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Comment | Bonfire of the vanities – Report
at 00:13:35
The string of Seny saves and the injury list masked that performance for a fair few sat around us In NU but I can't get beyond the idea that Marti wants out and is putting teams on the park to get himself back out the door and on the market asap.
This perhaps with one eye on the Swedish league having just one game to go until their close season and presumably soon to be not short of fresh managerial job opportunities.
We'll get a better idea tomorrow.
Either he will put out a side emboldened by a bunch willing young uns and they come away from Leeds with an unlikely point or three (or at least a degree of credit for the effort in a close run defeat) OR there is a lot more of what ever this was and we will be on the wrong end of something monumentally embarrassing more akin to an existential threat than three points dropped on the road. The sort of game where every opposing player discovers their inner Lua Lua and they collectively send us spiralling into the EFL equivalent of a black hole.
Solutions are neither obvious nor plentiful but we need some people making decisions who maybe want to be an Art Howe or even a Grady more than they want to be Billy or Pete beating the odds with a fluky run of games while laughing at the grown ups and their old fashioned ways.
How about Warburton (who definitely has Art Howe vibes) back as DOF and caretaker by December with Hayden and a couple of other Championship stalwarts in tow to stiffen the spine?
Much as I like Marti's suave Euro sheen and its promise (if not the actuality) of football that actually meets the club's self-image, that wouldn't be the worst thing. Should probably have been the first thing, |
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Comment | Right man. Right time? – Column
at 08:17:05
This latest change has to break that mould. Has to. We have to be able to wave this bloke off to Brighton or Palace or where ever in two or three years time and feel really good about it. We need a manager to be what Eze was and is .
When was the last time was that a manager left here, used the experience with Rangers as a springboard and truly improved both himself and his subsequent clubs?
Warnock has saved a few in that Red Adair role since he left us but is he a better manager? Are the clubs he saved for one season actually better in the long term? No, our last graduate who went on to shine is El Tel isn't it? 40 years. That has to change. Almost everyone else is a cautionary tale. We broke them or they broke us.
One other thing that occurred to me listening once again to that long interview with CIfuentes from a couple of years back is that with his system Dozzell wouldn't have needed or even felt the need to run 80 yards to win the ball back. Players know what the chatter around them is like and there was a man with a good goal under his belt who wanted to prove that also he has some dog in him. That is never going to be his strong point.
Per Clive's acute comment that Dozzell (and Field) should be scoring 5 or 6 of those goals a year, Dozzell is what he is and if what he is is a C list Juan Riquelme than that is what needs building on. What is the point of encouraging him or Chair to behave like a pound shop David Batty? Running around a lot of the time is about stats and pleasing the fans who sit near the pitch, have a poor view in terms of the wider context of the game and really like to see people chasing lost causes.
I certainly think Andre can be helped to bring that C rating up to a B- at least. What has happened with him the last nine months kind of reminds me of how Gerry treated Paul Murray. Another upright elegant player who arguably deserved better and whose career went sideways as a result. Dozzell is a long way from being the Paul Murray that was a bright spot in 96-97 but he could be that player for sure.
I also loved the comment about successful strikers being all about where to arrive and when to arrive in the penalty box. Easy to blame the quality of our crossing but Dykes' movement is chronic. Being a penalty box striker isn't really Dykes' role with Scotland which is more about winning and holding the ball between half way and the opposition penalty area and bringing other players into the game. He currently looks a better player when not burdened with the responsibility to be the main goal scorer. That has to change too.
Me, I am banking on this chap being a teacher, on him getting the most out of Field and our wing backs and on Dykes, Willock, Chair and Dozzell all learning a lot and learning it fast. |
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Comment | How Ainsworth’s dream job turned into his, and our, worst nightmare – Column
at 09:22:18
That pretty much sums it up doesn't it.
Ainsworth was like an NCO in Zulu trying to get his men through a difficult day in the face of superior forces on guts and a fairly shonky defensive plan. His side were occasionally resolute but largely either useless, moronic or, on a rare good day, simply dead lucky.
I used to think that McLaren's one decent spell in change was like watching a series of 3rd Round FA Cup ties with Rangers cast as the Southern or Isthmian League underdog. A likeable club riding their luck all the way to a feature on Grandstand, tabloid pictures of a bunch of middle aged semi-fit cloggers drinking beer in the bath and a 4th round game against an old money First Division giant complete with Motty perched in the scaffolding gantry. 15 minutes of fame with some nice photos and a big name pennant in the club house the most lasting reward.
