| Strictly business — Preview on 16:04 - Jan 31 with 3480 views | PinnerPaul |
Cheers Clive |  | |  |
| Strictly business — Preview on 17:03 - Jan 31 with 3347 views | stainrods_elbow |
As the great Samuel Beckett put it, the essentials don't change, in football or anything else. Sad to say, and as I've made clear elsewhere, the 'rinse and repeat' orthodoxy now awash on these boards - leaving aside how it privileges a 'business model' over all else like, uh, actually building a football team (as if the 'footballing side' only existed for the sake of the business, not, as Jim Gregory understood, vice-versa) - is not one that is likely to become a formula for the club's upward mobility, just because a few fans have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. As Gerry Francis has made clear - which is hardly reaching back into the mists of footballing time - if you asset-strip your best players after they'e only been around for five minutes, you're likely at best to stagnate, and more likely to decline. We saw it most egregiously at QPR in 1977/78 and 1994/95, with the difference now that it's become a hardwired neoliberal disease - even Les stayed for 8 years! If we get a decent season or two from any one now, we're supposed to be grateful. Essentially, the Hoos & Les -underwritten model we're infected with now makes Richard Thompson look like the personification of building a footballing empire.
The acceleration of modern football (and modern life), and the anaethetised conformity of thinking that surrounds it, has really turned it into a kind of farce. And then people wonder why there are no kids wearing Rangers shirts in their necks of the woods! It's utterly amazing how people still don't seem to get it. This isn't a club that, in recent years, has managed to generate competitive fees for its players, nor has it recruited particularly well, and it's unlikely to become a monument to progressive excellence now. We might have the odd success with youth prodigies like Eze or flourishing flowers like Freeman, but if they're then sold for younger/rawer/ unfinished/unfinishable new recruits before they bed into a stable sqaud that grows together, we'll never get anywhere. Nothing good in life is built without time, stability and resilience. If some others want to be patronisingly wrong about this, good luck to them.
In the meantime, much as I'd love to join the party surrounding one above average young player signing a 'bumper contract' to allow the club to get, in theory, a decent fee for him that's probably already been arranged with his agent for 6-12 months down the line, it makes me laugh mirthlessly when I read about his love for the badge and then compare it with exactly the same kind of meretricious propaganda that surrounded Freeman's deal. Call me old-fashioned, but it's mainly because I prefer to be treated like an intelligent fan, not a mug. |  |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 17:15 - Jan 31 with 3328 views | OldPedro |
"Geoff Cameron Facts No.128 In The Series — Geoff wouldn’t slide into someone's DMs whether Jordy De Wijs scores or not."
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| Extra mature cheddar......a simple cheese for a simple man |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 17:15 - Jan 31 with 3328 views | Northernr |
1 - I will call you old fashioned. Your arguments always draw on examples and quotes from the time of Jim Gregory of Gerry Francis. The sport has changed, the rules have literally changed, they operated before FFP, profit and sustainability, parachute payments. It's a different ball game now. We may not like modern football, I certainly don't, but denying it is what it is, harking back to the 80s for a way of doing things, is like shouting at the moon for being the moon.
2 - Benrahma, Watkins, Maupay, Mepham, Konsa, Sawyers, Woods, Hogan. All their best players at one time or another, all sold, all the money reinvested. Not a lot of stagnation going on there, likely promoted this year, in a new stadium, 7-2 winners yesterday. |  | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 17:22 - Jan 31 with 3290 views | TGRRRSSS |
AS well as they do as well as they are run as well as they turn out continuous gold nuggetts from others cast offs I don't think they will be promoted this season.
Somehow |  | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 17:35 - Jan 31 with 3244 views | nix |
Excellent article Clive. It's a bit of a heart in mouths time of the season. Will our bets on developing players in the summer transfer window come off? Still too early to be sure and we did need to bring a few old heads, especially now Carroll is out of the squad for the foreseeable.
So many factors have collided this season: the loss of Amos, the falling off a cliff of match day income, the loss of Bright and Manning for next to nothing, the concertinaing of fixtures leaving hardly any time to get a host of new, largely inexperienced young players in this division gelling on the training pitch, losing lots of goals with the loss of Eze, Jordan and Wells from last season.
