More than a month, and seven matches, into the new season, the transfer window is finally, mercifully closed, and so it's time to assess how QPR did and start focusing on what should still be the real quiz.
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What a bloody shame, eh? An actual real football match getting in the way of all the Transfer Window. A whole 90 minutes for us to snooze through when we could be signing someone, anyone. Maybe could have fewer, shorter matches and more, longer transfer windows? Swap em over perhaps — we’ll go through the chore of playing the actual bloody games in July, August and January, but the rest of the time is for transfers.
The pandemic has had some effect at our level. That mid-range Championship market, in which you used to get rinsed £8m+ for a part used Jonathan Kodija, Kenneth Zahore, Ross McCormack, Gary Madine, Scott Hogan etc., has gone completely. That’s not ideal for clubs like us looking to trade their way out of trouble, because the majority of our playing assets fall into that category — people like Rob Dickie and Ilias Chair. But the Premier League clubs spent £1.9bn this window, dwarfing the previous record of £1.4bn, which let’s be really frankly honest about this, in the current economic climate, with the situation people are facing in their lives, with the state of the world and the current direction of its travel — is absolutely fucking sick.
What also hasn’t stopped escalating is the appetite among football supporters and media for this eye-watering circus to continue. Sky Sports News with 24 hours of screentime to fill, tabloid newspapers with Rupert Murdoch’s talking points to pedal, have always used this junk to draw suckers in, but now you’re even seeing the ‘big beasts’ of the sport’s press, working for supposedly respectable newspapers, getting involved in the rumour and clickbait carousel.
If we look at Derby and Sheffield Wednesday, two well-supported famous names in football in this country, and how they ended up in states of financial collapse in the third tier, the answer is simple. Both of them, consistently, over a long period of time, spent money they didn’t have on transfer fees and wages for players with no re-sale value, and came up with ever increasingly creative and illegal ways to hide that from the league’s meagre rules that guard against it so they could continue. That’s it, nothing more complicated. Lots of the same worthy journos who wrung their hands over Mel Morris’ behaviour at Pride Park, wrote long think pieces about the soul searching British football needed to do, podcasted for hours about how this must never be allowed to happen again to a "community asset” the size and importance of Derby, are now exactly the same ones out there this week saying teams that have signed a dozen new players or more have had a "good window” and those that haven’t "haven’t backed their manager”.
If Nottingham Forest don’t survive this season, and don’t bounce back semi-immediately from the Championship if they do go down, what they’ve done this summer will fuck them for ten years — as it did us when we did the same thing. Am I reading pieces about that? No. I’m reading pieces about how it all makes sense really, because so many players left they had to bring this many people in, and let’s just ignore those ones they’ve bought and loaned straight out to the chairman’s other club because that fucks that argument up. From reputable journos, at big publications. One of the players they've spent £8.5m on has arrived with a broken leg for goodness sake.
Look at some of the sycophantic guff spouted last week when Scott Parker left Bournemouth having "not been backed in the transfer market”. Hang on a moment. Scott Parker has now twice bullied his way out of the Championship, once in second place and once through the play-offs, with squads and budgets that should have absolutely pissed the league. He’s done it playing some of the most dire, cynical, unwatchable football going. Last season, when even having the likes of Solanke and Lerma at his disposal didn’t look like it was going to be enough to prevent a collapse, Bournemouth went out and spent big again for him at the end of the January window to buy him another half dozen players to crawl over the line — most of those players they’ve either got rid of since or tried to. Now he’s shrugging his shoulders after 9-0 losses and giving it "what did you expect?” because he hasn’t been allowed another trolley dash and instead of reading "perhaps Bournemouth, having spent a fortune last time they were here, got relegated anyway and almost got stuck down there with all those overheads, are thinking in the current climate it might be best to just bank the money this season and stabilise the club for the future a bit” I’m getting "poor Scotty Parker didn’t get the backing he deserved” bilge served up to me. Fuck off, and get that cardigan out of my sight.
