Ding dong the witch is dead. But QPR are in danger of sleepwalking straight into the same mistakes they've made twice before. Opportunity knocks for football's most accident-prone club.
That’s not what you’ll have read in the brochure before the trip. Harry Redknapp is like the owner of a seedy hotel overlooking a dodgy petrol station in a bit of Eastern Europe that used to be Russia. There he sits, whiling away his time on Trip Advisor registering fake accounts and posting fictitious reviews about his comfortable beds, Michelin starred food and revitalisation of Gareth Bale who he absolutely was not ever going to loan to Nottingham Forest.
When you’re actually there, experiencing it, you can’t help wondering where all this positive press is coming from.
The Harry Redknapp you see in the brochure is the England manager in waiting, cruelly denied his seat at the head of the nation’s footballing table by a Football Association lacking balls and bottle, taking a safe option with quietly-spoken, vastly-inferior, Roy Hodgson. Veteran sports journalists had queued up for six months to coronate Redknapp. The FA maintain he was never in the frame.
Where’s that clip where the Portsmouth player kicks the ball at Harry during an interview? Where’s that clip where Harry corpses with laughter talking about Benjani’s shooting practise? Where’s that clip of Chris Kamara walking in on Harry and Jim Smith crouched over the Racing Post? Where’s that clip of Harry calling out a West Ham fan who doesn’t rate youth team graduate Frank Lampard as highly as he does youth team graduate Scotty Canham? Tell me that story about Harry bringing the supporter on during a West Ham pre-season friendly at Oxford City again would you, it’s been nearly 20 minutes.
That’s the Harry you get pitched… Harry Houdini. Riding in at the last possible minute, sweeping aside the mediocrity that went before him, hauling a new beginning in through his car window, with Gary Cotterill providing the voice-over through that chasm in his front teeth. ‘Arry the lad. ‘Arry the wheeler dealer. ‘Arry the old style English football manager leading the fight of domestic spit and sawdust against Johnny Foreigner and his flouncy tactics, fancy systems and latent homosexuality.
Let’s give a really brief, really harsh, assessment of Harry Redknapp’s two years as QPR manager. He signed 21 players permanently at a cost of £58m, not including the undisclosed fee for Reading keeper Alex McCarthy, and almost that many on loan. He sold or released 25 for a recouped amount of £21.5m. For all of this, QPR currently play with a striker at right wing, a central midfielder at left wing, and a 36 year old centre back with no ankles at left back. Redknapp took over a club in the bottom two of the Premier League going into an away game at Sunderland, and he leaves a club in the bottom two of the Premier League going into an away game at Sunderland. He’s achieved nothing in two years, and he’s spent millions. We are exactly where we were when he took over, and the accounts say we've lost obscene amounts doing it.
One would hope the notoriously harsh British press may pick up on one or two items of low-hanging fruit here.
Redknapp was at pains to point out that before last season’s Championship campaign that he’d been forced to get rid of half his squad to cut costs, and then rebuild the team in one summer. Fair enough, big job completed successfully, cast a glance at Wigan and Reading to see what you could have won.
But last year QPR were still operating on a budget that dwarfed almost all of the rest of the division put together. In September they went to Yeovil Town with players still on the books earning as much in a week as the entire Glovers squad and yet still needed a late penalty from Charlie Austin and a fine display from Rob Green to win 1-0. Name another Championship manager last season who had £8m to go out and buy Charlie Austin and Matt Phillips, two of the division’s five outstanding players from the year before. Name another Championship manager who’d have been asked so few questions when Phillips subsequently nose-dived in form, fitness and confidence after arriving. QPR spent more than any other team in the division, scraped up in the very last second of the play-off final, and this apparently furthered Redknapp’s reputation.
Fact was, QPR were never as consistent in shape, performance, formation or results as they were when Steve McClaren was here doing the coaching during the summer and early part of the season while Redknapp was away having his knee fixed. Rangers were a shambles before that, they’ve been a shambles since. It was only by a quirk of fate and typically stoic shifts from Richard Dunne, Robert Green and Nedum Onuoha that McClaren ended up on the losing side at Wembley.
Redknapp, who said he’d been plotting his golf club memberships and retirement when Gary O’Neil was sent off in that final, then spent the entire summer talking about playing a back three, which a number of South American sides did in the World Cup. He was allowed to add Rio Ferdinand to his line up, despite the QPR board continuously saying they’d learnt their lessons about signing ageing, high-earning, players with nothing left to prove or achieve seeking a final pay day at the end of their careers. He sold Danny Simpson, the club’s only right back, because with three at the back QPR no longer needed right backs. He signed a whole host of ‘number 10’ type midfielders who are too attacking to play in sitting positions, not quick enough to play on the wing and not prolific enough to play up front — Jordon Mutch, Leroy Fer, Eduardo Vargas and Niko Kranjcar came in to join Adel Taarabt. After two hideous games, the three at the back was dropped. Suddenly QPR were forced to pick central players on the wings, and Redknapp was allowed to publicly bemoan his lack of options at full back without anybody asking whatever happened to Simpson.