Ainsworth's side was essentially akin to the self same Southern League side - not the one who claimed a brief glimmer of limelight with a rare giant-killing but the same rabble playing on the Tuesday night after their big day out, inevitably going down without a fight 2-0 at home to a Waterlooville or a Margate in front of their 1300 regulars and not a tv camera in sight.
In the end guts, will, determination, blue-sky thinking will not get where you want to be week in week out. It might get you close from time to time but even if you think xG is twaddle you are going to suffer most afternoons if your opponents know a lot more about your own team than you do. That is the thing about data, there are no secrets if you know where to look. In effect the only metric that has really mattered the past year has been the degree to which the other side has taken our rabble just a shade too lightly.
The only mystery is why it took so long for the board to see the blindingly obvious and take the necessary action. No idea exactly how many shirking, gun-shy Hookys there are in this squad but we all have our favourite candidates for that role. Will be very interesting what develops in the January window if Eustace rocks up on Thursday as the new man in the hot seat.
Zulu is in a way a cautionary tale about what happens when a culture is mired in visions of past glories and yet is over-taken by adversaries that both the powers-that-be and the rank-and-file were largely too complacent to take seriously. Feels kind of familiar. |
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Comment | Innnnn one - Report
at 14:51:08
Great writing. If only the team was half this enjoyable.
Much as I loved Bobby Charlton as a kid if there is a minute's silence for anything or anyone on Saturday it should be for this club. |
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Comment | You’re going to need a bigger boat – Report
at 19:11:29
Great piece. Perhaps a little too forgiving in the circumstances.
Ainsworth has been hired as a human sandbag. nothing more and nothing less and that is a role with a pretty short life-span even at nostalgia-addicted QPR. To extend Clive's Simpsons analogy, our manager right now is Maggie sat next to Marge in the front seat happy as Larry behind a fake steering wheel and horn. She thinks she is driving the car but someone else is determining the direction of travel.
Meanwhile, according to an e mail this weekend from Cherry Red records, Ainsworth's band have their debut album out right now. Which is really good to know. Successful head coaches are of course well-known for having time for their hobbies and not in any way needing to be monomaniacal obsessives. For those distracted by the distant glow of events of 67, 76 and 82 the album is available on vinyl |
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Comment | End of Term Report 22/23 — Attack
at 09:24:55
These articles have been quite brilliant.
I don't really have any fears about going down or losing 12 games at home or scoring a pitiful number of goals at the Loft End. It was awful but a lot of clubs thriving today had to suffer a great deal worse than that in order to rebuild (and before over-taking the likes of us).
There is a very strong argument that throwing the kind money the owners are currently haemorrhaging to maintain the footballing equivalent of a failed state is doing us no favours medium or long term.
The entire model has been proven to be wrong-headed and doomed both commercially and on the field. You can fiddle with the economy of that system all you like and sell off as many assets as you can to maintain respectability on the balance sheet but in the end this government has to go. If that means dropping a level or two then that is the price that needs to be paid eventually in any case. Why delay?
I think I am right in saying that, based on the last set of accounts, in order for the club to have broken even it would need to have no paid players or staff. How does a business with the turnover of a club like ours get itself into that position?
The worst thing in a way is the group-think. It's not like one evil bastard has decided to gut the club for personal gain as we have seen down the leagues in recent years. This has been a team effort managed by a group of apparently plausible individuals (many of whom are the proverbial football men) who have got it spectacularly wrong over and over again.
The club's administrators should have an assessment category of their own. Fs all around. Including Ainsworth though at least he proved to be a lucky general when we needed one.
Their solution to every problem is to break the piggy bank and to pay off the fans with increasingly tawdry exercises in nostalgia. The sporting equivalent of empty calories. We are endlessly encouraged to look back at a very rose tinted past because we are too gun-shy to look ahead.
Coming back to the forwards, short term my worry in terms of my own enjoyment is having no-one in the squad who is likely to get game time who I will actually look forward to watching play.
I can't remember feeling like that since a stultifying 0-0 pre-season friendly at Griffin Park back in the days of Vinnie. A few weeks later there was (IIRC) the first mass airing of "One Gerry Francis" at Watford and the start of the long road to playing Palace in their flip flops.