Supporters are lapping this shit up. There is a prevailing attitude now, particularly among the supporters who follow it through social media, that the whole game is about signings and if you're not making signings you're not doing it right, and whether the signings are any good or not doesn't really matter because come the next window they'll just be demanding another dozen signings over the top of those signings. Signings, signings, signings. Come on Amit, never mind £1.8m losses every month, get your wallet out you tight bastard. Come January we’ll be haranguing him and Ruben and "wadmin” all over again for another half dozen. Macauley Bonne, George Thomas, Lyndon Dykes, all these players we’re now desperate to be shot of for some new blood, were all #announce subjects themselves in the not to distant past. See how quickly they went from "announce Austin bruv or I'll kill my nan bruv " to "Austin's fucking shit bruv get out of my football club bruv " last season.
So desperate is the hunger for yet more signings, that you can set up Twitter accounts now pretending to be a "bored intermediary” or "secret football agent” or "freelance journalist”, just literally go out and make stuff up, and people will eat it up, engage with the content, and ask you if there’s "any news”.
This summer there was on account "@preqpr” that billed itself as an anonymous intermediary working with the club on transfers. It had a hit rate similar to Sammy Koejoe. It wasn’t so much throwing shit at the wall as trying to throw shit at a wall, forgetting to release, and ending up splatting the stuff straight back into its own face. Did it matter? Did it fuck. More traffic than the North Circular Road — "heard anything about Archer mate?”. Soon as the deadline was over, the account was deleted. Have a look at this fucking micropenis waste of flesh "Sky Sports Dan” who bills himself as "Transfer specialist. Birmingham City fan. Work for Sky Sports” to his whopping 67 followers. That profile pic you see there is actually ripped off from Matt Fernandez (@MattfKVUE) a local news reporter for KVUE in Austin Texas. Nevertheless, he pops out a Tweet yesterday morning saying Rob Dickie is going to Middlesbrough, and people are all over it. By mid-afternoon the fucking story had appeared on TalkSport. Rob Dickie, needless to say, was not, ever, going to Middlesbrough.
Nobody is pretending recruitment isn't important. It's fucking vital, all your prospects hang on getting it right. But it's quality over quantity every time, and having a clearly defined strategy to it, that matters and it's this that gets lost in the hyperbole and clickbait.
I’ve said all summer, don’t worry about it, QPR will sign players, QPR love signing players, and lo and behold — seven newcomers, more than half a team. Yeh, but loads went out too Clive. Let’s count those up shall we? I’m ignoring the loans of Stephen Duke McKenna, Charlie Kelman (both Orient, good moves, Kelman already going well), Charlie Owens (Colchester), and I think it’s fair to discount Keiren Westwood and David Marshall as well for obvious reasons. Dillon Barnes was a standing fucking joke anyway, and Jordy De Wijs managed 20 starts in two seasons. So who’s left? Moses Odubajo, Lee Wallace, Charlie Austin, Dom Ball, Yoann Barbet and last season’s loans of which Sam McCallum and Andre Gray were the ones who played, and Jeff Hendrick and Dion Sanderson leaving improves the team automatically whether we replace them or not. So, seven in, seven out.
Some very good business among the ins. Kenneth Paal is starting to look the part, and as an analytics favourite there’s big potential resale value in that 25-year-old, certainly relative to Lee Wallace. Jake Clarke-Salter the same, although he’s never managed to put 30 games together in a season in his professional career so far, which is the reason he’s available for free to QPR this summer, and he’s not looking tremendously likely to do so this year either. Ethan Laird I’m already in love with, but this is a Kyle Walker MkII situation and there’s zero chance of him coming her permanently so it’s literally a signing to just move us slightly further up the Championship in the short term. Whether you think that’s good or bad probably depends on where you are with Osman Kakay. I said my bit on Leon Balogun last week — I don’t think it’s something we should be doing, I certainly don’t want him playing in front of the likes of Dickie, Dunne and JCS however good he might be, and it’s a clear and obvious contradiction in everything the club and Mick Beale said over the summer.
