In a week when foreign owners are starting to flex their mental health disorders over Premier League clubs, Malaysian owned QPR and Thai owned Leicester clash at Loftus Road.
Old First Division, Old Old Second Division >>> Saturday December 21, 2013 >>> Kick Off 12.15 >>> Loftus Road , London , W12 >>> Live on Sky Sports 1
Well that fit and proper person test for football club owners is working an absolute treat isn't it? No wonder QPR feel comfortable feeding their ongoing shopping addiction with an impulsive Christmas purchase of a Yosi Benayoun they have little use for — if the Financial Fair Play rules are applied as strictly as the "regulations" on who can and cannot own football clubs Rangers have little to fear in spunking 736% of their turnover on wages in a desperate attempt to regather their place in the precious Premier League.
At Hull , Dr Allam's counting lesson — he wants to "shorten" Hull City to Hull Tigers — continues apace.
Allam has made little secret of the fact that he'd like to take ownership of Hull's KC Stadium from the local council and build a retail and sport complex on the large patch of wasteground behind the away end which is currently used as a car park for football and rugby matches and, once a year, for the enormous Hull Fair. The council won't play ball, rightly wondering exactly why they should give up a community owned facility for a nominal fee so a private individual can make a colossal profit from the surrounding land. Allam has become obstinate as a result. The name change, which he claims is necessary to generate revenue in the Far East to make up for the money they lose by not owning their own ground, is just the latest in a long line of tricks and stunts he has pulled to force the council's hand.
He has made life increasingly difficult for the rugby league side that shares the KC Stadium. In the middle of last season all Hull FC photographs and memorabilia were stripped from the stadium — including the Johnny Whiteley pictures from the Johnny Whiteley Suite — because Allam said the club had to pay the Stadium Management Company £20,000 a season to have them there. He said Hull City paid that amount to have their pictures displayed — but given he owns both the football club and SMC that's a bit like him passing money from his right hand into his left hand. Early in the new year Hull FC's Richard Whiting will be rewarded for ten years of service with the club with a testimonial match — but anybody wanting to go and pay tribute to a wonderful utility back and loyal servant will have to drive to Featherstone to do it because Allam wants to charge Hull FC rent to use the stadium for the match, so they're playing it away from home.
Every now and again Allam takes a photographer from the Hull Daily Mail to a field on the outskirts of town and holds up blueprints for a supposed new stadium complex which he says he will move Hull to if he cannot gain control of their current home. City manager Steve Bruce, presumably rather enjoying continued employment, says Allam should be allowed to call the club whatever he likes and make the team play in pink if he wants, because he's put some money into it and got it into the Premier League. Welcome to modern day English football — as long as you buy a few players and get the team to the Premier League for a bit you can do whatever the hell you like to the club. The Football League, and the Premier League, do and say nothing about it. They'll probably sign off on the name change as well.
Down in Cardiff , the Vincent Tan ego expansion shows no sign of abating just yet.
Although Malky Mackay showed himself to be a wonderfully promising young manager at Watford , and then followed it up by succeeding where Dave Jones had repeatedly failed by promoting City to the Premier League, Tan seems determined to be rid of the Scot. He sacked his director of football Iain Moody, who Mackay liked and worked closely with, and has publicly undermined the boss at every turn. This week, having said he wouldn't give him a penny to spend in January, the megalomaniac Malaysian has told Mackay to resign or he will be fired. Time for Tan to step out from behind the fake moustache and dark glasses and get his cheque book out one feels — this flagrant attempt to bully Mackay into an untenable position and avoid having to pay off the remaining two and a half years of his contract doesn't look like it's going to work at all.
And this all, of course, after he'd changed the traditional Cardiff blue to a red strip and told any supporters who didn't like it that he would simply withdraw his backing and bankrupt the club if they complained too loudly. Again, his money enabled them to reach the Premier League for a bit, and therefore nobody has said anything very much about it. Get to the Premier League and you can behave exactly as you wish. The Football League, and the Premier League, do nothing about it.