Isn’t this the sort of stuff journalists are supposed to thrive on? Isn’t this fish in a barrel stuff? But then you have a drink with a press officer from one of his previous clubs and you hear about how they’d be packing up for the day and heading home only to see a couple of national hacks heading the other way across the car park for an unscheduled, off-diary, chat with the manager, and you realise who’s buttering bread on what side here. When everybody’s favourite spit-producing hyperbole king Jim White is asked about sources, he always trots out a story about Harry ringing him to let him know Robbie Keane had gone to Celtic. Purely out of the goodness of his heart, obviously.
The thing you quickly get used to when Harry Redknapp is your manager, is it’s never his fault.
When he’s not passing blame, he’s lying. He’ll sit there and say he’s no idea how much Charlie Austin earns, how much he’s been offered, or what the state of his contract negotiations are, because all of that is dealt with by the chairman and the chief executive. Then, sometimes in the very next sentence, he’ll happily reveal that Jose Bosingwa is on £65,000 a week, and Adel Taarabt and Shaun Wright-Phillips are not far behind. Whatever you think of that trio of individuals, the way Redknapp just threw club assets under the bus when it suited him, revealing details of contracts and wages, was completely unprofessional.
It continued right down to the death today. Redknapp was at the QPR training ground for the best part of 14 hours on Monday as the transfer deadline approached. He says he was trying to get Emmanuel Adebayor in on loan. Widespread reports say he was trying to return Mauro Zarate to West Ham just three weeks after taking him on loan in the first place in order to create space for Matt Jarvis to come the other way. Whatever, he was there, he was busy, and he was engaged.
Today, transfer window closed and no players in, we’re told that the knee problems he’s been suffering since he arrived here two years ago are too bad for him to continue. Fine yesterday, not today.
Martin Samuel, an experienced, investigative sports journalist of many years standing in this country, treated Harry to a puff piece in The Mail today "confirming" as much.
The willingness to swallow this is embarrassing. Paris Hilton thinks more carefully about what goes down her gullet.
Here’s Harry on October 25: "I'm first one out on that training ground every single day. Every day. Anybody who says I'm not out there every day is lying. I'm in this ground 07.30 every morning. Everybody can bring their cameras any day of the week, when the players are out there I'm there.”
And here he is today: "I'm struggling so badly now. I can't walk, I can barely stand and watch. I'm in pain all the time. I went to see my grandson play football at the weekend, and after five minutes had to go back to the car. I couldn't even stand up. What sort of life is it if you can't watch the kids play? I feel positive about the future at Rangers — Sandro is back at the weekend and he will make a huge difference. We've got other players coming back from injury, too — if I could get out and coach them like I could five years ago, I'd be optimistic. But I can't.”
I’m sorry, but do these people think we’re fucking backwards or something? You’re telling me that had Harry Redknapp been able to once more land his precious Jermain Defoe and Peter Crouch this January, and pair them together in the QPR attack, that he’d be resigning today? I suspect that if we were going into Saturday’s game with Southampton with "Little Boy Jermain” and "The Boy Crouchy” paired together in attack that we’d probably have Harry Redknapp as manager bad knees or no bad knees. You’re telling me this knee problem is considerably worse than three weeks ago after Burnley, or two weeks ago after Man Utd, when a departure would have left a successor with transfer window to spare, or yesterday even?
We didn’t float in on the last onion boat here you know.
Truth is, this is the last stop Harry Redknapp can get off at where he’d be able to pitch relegation as not being his fault. Bravely rescued shambolic club after relegation (which he spent £25m trying to avoid and failed), promoted them straight back in glorious circumstances (spending more than anybody else in the league), only to then have his hands tied behind his back in the January transfer window when reinforcements were needed (after spending £30m on nine players during the summer). That’s the line you’ll get, and this time next year when QPR are God knows where and Harry’s knees are in tip top shape again, he’ll be in that chair on Match of the Day pitching for another job.
For whoever that club is, remember this… you don’t realise just how much he’s doing your head in until he leaves.
There’s the Man Utd thing. And the Chelsea thing. There’s the fact that he left Fulham after a year because as a settled, secure, mid-table Premier League club they "didn’t match my ambition”. There’s the fact that most thought he’d done that because the felt he was going to get the Aston Villa job, when in actual fact he considered himself a viable candidate for the vacant post at Stamford Bridge. There’s his omnipresent minister without portfolio Kia Joorabchian. There’s his insistence on constantly referring to "Premier League football matches” and, even more irritatingly, the "business of winning Premier League football matches” upon which he is incredibly focused. There’s his insistence that having been tactically dismantled, comprehensively picked apart, and soundly beaten 5-0 on your own ground by Swansea City his preparation for the game, and every other game, is "meticulous”.
Mark Hughes makes me want to walk out of my flat, go down the stairs, go across my back garden, go into the bin storage area and start violently kicking the wheelie bins around the enclosed space, scattering the rubbish and entrails around, rattling the hollow plastic receptacles and making a hell of a bloody row, all the while yelling out swear words, just so I can’t hear him talking — either in person, on a television screen, or in my head. Just shut up Mark. Shut up about your ambition and your meticulous preparation and your fucking Premier League football matches.