If Chair, Willock, Dykes (and presumably Dickie, and Dieng) all depart then I'm afraid I can't summon any enthusiasm for the idea of spending my afternoons and evenings hoping that players who could just as easily be playing National League South are all going to punch above their weight at the same time often enough to win a dozen games.
Our current scouting record does not suggest that we will get as lucky as Gerry got with Darlington and Wardley let alone achieving that in half a dozen positions. Gerry had a lot more to work with in terms of viable Championship players than Ainsworth will have. The starting position squad wise was much much healthier and the experienced players were able to provide a good foundation when properly utilised. There is no such foundation today.
Nailed on for 23rd unless there are two or three FFP handicaps handed out along the way.
For those who wanted their Rangers back I think that day is looming and the question is if that were to happen what do you want to do with it? Are you going to do the equivalent of a Union Berlin fan and pick up a shovel and build your own stadium? Cos that is probably what is going to be required in some form or another. Radical surgery top to bottom and a long painful rehab. |
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Comment | Bittersweet symphony — Report
at 08:19:36
"This has the potential to get a lot, lot worse without some really quick, clear-headed, decisive action, almost immediately"
Well, yes. Quite.
This might actually be my favourite of your recent reports, Clive. No romance, no light at the end of the tunnel, just hard cold facts.
There are many things that worry me about this team and this club but Ainsworth making out that 18%, 19%, 20% possession is something that had been planned-for rankles. Of course I would rather have a lucky general than not but don't over- egg it son.
The idea that the team has brought much more to the table the last fortnight than a wild-eyed desperation is pure self-delusion. This is a very poor team playing in the colours of a rudderless club supported by some of the most patient people in professional sports. Players playing to keep a significant black mark off of their cvs when shopping for new contracts come June rather than any affection for the shirt or any of us.
I watched a lot of Southern League and Alliance League football as a kid in the early 70s and most Novembers I would get to see teams of former pros and nearly pros, combining playing for some extra walking-around money with driving cabs, running pubs or wiring houses come up against an actual Football League team in the cup. The part-timers would more often than not gut their way to a fortuitous 1-0 or maybe a replay playing ugly, brutal, gutsy 18% possession football against the likes of Torquay and Darlington and Peterborough. Truth being that the semis pros were pragmatists, supporting families and probably seeing more money each week in total than the full-timers they were pitted against.
The suspension of disbelief that was required while witnessing out-of-condition bruisers wading through mud in search of some kind of personal redemption masked the fact that the same match-up, taken out of the context of the cup, would 9 times out of 10 be if not a cricket score then an ice hockey score the other way.
It is the kind of football that is exhausting to watch and while it might have been the sort of thing that would get the mayor, the local paper and On The Ball excited for a week or so, everyone knew deep down the inevitability of the 4-0 drubbing that was waiting in January when a team of over weight misfits would come up against a switched-on side of actual athletes with even a modicum of self-respect.
Continue like this and we are *that* team except we are that team every single week. Every game feeling like we are hanging in there, absorbing pressure, hoping for a lucky punch and an opponent without the wherewithal to punch back. There are points to be won with that approach but I doubt there are 50 given that the league looks like it is going to get a lot stronger with its fresh intake from both ends. A lot of the deadwood is being cut away.
We haven't actually seen Ainsworth try this kind of thing at home yet. It will be interesting to see how patient everyone is come November, if it turns out that grim, attritional, house-to-house defending is going to be the actual strategy and Wycombe's 39 goals in 46 (and significantly less than a goal a game at home) is the actual template he is most comfortable with. You probably wont see people on the pitch calling for blood but you wont see many people in the stands either. |
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Comment | Everything we’ve come to expect from this team and more - Report
at 23:58:34
Not for the first time this season I have looked forward to reading your match report more than I have going to actual game. I feel really bad having dragged my daughter into this. At 26 she should really be doing something with her Saturdays that feels less like an act of self-harm.
The only thing I would take issue in your yet again glorious piece of writing is the idea that Chair's performance was "pony".
Every time the ball found its way to him (usually a happy accident than the result of strategy or even intent) he was surrounded by three sometimes four players. Is he given options for a pass? No. Not once. So he is left with either playing for a throw (and you very eloquently pointed out how those go) or attempting to dribble through the pack. These are his only choices and even Adel is thinking twice about the dribble in most of these situations.