Whether yesterday’s loan of Tim Iroegbunam from Aston Villa is similar we’ll see in time. Again, there’s zero chance of him signing here, unlike the similar capture of Taylor Richards who we’re obliged to buy from Brighton next summer unless we’re relegated. Nobody at Villa, nobody who’s watched him play England youth football, has a bad word to say about 19-year-old Iroegbunam, who moved to Villa’s youth set up from West Brom a year ago and was given a Premier League bow last year by Steven Gerrard when Beale was there alongside him. Up until this week you’d have said midfield was a clear issue for QPR, as it has been since Stefan Johansen’s loan was made permanent and his form and fitness went off the side of a cliff. Johansen was suddenly back to his best this week, and Andre Dozzell is playing like we’ve never seen him before in this last two games — perhaps that’s Beale publicly threatening to replace them, which he has now done. With Luke Amos and Richards still to come back it’ll be interesting to see how often Iroegbunam plays, who he plays instead of, and how much money it costs the club when it doesn’t — these Premier League loans, as Sanderson’s was last year, often include clauses where the borrowing club owes a greater percentage of the player’s wages when he doesn’t play as opposed to when he does. If Beale is going to demand the high press and work rate we’ve seen from Dozzell and particularly Johansen over the last 180 minutes, significant coverage in that area will be no bad thing to have — Johansen struggled with the schedule last year playing a much more passive role. I’m looking forward to seeing Iroegbunam after everything I’ve heard and what little I’ve seen — strategically though I’m more on the fence.
The two big areas we weren’t able to address are strength in depth, and strikers. Given the way he started the season, and now 25-years-old, I think it would have been best for all parties concerned if some sort of back up had been attained for the left side of the defence to move Trävelmän further away from the general public — a nice loan spell at Bora Bora FC or Atlético de Aruba could have been strategically helpful. It’s a big ask for Paal to come out of the Dutch league and do 48 games for us this season, and like I say JCS isn’t exactly filling anything apart from the physio room at the moment. Up front they’ve failed to shift Bonne — one of those classics where we’ve got somebody on a wage way above his level so none of the clubs who might want him can afford to do so — and Lyndon Dykes’ woes in front of goal reached a new low against Hull on Tuesday. He has, despite the misses, shown against Watford and the Tigers that he might have some use in the Emile Heskey-non scoring striker role. You don’t have to be very good, or confident, to charge around adding physicality, nuisance value, winning headers, occupying defenders. He’s done that in the last two games, and the likes of Willock and Chair have thrived behind it, with Tyler Roberts still to really get fit and also join in there. There’s Richards to come back too, remember, but it’s a stone cold fact that we’re one injury to Chair, or particularly Willock, away from being a distinctly average/poor team again.
All of that — the strikers, the strength in depth, the lack of coverage for key players, the having to rely on some loans we can't buy — is simple maths. Sure, it’d be nice to have two players for every position, be nice to have a few more Sinclair Armstrong types coming out of this well-staffed academy system to provide that coverage. But one thing we didn’t do, again, this summer is sell a player for significant money. The most sellable asset we’ve got, Willock, will only have 18 months left on his contract come January. Strikers are expensive. We can only carry a light squad because of the wage bill. Until we start regularly selling players, that’s the financial reality — particularly stark this summer after the outlay of a year ago, which was again done on the back of the Eze sale with no other significant outgoings since. You want to buy a striker, you want two players for every position, you want more signings — you have to be selling players. Regular sales of our best players for big money would open up all kinds of opportunities and relieve a lot of the pressure we’re currently under. QPR couldn’t stretch to the loan fee for Villa’s Cameron Archer, and nor should they have done — dead money unless he gets you promoted, which you would think unlikely however brilliant he may be. What people are wilfully ignoring over and over again when they talk about the owners being tight is that the wealth of your owners means nothing. The sum is: the rules of the league say you can lose only £39m over any rolling three-year period - QPR have spent x. Whatever that equals is what you have to spend, not the wealth of the owners. There's also a consistent, chronic underestimating of how much wages cost and how important they are to that bottom line relative to transfer fees - five free transfers are the farthest thing from free. That's without getting into the more philosophical debate around whether we/the owners want to be a club that loses the absolute maximum permitted amount of money each year.
