, this is where so many either don't see the bigger picture or their own preferences blind them to the real facts,
One of these players takes the vast majority of our set-pieces & corners so you would expect that player (Chair) to have significantly better stats.
One of these players has suffered with a recurring hamstring injury over his last two seasons which has undoubtedly impacted his stats,
And I think your stats for Willock in 2021-22 prove a fully fit Chris Willock was contributing 1 in 2 goal involvements whereas on average Ilias Chair contributes 1 in 3.3, including taking all our set-pieces & corners.
This thread is'nt about Chair mind, as love his work ethic, even if I do despair with his lack of end product and 1 in 6.5 goal return.
I get we're now a team short in stature but if we are to stay up we need to give Chair a free role and hopefully fully & finally realise his potential.
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Mark Warburton interview on 10:52 - Nov 16 with 2045 views
I've always thought Warburton was a good Manager and with his career in Football and Finance, eminently well qualified to be a Director of Football with us. The League tables confirm his achievements with us as the best Manager we've had since Colin. Maybe he could work with Marti, possibly with Hoos in his current role, but doubt Nourry would welcome him as he would be a very strong candidate to replace him.
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Mark Warburton interview on 11:08 - Nov 16 with 1985 views
How can someone like Warburton steeped in football, from youth level, grass-roots, non-league, coaching & management, with a successful career in finance, managing dozens of people and hundreds of millions of pounds who knows our owners, our club, our academy staff, most importantly our woefully inept stats & recruitment departments.....
Not be the best qualified person for the job?
Am I seriously missing something here?
Oh wait, lets give our start-fxxker owners (anyone read about Nabisco's CEO in Barbarians at The Gate?) media friendly nice guy Les who's done some useless UEFA classroom tutorials or some over confident geek from St Paul's a go and see what happens.
If our fans had any sense they'd be singing Mark Warburtons name for 90 minutes at our next home match, but oh, remember that period we play sideways too much, I can just imagine Charlton fans having that gripe after their last two decades.
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Mark Warburton interview on 12:26 - Nov 16 with 1887 views
Some light reading here for your international weekend. It’s what we said at the time of the sacking. Basically “yeh it’s gone to sht this season, but this is a big mistake we’ll come to regret”.
Whatever anybody thinks of him, he’s the only manager in the ten years we’ve had since the Prem who had us consistently midtable and performed up to and beyond his budget. 13th, 9th, 11th. I’d like a bit of 13th, 9th and 11th now let me tell you.
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Mark Warburton interview on 15:47 - Nov 16 with 1624 views
He did a good job but the wheels well and truly came off that 3rd season and before the injuries came in. If you look back a lot of the wins were narrow ones which could have gone the other way and that eventually turned to losing close games instead.
I'm not sure he'd have lasted long into that 4th season if he had stayed, he'd already fallen out with the board and the DOF and was starting to lose fans but we'll never know
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Mark Warburton interview on 16:06 - Nov 16 with 1589 views
It doesn't really make sense to say one can 'regret' something when one has no way of knowing how it would have turned out. It seems to me that, for all Warburton's intensity, his race was run at QPR after three years, and, injuries aside, he didn't do well enough, or sustianbly enough, in the end. Good managers and good clubs build and develop on their early promise, and we went into an abject tailspin. In the end, it's a matter of opinion, of course, and I can see why some might think he deserved another year given all the variables, though I'm not convinced he did. The one thing I do agree on is how shabbily his termination was handled, but when you have people like Hoos and co running the show, who ooze about as much class and professionalism as Gerald Ratner, it's no great surprise.
The first LFW article makes a bit of a deal of Warburton's healthy management prospects after he left us, but is, with hindsight, wide of the mark. Apart from a spot of coaching at West Ham, he hasn't had a management job - at Birmingham or anywhere else - since, and that should tell you something.
I do quite like Mark, and his professional commitment is very impressive indeed, but I wouldn't describe his overall record as anything more than (literally) up and down with us. That said, were he to come back in some capacity, it's hard to imagine things getting any worse on the pitch, and far stranger things have happened.
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