You would think with three or four Coventry players drawn the ball it would open up all kinds of options elsewhere in the attacking 3rd but it doesn't because no one apart from Chair wants the ball. In the same way Dykes can't nod the ball down to himself even someone as talented as Chair can't work a triangle with himself, get to the bye-line and find himself on the edge of the 18 yard box for a shot at goal. He needs an Eze or a Manning or a Wallace or a Pugh or the Willock of not so long ago who can find space to receive the ball while three defending players are occupied with one guy and have a pre-conceived idea of what to do next.
Speaking of missing players lets scroll back to just before Covid when Pugh was literally central to all that was good in that promising run of form but he doesn't have an uncle who used to work in the box office and no one can make a penis joke chant out of his surname so he is apparently completely dispensable, so dispensable it would seem that he has never effectively been replaced.
And why do our players get drawn to the ball and then conspire to get in each other's way while leaving acres for opposing players to run into? I'll tell you why - fear and abject coaching. They know they can't afford to make any mistakes so they all panic and panic together. They can't bring to mind the very basics of defending when it matters. Gun shy doesn't come close to describing it. They play like men who get shouted at an awful lot and now only hear the tone and none of the actual content.
And while we are in this pit of despond lets ponder how many crosses were aimed over the heads of Dykes and Martin and in the general direction of the smallest man on the pitch? So many it almost seemed deliberate.
As for Chair's substitution that had all the hallmarks of John Gregory. Insecurity expressed through a silly, self-defeating power play. Maybe it was the fasting thing. The player certainly didn't seem to think so and he should know.
All Coventry had to do to win the game was stifle Chair out on the wing and be alert for second balls off of Dykes. That. Is. It. So not any kind of breed of pony for me.
Lets also not forget that we effectively started with 9 players set-up in a bound to fail formation - it's Dykes or Martin not both and Albert should probably be playing at Dulwich or Lewes at this point. As you say the midfield was overwhelmed (Amos might have helped but probably not enough) and playing Dunne at RB is massively stupid even before you get to the issue of 4 vs 5 at the back. Laird probably has a questionable attitude but for godsake start him and see how it goes. He is a fit, talented right back and considered good enough to potentially make the grade for an actual Champions League club. But no lets play a centre back there whose confidence levels are already rock bottom.
That's my friend is pony right there.
Speaking of 4 vs 5 and in case anyone is wondering, Barbet's Bordeaux are second in the table, conceding less than a goal a game and are a good bet for promotion despite losing to third place Metz. We're doing just fine without him, right? Warbs would have kept him. He might have kept Moses Odubajo too and right now I would give you all the money I may or may not be spending on a season ticket next season to have them both back for the final four games.
I said last week that English ex pros see their coaching badges as akin to a driving licence rather than the opportunity to continue learning. And what do we do? We give the keys to someone who used to look good in the shirt, a coach who has kept the same job for en eternity without being snapped up by anyone else (think about what that means in the context of this industry) and applauded that decision while he drives the club (well loved, family vehicle in need of a re-spray but in passable nick, many previous owners) over and over into the nearest wall while claiming that he is getting the hang of it and the cavalry are coming. He gets paid to do this and will eventually be paid not to do it. That's where we are.
Actually where we really are right now is in the final scene of Zulu except in the QPR version everyone is dead apart from bed ridden depressive Paul Daneman and the massed ranks of the enemy gathered on the hills above are not going to turn around and go home. |
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Comment | It’s about ownership — Preview
at 13:45:47
Sad and desperate times and only an upgrade on 2021 because of the very dichotomy you have so very brilliantly outlined. The bottom line for me and the pre-requisite for making progress any time soon is to let go of the past. No more misty-eyed, mostly second hand memories of 67 or 76 (or even 2011) until we've achieved some degree of respectability in the here and now. As the song says ... yesterday's gone. |
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Comment | Things turn toxic as hapless QPR lose yet again - Report
at 12:50:27
Given that this attack has to practice against this defence what can either party possibly be learning in training? You'd be better off paying some mid table National League South side to come in three times a week to provide the oppo.
There's clearly no tactical plan so why bother training at all? You might as well have no coach, let the captain run the bench and let the players do what they fancy in the game. Could that really be any worse?
We'd actually be better off with the team going nowhere near a football pitch and spending the week in psychotherapy.
I have a lot of time for GA as a legacy figure but for Christsakes don't hire a head coach who has hobbies! You need monomaniacs, people who do little but watch, analyse, read and talk about football 18 hours a day. The level of fine detail that is involved now compared with 20 years ago literally makes it a different sport from the one Gallen and Ainsworth et al played. Motivational buzzword bingo is not coaching in 2023.