I think we’ve come out of it slightly better off than I expected us to, and probably a good deal worse than many who ignore that FFP reality did — not sure it helps Beale so frequently saying how confident he is that multiple signings are imminent and then it not happening. We’ve got a very handy starting 11, with some really exciting talents, who are a joy to watch on their day — how can you not get excited about coming to Loftus Road to watch people like Willock, Chair, Laird, Paal, Dieng etc when they play like they did in that first half on Tuesday? Sinclair Armstrong coming through is a potentially lovely bonus on top of that, and it’s time to now get behind him and get enthusiastic about his prospects (without over burdening of course) rather than lamenting some Villa equivalent not coming in on loan and bumping him one more rung down the selection ladder. The depth beyond that simply isn’t there, the strikers aren’t good enough to sustain a top six push at this level, but that’s economics, little else.
As ever, the best thing of all about the summer transfer window, is that the fucking thing is closed.
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Team News: QPR have Tim Iroegbunam on loan from Aston Villa straight into the squad and available, but yet to train with his new team and therefore almost certainly set for a bench spot at best. Tyler Roberts came back from his latest injury for the last half hour on Tuesday, but looked distinctly out of sorts in a good team performance, so we’ll see where that lands. Other than that, with Richards, Clarke-Salter and Amos all out until after the international break and two wins on the spin it looks like we might have a fairly unprecedented unchanged team for a third game in a row.
Swansea have spent all summer expecting to lose last season’s 24-goal top scorer Joel Piroe, and then looked set to lose his partner Michael Obafemi to Burnley yesterday, but both remain at the club and will start in a formidable attack. Brentford defender Fin Stevens joined on loan and should be available, subject to the ‘international clearance’ the Welsh sides ridiculously have to clear before new signings can play, even from within the same Football League structure. Ryan Bennett terminated his deal and departed yesterday.
Elsewhere: A rare old spread in the Lancashire and District Senior League this weekend with games on Friday and Monday, three on Sunday and seven Saturday.
Friday Night Football must mean West Brom, who decided to liven up their stodgy draw enthusiasts with the addition of veteran Palace defender Martin Kelly on deadline day, at home to Burnley.
Six games other than our own on Saturday afternoon, most intriguing among them for me is Coventry’s trip to Norwich. Having fended off summer interest from Fulham, Burnley and Middlesbrough in star trio Gustavo Hamer, Callum O’Hare and Viktor Gyokeres respectively, I quite fancied Mark Robins’ side as a bit of a dark horse this season. However, the destruction of their pitch means they’ve only played four games, O’Hare is injured long term, Dom Hyam has been picked off cheap by Blackburn, and a variety of attempts to strengthen the squad over the summer fell flat at the deadline. They go into this difficult away game bottom, with the natives restless.
Blackburn succeeded in holding onto Ben Brereton-Diaz, which is good for their team in the short term against Bristol City in this weekend’s exciting match between two teams beginning with B, but dire for their finances medium and long term with his contract up next summer and no intentions of signing a new one. Lutown had a genuinely great window, some really shrewd stuff, and they’re starting to motor with two wins in South Wales either side of a draw with early pace setters Sheffield Red Stripe ahead of a home banker with Wigan Warriors tomorrow. Steady yourself down guys, you might want to take a seat for this one less it knock you clean off your feet — Steve Morison felt Nathan Jones over-celebrated and showed disrespect post Cardiff victory in the week. Two of the division’s biggest gobshites together there, and Morison is back at his old club Millwall this weekend. Rotherham v Watford is a real clash of opposing budgets, Preston are drawing nil nil at home to Birmingham.