There is an argument, eloquently put forward by Flavio Briatore during the outstanding and highly relevant Four Year Plan documentary on QPR’s last disastrous foreign ownership, that our club simply attracts idiots as managers. "One was a drunk, one attacked the players, every idiot we find, not an idiot left in turn,” says Briatore, subtitled, not bothered about cameras filming him.
And if you wanted to turn that horse carcass over and continue to beat it, I believe there may be a little flesh down there by its hind leg. You could still potentially draw out an argument that Mark Hughes was totally at fault for the reckless spending and backroom staff building that went on here during his 11 month stint in charge, costing the club hundreds of millions of pounds, condemning the team to relegation, haemorrhaging Tune Group money across the footballing wastelands. You could easily say it was all Hughes’ fault. His mate Kia lumbered us with Julio Cesar, Jose Bosingwa, Ji-Sung Park and others. You could blame Hughes for it all. Hughes is an arsehole, you’d garner a lot of support.
And you can now blame Redknapp for our current predicament, for all of the intensely irritating reasons I’ve already outlined. A dinosaur in a modern era. Once again pulling poor Tony Fernandes’ pants down and taking advantage of his lack of football knowledge and experience.
But is there not a worrying pattern developing here? Hughes has secured mid-table finishes and prolonged cup runs at clubs of similar size to QPR in the Premier League — Blackburn, Fulham and now Stoke. Matt Phillips excels in the Premier League and Championship with Blackpool but cannot find fitness or form with QPR. Junior Hoilett likewise at Blackburn, likewise at QPR. Jordon Mutch was one of the stand-out performers for Cardiff in the Premier League last season as an advanced, goalscoring midfielder — sold at a loss by QPR after six months. Leroy Fer… Eduardo Vargas… Steven Caulker… Why do players and managers find it so difficult to reach the standards they achieved at other clubs once they come to QPR?
How many players have to fail here before we stop blaming the manager? How many managers have to fail before we look at the people above them and, rather than singing the chairman's name at matches, start asking serious questions about the way the club is being run?
Sooner or late this worship, and subsequent persecution, of the individual has to end at QPR. You bring in an ethos, an attitude, a way of doing things, and you bring in individuals who buy into that and fit it and you create a collective. At the moment QPR is a collection of individuals who are either our saviour — Charlie Austin, Robert Green, Tony Fernandes — or sworn enemies — Junior Hoilett, Harry Redknapp, Mark Hughes etc
Tony Fernandes, his board and his CEO are the common factors here. All sorts of managers and players are failing under them. Why is that? Given that these are the people who say they want to build our club a training ground and stadium that — if ever completed — would change the QPR we know in every possible way forever, now’s probably one of our last chances to find that out and solve it.
It’s frustrating to see a clutch of good signings coming in and failing, but it’s not the first time, nor probably the last, and it’s because they’re not coming into anything. Mark Hughes isn’t a bad manager, Harry Redknapp isn’t a bad manager; Jordon Mutch isn’t a bad player, Jose Bosingwa isn’t a bad player. You can pile evidence up a mile high to prove this: medals, performances for other clubs, appearances at the highest level, signings made. A vast array of football people are coming to QPR and failing in a variety of circumstances. It’s not coincidence, it’s not Mark Hughes’ fault and it’s not Harry Redknapp’s fault.
QPR have a wonderful opportunity at this moment. They’ve brought in Les Ferdinand as a football person between the board and the management, they’ve added Chris Ramsey to oversee the grossly under-performing youth side of things, there’s been a clear change in transfer window policy, there have been wise words about long term planning and "no more cheque book”.
Now appoint a manager who fits with that. Harry Redknapp clearly didn’t, and the clashes, leaks and tortuous departure — that has rock all to do with his dodgy knees — were the result. He was appointed from a shortlist of one, as was Hughes before him. Interview. Have a look around. Paul Clement, the assistant manager at Real Madrid, is keen. There will be others, in the lower divisions and abroad. Take time.
More important than the name of the next manager, is deciding what sort of a club we are. Are we going to continue to be a mini-Man City throwing silly money around? Are we going to be like Newcastle and scout the continent for bargains to sell on later? Are we going to be QPR of old, scouting lower divisions and home nations for young talent to buy low and sell high? Are we going to be a Tony Pulis Stoke set up, eking out the last dregs of quality from grizzled veterans? Are we going to try and be the Premier League team in London that actually takes kids, trains them up and plays them in the first team, rather than just hoarding them so nobody else can have them?
Whatever it is make a decision now, compile a list of managers accordingly, interview them carefully, make an informed decision over a period of time. Maybe look down the road, where Brentford are threatening to emerge from decades in our shadow with a new stadium on the way, a vastly superior youth and scouting set up, a forward thinking manager and a QPR-supporting CEO. The Bees are going to go past us if we're not careful, what price Marks Devlin and Warburton?
Or, you know, appoint Tim Sherwood. He’s mates with Les and he’ll tell you his win percentage at Spurs was top notch. See you this time next year for the same article. More heartbreakingly, I’ll see you at Sunderland on Tuesday night.
Links >>> Redknapp's six best, and six worst >>> Said and Done
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images