Back in November I listened to a really intereating pod with the Scandi coach who was allegedly in the frame after Beale. The man is clearly an obsessive and the attention to detail was quite frightening. Night and day compared with the platitudes a lot of our ex pro coaches trot out here. The line between pundit and manager seems wafer thin In England at times. Holloway talks a load of nonsense as well. Pre-data, condiment pots on the caff table levels of thinking. Getting the badges should be just the start. Here it seems to be treated as the equivalent of a driving licence.
Meanwhile Emma Hayes is sat at Chelsea, clearly bored with the WSL. She would have been an upgrade on Beale, a born winner, in need of a challenge and would sort this dressing room out in no time. Tough-as but smart with it.. Too late now as she is way too good for L1. Some might laugh but it's the Moneyball thing - we literally can't buy what we need so we need to be doing and thinking what no one else is doing and thinking and finding a different route to respectability. But we needed to do it a lot of yesterdays ago. |
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Comment | I hitched a ride with a vending machine repairman — Report
at 08:24:20
Horrible performance. Superb piece of writing. Always good to see you sneak in a Moneyball reference.
As I have mentioned before I strongly suspect that the DoF and Hoos have bought into the Oakland As / Billy Beane fable but not where it counted - not the commitment to analytics, not learning to spend limited resources wisely, not looking for advantages in the market and on the field that others have missed. None of the good stuff. They watched the movie, didn't bother reading the books and missed the underlying point of the Billy Beane story entirely.
What they have bought into instead is the misguided idea that players and coaches are just interchangeable parts, names on the board that have no hinterland and to whom no real duty of care applies. The money compensating for all other considerations.
Sure these men make a lot of money compared with you or I and that at least provides a degree of safety in turbulent times (they probably don't turn the heating down to 16 hen it is minus 2 outside) but it doesn't mean that your HR policy should be at Bezos / Musk levels of bottom line driven joylessness and I would argue that right now, in terms of a place to develop a career as a young or young-ish footballer, QPR is probably the least attractive London club to join in the top five divisions.
Pretty much the only advantages we have that are worth a light are the travelling support, the community work and the new training complex and Eze looks like a man who advanced himself in spite of the way the club is run, not because of it. Chair may be coming to the same conclusion and he clearly loves the bones of the club. Right now, as we somehow summon up four more wins and stagger towards somewhere not too far shy of 20th, I just want to see the kid happy and for Sinclair Armstrong to get enough games to earn a move to somewhere where they will play to his strengths. Not much to ask but an ocean away from where we are now.
The result of having the club run by people who read business management how-to books on the toilet? We've seen three of the last four seasons go to shit, seasons thrown away post transfer window when a combination of managers, coaches and players had to play out the schedule knowing the chances were that they were not coming back to Rangers for pre-season and were being left to swing. How many 50-50s are you going into full throttle when you know you are looking for a new employer come June? Unless your name is Angel Rangel not so many. As a coach how much time are you going to spend working on improving players who you wont be seeing again come July? Months of football and mountains of money literally thrown away.
A club with real potential to get at least a play off place let two pretty key components go in Hall and Pugh and were either unable or uninterested in replacing them. They had meanwhile penny-pinched their way through the process of getting players out of furlough and back on the pitch with predictable (terrible) results that carried right over into the following season. Covid was a nightmare for sure but it was that nightmare for every team in the league and when it came to the careful management of our most tangible assets (aside from the stadium itself) the club clearly let them down. Then in Warbs' last year, having leaned the square root of nothing in the process, we did it all over again!
And the accumulated impact of treating people with real lives as interchangeable parts has led us eight here. Players know that whatever loyalty they show this club will not be reciprocated because the whole thing is being treated as a numbers game but not in a good way. This doesn't excuse Saturday's debacle at all but the tone has been set and the apparent ease with which Beale was allowed to join (with no track record but an easily broken contract) and then leave only goes to underline that. Like a Tory cabinet of none-of-the-talents the upper echelons of this club come across as cynical men who accept the cynicism of others as normal practice. Loyalty is for chumps and punters, keep churning the playing and coaching staff and keep the focus off of us. Fans are treated with contempt like people on the doorstep clapping the NHS or cheering a royal wedding while the country goes up like a dumpster fire.
So here we are with a squad where only Paal, Chair and JCS have deals that extend beyond next season. No one is going to want to buy any of them. None of them are in the kind of form that is going to change someone else's season right now, at least not for the better and not to the degree that the potential suitor wont just wait it out until January and do a deal then.