Blackpool couldn’t hold onto Josh Bowler, and if you’re looking ahead to next summer already look at how they struggled to get north of £2m for one of the division’s outstanding players because he only had a year left on his contract — cough, Chris Willock. Naturally he went to Nottingham Forest, like everybody else, but if you think 21 signings in one transfer window (with free agent Serge Aurier still to come) is a bit mental then please open wide while I shovel 4,000 words of The Athletic’s client journalism down your throat where boyhood Forest fan journos explain patiently that this is all absolutely fine and normal because Forest lost so many players over the summer they just had to do it. Lost so many players, in fact, that Bowler has immediately been loaned to the chairman’s other club Olympiakos. That boy really does like to make moves to clubs with no intention of playing him does he? Pool start life without their star man at Huddersfield, and that already has a the strong sniff of a relegation six-pointer.
Reading’s Jekyll and Hyde start to the season continued with a second 4-0 away loss of the year already in Sheffield during the week, and they go back in against Stoke at home in Alex Neil’s first match in charge. Injury ravaged Hull at home to Sheffield Red Stripe rounds out the Sunday fixtures. Then it’s a North East derby between Boro and Sunderland to finish us off in the Monday Night Football.
Referee: Experienced Championship referee Oliver Langford in the middle for this one. Details.
Swansea: Be afraid guys, Swansea haven’t won at home yet… I suppose a goal scored in injury time at the end of the game counts the same as any other, but to be leading 2-0 on 90 minutes here against Millwall and then 1-0 again away at Stoke and end up with just two points feels like a bit of a freak anomaly without which Swansea would have ten points and be bang in the middle of the early league table. There was also one of the worst misses you’ll ever see as long as you watch football from Michael Obafemi in a 1-1 opening day draw at Rotherham that could and should have added another two points. Instead, they’re fourth bottom, with six points, and just one win to their name so far — 1-0 away at Blackpool, an 87th minute winner of their own. Only Boro and Hull have conceded more than Swansea’s 11, and seven of those have been shipped at the Liberty Stadium where Blackburn and Luton have already won 3-0 and 2-0 respectively, and Wawll escaped with their 2-2. Away from home Russell Martin’s side have only lost one out of four, with 1-1 draws at Stoke and Rotherham to go with the Blackpool win and a 2-1 loss at Boro. The Swans have scored one goal or fewer in six of their seven league games so far. The last time they scored more than two was a 3-3 draw with Bournemouth in April that they had led 3-0. Throw in the 90th minute equaliser the Cherries got there, and another for Reading in a 4-4 draw a fortnight prior which the Welsh side had again led by three goals at one point, and there are a couple of trends here — blowing hefty leads, late in games. Joel Piroe has scored in his last two games having not notched in any of the first five — he bagged 24 goals in 47 appearances in a fantastic debut season in British football last year.
QPR: The midweek victory against Hull was the first time QPR have won two consecutive games since they beat West Brom and Coventry on January 15 and 22, 29 games ago — part of a run of four consecutive Championship victories at that time, and five wins and a draw from six away games. No clean sheet though thanks to Tyler Smith’s late consolation strike which means Rangers have conceded at least once in all eight league and cup games this season, and have just two shut outs in the last 27 outings, one of which was at Swansea on the final day. That 1-0 victory was Rangers’ second successive victory on this ground by that score following Lyndon Dykes’ late winner here during the lockdown. Swansea have now failed to score against QPR in three full matches. Prior to that, however, our record here was fairly dire with no victories in ten visits dating back to 1980/81. The R’s failed to score in seven of those ten games, including the last three prior to 2020/21. Chris Willock’s goal against Hull was his fourth in four appearances this term — QPR have still never lost on any of the 14 occasions he’s scored for us (W11 D3). Mark Warburton’s disdain for shots outside the box certainly seems to have been banished by the Mick Beale regime — six of Ilias Chair’s last eight have been from range greater than 18 yards.
Prediction: We’re once again indebted to The Art of Football for agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsor’s QPR collection here. Let’s see what last year’s champion Cheesy thinks this week…
"What a week, but I have followed Rangers long enough to know not to get my hopes up too much - 4-1 at United followed by that Cup match at Southampton for example. My head is saying a draw for this one, but I'm going with my heart and a win.”
Cheesy’s Prediction: Swansea 1-2 QPR. Scorer — Ilias Chair
LFW’s Prediction: Swansea 1-1 QPR. Scorer — Chris Willock
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