As I said on another thread, I think we'll be much better placed next season, with our players having more experience in general and having played together more. Also, in terms of recruitment, it's so much more obvious what need is most pressing, as opposed to the summer where we seemingly needed players in almost all areas.
Thanks for the balance and the larfs. |  | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 17:48 - Jan 31 with 3214 views | Northernr |
| Strictly business — Preview on 17:15 - Jan 31 by OldPedro |
"Geoff Cameron Facts No.128 In The Series — Geoff wouldn’t slide into someone's DMs whether Jordy De Wijs scores or not."
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| Strictly business — Preview on 18:12 - Jan 31 with 3148 views | stainrods_elbow |
| Strictly business — Preview on 17:15 - Jan 31 by Northernr |
1 - I will call you old fashioned. Your arguments always draw on examples and quotes from the time of Jim Gregory of Gerry Francis. The sport has changed, the rules have literally changed, they operated before FFP, profit and sustainability, parachute payments. It's a different ball game now. We may not like modern football, I certainly don't, but denying it is what it is, harking back to the 80s for a way of doing things, is like shouting at the moon for being the moon.
2 - Benrahma, Watkins, Maupay, Mepham, Konsa, Sawyers, Woods, Hogan. All their best players at one time or another, all sold, all the money reinvested. Not a lot of stagnation going on there, likely promoted this year, in a new stadium, 7-2 winners yesterday. |
I'm not 'denying' what modern football has become, Clive - I'm simply introducing, as I say, the limits of 'rinse and repeat' neoliberal economics when applied to football and trying to introduce a little critical thinking. If people don't want to understand that football isn't merely a business, or is more than just a business, or is irreducible to an exercise in number-crunching, as it always was, or engage with my points, there's little more I can add. I began supporting QPR to watch a wonderful team evolving, not cream myself because a player has signed a contract which might mean we get to sell him for less than peanuts. If that makes me old-fashioned, I'm glad to be.
As for Brentford, I'm not too bothered if they managed to put a few goals past the feckless bottom club the other day. They've got a good 'un in Toney, who's scored half their goals, and they may quite possibly fail again this season as they did last, unless you have some kind of crystal ball I lack that shows the end of season placings. Even at our supposedly lesser developental stage, we should have beaten them at their place. I also don't care for their new ground.
We succeeded in 1976 and 1982 and, to some extent, in 2011 because we had a nucleus of quality players we kept together to develop a way of playing. (We also fell apart in 2012/3 by too much 'reinvesting'.) If we flourish again, it'll be for similar reasons. | |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 18:15 - Jan 31 with 3140 views | TGRRRSSS |
The Reinvesting the season after Champ winning year was TF basically going on Supermarket sweep grabbing anything he could without any thought or idea or planning. | | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 18:22 - Jan 31 with 3120 views | Northernr |
| Strictly business — Preview on 18:12 - Jan 31 by stainrods_elbow |
I'm not 'denying' what modern football has become, Clive - I'm simply introducing, as I say, the limits of 'rinse and repeat' neoliberal economics when applied to football and trying to introduce a little critical thinking. If people don't want to understand that football isn't merely a business, or is more than just a business, or is irreducible to an exercise in number-crunching, as it always was, or engage with my points, there's little more I can add. I began supporting QPR to watch a wonderful team evolving, not cream myself because a player has signed a contract which might mean we get to sell him for less than peanuts. If that makes me old-fashioned, I'm glad to be.
As for Brentford, I'm not too bothered if they managed to put a few goals past the feckless bottom club the other day. They've got a good 'un in Toney, who's scored half their goals, and they may quite possibly fail again this season as they did last, unless you have some kind of crystal ball I lack that shows the end of season placings. Even at our supposedly lesser developental stage, we should have beaten them at their place. I also don't care for their new ground.