One can't help but wonder what you have to do to fail the Fit and Proper Person test for ownership these days? I mean, if we resurrected the bodies of Dr Harold Shipman, Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Trenton Chase, found a way to mobilise them and formed a consortium to take over Brighton and Hove Albion and move the club lock stock and barrel to Weston Super Mare because "we bloody well feel like it ok?" we'd probably get little more than a mealy mouthed statement from League chairman Greg Clarke saying they're reluctantly approving the move, and the idea of sacrificing people on the pitch at half time so we can open their heads and feast on the goo within, because "the league is concerned Brighton would not be able to fulfil their fixtures next season without this investment."
Which should all make us rather grateful that QPR are currently owned by Tony Fernandes — naïve in the sport, prone to mistakes, with a catalogue of errors on his CV during a two year stint at Loftus Road already, but with a keen eye on the PR side of things and seemingly a sense of how you do and don't treat a historical institution like a football club should you come into possession of it.
Fernandes should not have sacked Neil Warnock. He should not have appointed Mark Hughes. He should not have allowed Mark Hughes, Mike Rigg and the minister without portfolio Kia Joorabchian to bloat the club's backroom staff with their chums, and the playing squad with a load of ageing, overpaid tat. He should not have gone off on one about the 'global brand' when QPR were barely even a top flight football team. He should not have kissed up to Ji-Sung Park so much. He should not have taken Rangers rattling around Asia for two weeks in preparation for a Premier League season. He trusted the wrong people, made the wrong decisions, and as a result Rangers lost their hard won top flight status.
But he's not malicious. Tan, Allam, Flavio Briatore and others all seem genuinely nasty in the way they go about the business of running football clubs — deliberately rubbing fans up the wrong way as if they'd actually like them to stop coming altogether so they can be replaced with tourists and day trippers at £60 a ticket. They pay scant regard for their club's history and fan base. Fernandes does at least seem to understand that football clubs are nothing without their tradition and hardcore support and does his best to maintain and appease both. How refreshing it is to be picking newspapers up and seeing other clubs descending into carnage of their chairman's making when for many years every third breaking news story about a football club behaving badly was referring to our Queens Park Rangers.
It's 12 months since the worst Christmas in living memory at Loftus Road saw Liverpool 3-0 up at half time hot on the heals of a 1-0 defeat at Newcastle where players — Julio Cesar chief amongst them — had come up with spurious injury complaints because they didn't fancy the flight north so far into December. QPR now have a hard working and reasonably talented team to be pretty proud of. Sure, they haven't been great to watch at times, but after the horrors of last season there's pleasure to be found in watching Danny Simpson play so consistently well over such a long period of time, or Charlie Austin working as hard as he does, or Richard Dunne and Clint Hill dolling out some old-school defensive lessons to new fangled tippy tappy strikers. It's between Simpson and Austin for Player of the Year for me so far — though I suspect most would probably vote for Joey Barton if asked to pick now. Even he, to his credit, seems to have wised up this term.
Promotion looks a good bet, a new stadium is finally on the horizon after years of failed attempts and broken promises, planning permission has been obtained for a new training ground, the owner is saying the right things, the manager is doing a good job and the team is top of the table with just two defeats from the first 20 games. Christmas brings television cameras, and third placed Leicester City , to Shepherd's Bush for a mouth watering top of the table clash at Loftus Road which is totally sold out with a day to go until kick off. Things could be worse couldn't they?
And now, just to really put the tin hat on it all, comes the news we've all been waiting for over the course of 13 long weeks. Yes, it's true, Bobby Zamora is fit for selection again. Saints be praised. What a time to be alive.
Links >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33602/leicester%E2% Profile >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33601/furlong%E2%80 >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33590/live-from-dov >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33589/tierney-in-ch >>> Betting
Paul Furlong heads home the equaliser as Ian Holloway's QPR side roar back from 2-0 down to beat Mickey Adams' Leicester 3-2 at Loftus Road in 2004. Furlong scored the winner in injury time after David Connolly had been sent off for elbowing Georges Santos with the Foxes 2-0 up and cruising.