We succeeded in 1976 and 1982 and, to some extent, in 2011 because we had a nucleus of quality players we kept together to develop a way of playing. (We also fell apart in 2012/3 by too much 'reinvesting'.) If we flourish again, it'll be for similar reasons. |
Again, the sport is very different from when you started following QPR. I hate it, you hate it, but it's a fact of life. You are having a go at the wrong thing. Your beef is with the EFL, the FA, the Premier League, the rules. You're yelling at QPR for complying with them.
You're hammering, constantly, QPR for declining. I show you a team that is progressing, year on year, from a lifetime in the lower leagues, to the brink of the Premier League, through recruitment and trading. If QPR had Brentford's team, playing the way it is, where it is in the league, assembled the way it has been assembled, we'd be going fcking nuts. And rightly so. You say they're failing, it doesn't look like failure to me. That "good 'un" Toney was bought with the profits from the sale of their last "good 'un", Watkins. He was bought with the profits from their last "good 'un" Scott Hogan.
You can talk about neoliberal economics all you like, if you look at Brentford atm and pretend that model isn't successful, isn't working, isn't a good way to progress in a league heavily weighted towards those with parachute payments, then you kind of undermine your other, mostly straw man, arguments.
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| Strictly business — Preview on 18:39 - Jan 31 with 3072 views | stainrods_elbow |
| Strictly business — Preview on 18:22 - Jan 31 by Northernr |
Again, the sport is very different from when you started following QPR. I hate it, you hate it, but it's a fact of life. You are having a go at the wrong thing. Your beef is with the EFL, the FA, the Premier League, the rules. You're yelling at QPR for complying with them.
You're hammering, constantly, QPR for declining. I show you a team that is progressing, year on year, from a lifetime in the lower leagues, to the brink of the Premier League, through recruitment and trading. If QPR had Brentford's team, playing the way it is, where it is in the league, assembled the way it has been assembled, we'd be going fcking nuts. And rightly so. You say they're failing, it doesn't look like failure to me. That "good 'un" Toney was bought with the profits from the sale of their last "good 'un", Watkins. He was bought with the profits from their last "good 'un" Scott Hogan.
You can talk about neoliberal economics all you like, if you look at Brentford atm and pretend that model isn't successful, isn't working, isn't a good way to progress in a league heavily weighted towards those with parachute payments, then you kind of undermine your other, mostly straw man, arguments.
This post has been edited by an administrator |
You over-idealise the 'Brentford model' imo, Clive. They might have nearly made it to the promised land last year, but the previous 4 seasons they've been 11th, 9th, 10th and 9th. In essence, they've been mostly just a bit less mediocre than us, in other words.
When you have a culture in a club which is basically just about putting players in the shop window to sell, you will mostly create the conditions for more situations like that of BOS to arise. It won't encourage players to come and be part of building collective progress and success, but, not for the first time, I'm flummoxed as to why this even needs pointing out. | |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 18:51 - Jan 31 with 3056 views | Northernr |
| Strictly business — Preview on 18:39 - Jan 31 by stainrods_elbow |
You over-idealise the 'Brentford model' imo, Clive. They might have nearly made it to the promised land last year, but the previous 4 seasons they've been 11th, 9th, 10th and 9th. In essence, they've been mostly just a bit less mediocre than us, in other words.
When you have a culture in a club which is basically just about putting players in the shop window to sell, you will mostly create the conditions for more situations like that of BOS to arise. It won't encourage players to come and be part of building collective progress and success, but, not for the first time, I'm flummoxed as to why this even needs pointing out. |
You and I actually agree. The 1990s at QPR was a gigantic missed opportunity. Richard Thompson looked at a team a couple of additions away from a serious title tilt and asset stripped it. We got relegated instead, just as the television money exploded, anybody with any modicum of perception about what was to come from Sky (why exactly did he think they'd gone balls deep on 'The Premiership' if not to blow it into the stratosphere?) would have held on to a few players, invested some money, bought a Keller, or a Rae, or a Mendonca, and pressed on.
But football. has. changed. The rules. have. changed. Weirdly Richard Thompson and his model would be perfect for now - buy Sinton, sell Sinton, buy Sinclair etc. And if we'd had Tony Fernandes back in 1993, we'd probably have gone close to winning the whole thing, because back then £5m on Alan Shearer and £5m on Chris Sutton won the bloody Premier League at Blackburn.
But it is not 1996 any more.
When asked for your alternative, you merely propose stuff that would, pretty quickly, breach the FFP rules all over again. Or go off on one about how brilliant things were during the war, and how we should just man the barricades and say fck them, and put together a team of boys from the White City estate just like the old days and just like that, and never give any of them up.
There are other solutions. Huddersfield turned the deck back on the house the other year with a left field coaching appointment, David Wagner galvansied a team with weird and wondertful pre-season camping trips to Sweden, recruitment from leagues he knew in Germany, attacking swashbuckling football the likes of which you and I would dream to see again at QPR. So it doesn't have to be about sell and buy, there are other ways. But whenever we try and ask you for your alternative it turns into an episode of the West Wing, all flowery speeches about pride and badge and feeling, and never about practicality.
If the Brentford model sucks (it doesn't, it's a club the size of Scunthorpe United finishing in the top half of the Championship, potentially about to go into the Premier League) suggest another, without resorting to tearing things down, slagging Lee Hoos, straw man arguments, harking back to the war, or quoting Samuel Beckett. | | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 19:38 - Jan 31 with 2961 views | derbyhoop |
Other clubs who are a similar size to us and appeared to be progressing were Preston and Bristol C.
In response to pre-season predictions I wondered if they'd reached their limits in the way they blew promotion chances last season. But we couldn't afford Nakhi Wells and he went to Bristol. We wanted Whiteman but Preston outbid us.
We're operating on a shoestring and we have to get most things right over a long period if we are to challenge at the top end of the Championship. Including buying cheap, selling high |  |
| "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 19:59 - Jan 31 with 2926 views | stevec |
Does anyone know if FFP is still actually an operational thing? |  | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:06 - Jan 31 with 2904 views | Northernr |
| Strictly business — Preview on 19:59 - Jan 31 by stevec |
Does anyone know if FFP is still actually an operational thing? |
It's a good question and atm that's still up in the air. I don't see how you punish clubs for profit and sustainability when they've had now crowds for more than a year, and basically had a day's notice that this was going to happen to them. | | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:07 - Jan 31 with 2898 views | Northernr |
| Strictly business — Preview on 19:38 - Jan 31 by derbyhoop |
Other clubs who are a similar size to us and appeared to be progressing were Preston and Bristol C.
In response to pre-season predictions I wondered if they'd reached their limits in the way they blew promotion chances last season. But we couldn't afford Nakhi Wells and he went to Bristol. We wanted Whiteman but Preston outbid us.
We're operating on a shoestring and we have to get most things right over a long period if we are to challenge at the top end of the Championship. Including buying cheap, selling high |
Bristol City big sales, Webster, Kodija, Reid, Bryan. Big sales means more money to spend.
Preston have actually pushed the boat out of late, some pretty alarming wages to turnover stats in recent accounts, but also got big money for Hugill and Robinson. Big sales means more money to spend. | | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:29 - Jan 31 with 2856 views | derbyhoop |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:07 - Jan 31 by Northernr |
Bristol City big sales, Webster, Kodija, Reid, Bryan. Big sales means more money to spend.
Preston have actually pushed the boat out of late, some pretty alarming wages to turnover stats in recent accounts, but also got big money for Hugill and Robinson. Big sales means more money to spend. |
How many big sales from QPR?
Eze - definitely.
Freeman? Bowler?
We didn't get a fortune for Luongo or Smithies. | |
| "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 20:35 - Jan 31 with 2848 views | Northernr |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:29 - Jan 31 by derbyhoop |
How many big sales from QPR?
Eze - definitely.
Freeman? Bowler?
We didn't get a fortune for Luongo or Smithies. |
One and a half really. Eze and Freeman.
Bristol City have done near 40m in player sales. | | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:43 - Jan 31 with 2836 views | kropotkin41 |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:06 - Jan 31 by Northernr |
It's a good question and atm that's still up in the air. I don't see how you punish clubs for profit and sustainability when they've had now crowds for more than a year, and basically had a day's notice that this was going to happen to them. |
Wasn't there an article recently about Hoos pleading QPR's case to the EFL clubs on our outstanding £20m? Apparently there was one club openly unsympathetic and opposed to helping us out - don't know who - but otherwise he had a pretty supportive audience it seems.... sorry, no reference or link.... might have dreamed it.