Team News: To be fair, it's probably a bit soon for Bobby to be taking part just yet, so rest your weary head for another few days at least.. Clint Hill is a doubt having left the Blackpool game at half time, but Nedum Onuoha was a superb deputy at Bloomfield Road and he is now fully recovered from his hamstring injury and able to play. Ale Faurlin is a long term absentee. Yossi Benayoun may make the bench after signing on a free transfer a week and a half ago. Niko Kranjcar must be pushing for a start after a match-changing substitute appearance against the Tangerines.
Apart from strikers Chris Wood (hamstring) and Tom Hopper (shin) and defender Sean St. Ledger (groin) who are all long term absentees, Nigel Pearson has no new injury concerns ahead of this one.
Elsewhere: Christmas is a time of year when all of those people who like to arrive at the cash register and present their goods before giving any thought whatsoever to how they're going to pay for them — resulting in a 90 second rummage through Mary Poppins' handbag to try and locate a debit card or cobble together £57.60 in loose change — go out onto the streets together, at once. It's a time of year when the pubs fill with non-pub people, clogging the bar area with business bumholes on Christmas-jumper themed work outings and said handbag clutchers hunting cappuccinos. It's also a time to spend with the faaaaaghmly, including the parts of the faaaaaaghmly you don't really like spending time with.
God bless the Championship then, for recognising that actually this is all a bit shit really and what your everyday, salt of the earth, over worked, under paid, stressed, miserable, depressed, latent alcoholic really wants is a load of football to take themselves off to and leave the Westfield dwellers and "parents" to their own devices. Rounds 1,112 through 1,386 will all be crammed into the next eight days at the end of which any centre half completing every minute of action shall be awarded the Victoria Cross.
Too bloody right as well. So punch your mother to the ground and step over her bloodied corpse to get to Brighton v Huddersfield this weekend, or possibly Derby v Doncaster , and support this brave initiative. Or stay at home and annoy everybody else as much as they're annoying you by putting the 17.30 televised clash between Miwllwall and Middlesbrough on the big television with the surround sound and joining in enthusiastically with the "we'll awll go daggggggh…. TO THE DEEEEEEEN" post-goal festivities. Shout obscenities at any elderly relatives who object.
Champions Elect Bolton continue their relentless march to the league title with guaranteed home victory over Charlton this weekend while just up the road this week's North-off sees Burnley face Blackpool. Imbued by no longer having to listen to Dave Jones mumble on about a penalty his Cardiff side should have had at Loftus Road in 2010, Sheff Wed have won two of their last three after a run of one win in 17 since Jones was sent packing back to his wife/Welsh netball playing bit on the side. This week they welcome Bournemouth.
Nottingham Trees are at Birmingham , the Globetrotters (doing slightly less globetrotting as of last week) go to Reading , and Udinese have former Siena and Palermo boss Giuseppe Sannino in charge for the first time following Gianfranco Zola's sacking as they travel to Ipswich . An afternoon standing alongside Mick McCarthy will probably have him worrying that learning English isn't as straightforward as he'd been led to believe.
What else do we have here? Oh, Leeds v Barnsley. Yorkshire.
Referee: First v third in the Championship usually calls for one of two things — a Premier League referee dropping down, or a second tier official being lined up for promotion. Things bode well for Paul Tierney then, the Lancashire official in his fifth full season on the league list who has been trusted with this game of the day. It's the second QPR appointment of his career, the first since a 2-0 win against Plymouth back in 2009 early in Neil Warnock's reign at the club. For details of that game, his stats from recent seasons, and details of appointments elsewhere this weekend, please http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/33589/tierney-in-ch here.
QPR: Rangers' home form is formidable. The R's have taken 26 points from a possible 30 with eight wins and two draws from ten matches. In that time Harry Redknapp's side have conceded just twice — against Derby and Sheff Wed — and they went on to win both games regardless. They have kept eight clean sheets at home, 14 in total, and conceded just ten goals in 20 league games this season which is the best defensive record in the Football League by a stretch. Rangers are on a run of three games without conceding a goal — Bournemouth, Blackburn and Blackpool — but their slim total of 24 goals scored this season is the lowest of any team in the top eight which tells you why they're top but not streaking clear of the rest. Charlie Austin's goal at Bloomfield Road last week was his tenth of the season which lifts him to fourth in the division's scoring charts, level with Leicester 's David Nugent.
Leicester: The Foxes have endured a bit of a wobble since climbing to the top of the table on the final weekend in November. A run of nine wins and two defeats in 11 games took them there, but they've lost three and drawn one of four since in all competitions. A 1-1 draw at home to high flying Burnley last weekend followed defeats at Brighton and Sheff Wed. Away from home the Foxes have won five times, claiming successes at Ipswich, Watford, Yeovil, Derby and Middlesbrough. But they've lost four times, and in suspect places — Doncaster, Sheffield Wednesday and Charlton (as well as Brighton) don't seem like the sort of away games a team chasing promotion should be losing. In 12 away games in all competitions this season only one has ended in a draw, and only Doncaster have prevented Nigel Pearson's team scoring.
Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding tells us…
"A mouth-watering top of table clash takes place at Loftus Road on Saturday lunchtime as the cameras arrive in West London to see QPR take on Leicester.
"Leicester had started the season superbly but recently they have stumbled. A victory for QPR last week at Blackpool sets this one up nicely. With a full house at the Bush and the majority of people celebrating the start of their time off over the festive season, the place really should be a rocking atmosphere. In terms of team news, Rangers are pretty much at full strength, with only Faurlin and Zamora missing out. Hill faces a late fitness test so Onouha could come in at centre half. Leicester will be without Chris Wood and Sean St Ledger so will be pretty much full strength themselves.
"Leicester create many chances, mainly through the channels of Lloyd Dyer and Anthony Knockaert on the flanks. The perennial Championship striker David Nugent provides their main goal scoring threat. But they concede many too. Their last two away games have yielded zero points with defeats at Sheff Wed and Brighton , yet on both occasions they found the net in defeat and indeed they have only failed to score once away from home and only kept a clean sheet twice on the road all season.
"No matter how I look at it, I think this game has goals in it. QPR have an excellent defensive record, but those that watch them regularly will know they've ridden their luck on plenty of occasions recently - most notably last week. Based on the stats alone, I can understand the price 888Sport are offering on both teams to score at a massive evens, but if you look beyond the stats for a change, having watched a lot of both teams this season, and considering Leicester's potent attack and our own ability to net, especially at home, its hard to look past this for my bet for this match. Its not one I'm going mad on but my recommended bet for this game is…"
QPR v Leicester - Both Teams to score (Evens) - 888Sport.
Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Mase says…
"Continuing to underestimate the ability of our side to achieve results that belie the performance that accompanied it has cost me dear in the first half of this season's Prediction League.
"Leicester arrive to play out their second first v third clash in seven days (if that makes sense) in Saturday's early kickoff. Watching the highlights from their last visit (in our promotion season) earlier in the week gave me a few goosebumps, and also made me realise how transient a game we follow. Only Clint Hill of the 18 in the squad for us that day has any prospect of featuring on Saturday; yet the togetherness there was in March 2011 as we headed for the final straight towards the title is finally beginning to re-emerge three seasons later. There was a steeliness in Charlie Austin's eyes in the pre-Blackpool interview on QPR Player and the "we know how important it is for the fans, this is where we turn our season round" empty platitudes of last season are being transformed into tangible points and league positions.
"Leicester have stumbled somewhat of late with defeats against Forest, Sheffield Wednesday and Brighton preceding the midweek second-gear humping from Man City , but remain very much in contention in the league. They have useful experience and able individuals throughout the team and will present a real danger to us of a spoilt Christmas.
"And yet. We are still unbeaten at home, have only dropped four points in W12. It is not a 'good moment' (to quote any foreign manager in the Premier League) to play us. This is the sort of fixture that set champions apart from pretenders, and I just cannot see us fluffing it in front of the cameras."
Mase's Prediction; QPR 2-0 Leicester . First Scorer - Austin
LFW Prediction: QPR 1-1 Leicester . First Scorer — Austin
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