Probably Derby that was unsympathetic. No idea otherwise. |  |
| ‘morbid curiosity about where this is all going’ |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 21:58 - Jan 31 with 2698 views | stainrods_elbow |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:35 - Jan 31 by Northernr |
One and a half really. Eze and Freeman.
Bristol City have done near 40m in player sales. |
It was interesting that, one we'd sold Eze for a reported 16m + add-ons, our manager apparently couldn't wait to tell us it DIDN'T mean much more money to spend, just the owners writing a slightly smaller cheque each month for a while. (He sounded so much like he was reading I presume he was under instruction form Hoos/the Board to manage down expectations.)
Not only are we not allowed nice things - even when we cash in on them it seems we're not allowed nice things either!
Other clubs, e.g. Clive's much-touted Brentford, at least go out and replace players with quality once in a while. QPR being QPR, we 'develop' BOS, allow him to run down his contract, and then ship him off to Turkey for another one of our 'undisclosed' (read 'probably embarrassing') sums, while apparently not replacing him. It's not so much 'rinse and repeat' as drag him out off the tumble dryer after a season or so, then carry on without your spin cycle. | |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 22:13 - Jan 31 with 2671 views | LongsufferingR |
I think I've just found out what it's like to bang my head repeatedly against a brick wall. |  | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 22:18 - Jan 31 with 2656 views | stainrods_elbow |
PS I'll try to come up with some more of the positivity that Clive would like when I get the time, even though that assumes I start from all his premises. I also don't think I'm specially qualified to develop a master plan for 'how to run QPR' (nor do I have to) - any more than I'd criticise him for writing reports on games without having played pro football. I speak and write as a fan first and foremost, not a businessman or DoF, and I reserve the right to polemics, emotion and bloody-minded/cussed/hard-won opinion over neoliberal compromise on that basis, which is, in my view, the lifeblood of messageboards like this. At the same time, the points I've made about the limits of 'rinse and repeat' stand in any era, and people can take them or not as they wish. The economics of football have changed in some respects, I'd be stupid to say otherwise, but coaching, building and unifying a squad is still just as important as it always was. If people can't see the contradiction, for example, between only acquiring players to sell them at the market as soon as possible and the executive pretending to care about filling the Family Stand with young fans (who will only become fans, like I did, because they identify with a team and playing style), I can only point it out to those whose ears aren't completely blocked.
Finally, if I'm sadly also being traduced for appealing to the badge of all things, I really ought to send round Kevin Gallen, Ian Holloway and the ghost of Alan McDonald to duff someone up. If that doesn't mean anything, what is anyone actually 'supporting' (apart from a plc)? | |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 22:19 - Jan 31 with 2652 views | stainrods_elbow |
| Strictly business — Preview on 22:13 - Jan 31 by LongsufferingR |
I think I've just found out what it's like to bang my head repeatedly against a brick wall. |
I know the feeling! | |
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| Strictly business — Preview on 22:28 - Jan 31 with 2625 views | Roller |
| Strictly business — Preview on 20:06 - Jan 31 by Northernr |
It's a good question and atm that's still up in the air. I don't see how you punish clubs for profit and sustainability when they've had now crowds for more than a year, and basically had a day's notice that this was going to happen to them. |
The last I read on this, last season and this one were to be assessed together with clubs allowed to exclude Covid costs - such as getting the ground Covid secure - and they can also factor in lost income. Sounds like a mine field. |  | | |
| Strictly business — Preview on 22:48 - Jan 31 with 2588 views | LongsufferingR |
| Strictly business — Preview on 22:28 - Jan 31 by Roller |
The last I read on this, last season and this one were to be assessed together with clubs allowed to exclude Covid costs - such as getting the ground Covid secure - and they can also factor in lost income. Sounds like a mine field. |
Somehow Derby will have spent £49m on hand sanitiser | | | |
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