Is there a way out other than hoping there are three teams even worse than us come May? Not that I can see. Not when Hall, Manning and BOS look like the wise heads and Eze the exception that proves the rule.
My knee-jerk solution? Les and Lee are done. Bring Warbs in as DoF and give him complete control. Let decency be the guiding principle and see where that takes us. If he'd even have us at this point. |
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Comment | All eyes on the boss as QPR soar to the summit — Report
at 09:22:26
Excellent report.
I can't remember the last time I went to Rangers game with no sense of jeopardy at any point during the entire proceedings. My first year as a ST holder was 95/96 and since then majority of games have had the dynamics of 3rd round FA Cup ties against teams from a higher division. Somehow or another, even when 3 up, it usually ends up feeling like we only just got over the line and that it was a bit of a grind. The Holloway Mk II / McClaren eras were almost exclusively that way. Could often be exciting but only if masochism is your thing. I've been bored at times but rarely entirely untroubled (3-2 against Sheffield in 2011 is one of the few exceptions proving the rule) . Until Wednesday. And that isn't about the opposition (rank as they might have been) it's about our team's mental state. Their belief, their resolve and their hunger to be led intelligently. |
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Comment | Standing on the platform, watching you go — Report
at 10:16:57
That's an astonishing and incredibly well-balanced (doubly so in the febrile circumstances) piece of writing, especially turned around in such short order. Bravo! I'd definitely buy a book of the best of these reports from down the years.
On an unrelated topic word of us looking at taking as many as three young Spurs players on loan worries me greatly. Maybe that's just an old(er) fan recalling the recruitment of Slade, Rose and Harper under Houston / Rioch (not to mention Morrow who was effectively a reserve player at Arsenal). Not that Rose ended up being a bad acquisition but was at least a couple of seasons away and a whole load of fan abuse away from being ready for that level. I am getting unpleasant settle-for-being-a-THFC-feeder-club vibe about the whole idea. Next stop on that journey is ground-sharing. |
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Comment | So, this is goodbye — Preview
at 07:26:41
That's a heartbreaker to read.
Injuries? Yes. That issue can't be avoided but the strategy of letting the contracts of key contributors run down shows a degree of professional ineptitude and / or lack of a grasp of basic psychology that is hard to explain. Tells all concerned that there is not a lot of faith there. UNLESS that is the club is about to be sold and a clean slate has been demanded. In which case God (and all his angels) help us because the one thing you can say about the owners and senior management is that they have been trying to nurture something on and off the pitch that is pretty unique.
On the upside the Teflon brigade have serious form in this area. Arguably McClaren's one season was torpedoed by two issues a) over-playing of a knackered core and b) a whole raft of players going into the new year with no contract offers. The later no doubt playing on the minds of the former. On the other side of the coin there was a lot of hype about how well bonded that squad was (Coffee Club was ?) and yet according to the captain the situation backstage was far more febrile. Either way they were going into the transfer window with a 70 point season well within reach despite the chaotic start and yet more or less every wound that worked against that unlikely target being achieved was self inflicted.
Speaking of which Austin sitting (sulking?) in an empty stand in full view for 25 minutes while the team struggled to find any sense of themselves against Rotherham feels like a major turning point to me. Either as a catalyst or a symbol of a darker subtext.
I like Charlie a lot, I want him to do well, most of us are old enough to know how bereavement can **** your life up (especially your focus at work), I love his (and his family's) commitment to the club and I hate the hate that he is attracting BUT that was poor - poor at a sub-Gallas level of abdicated leadership. Just three wins since? Tell me that is a coincidence.
Coming back to contract negligence, I would also argue that losing Mark Pugh and Grant Hall when the first pandemic season resumed was a far bigger factor two years ago than a lot of people would care to admit / remember. That and, again, a complacent attitude towards the basic logistics and psychology of getting a team that had been off the boil for three months back into competitive shape. If significant corners were cut to save some pennies (a Hoos speciality it seems) then there's form there too.
Took them three weeks of matches (and arguably he first half of the following season) to get anywhere close to the form they had showed before. Obviously hindsight in the midst of an international crisis is 20/20 but other clubs got it right (or closer to right) and, once again, on the basis of the form that we were in up to Preston away that team was good for a 68-70 point total and a sniff at the post season. Mark Pugh played a big and mostly unsung role in that run.
My big crayon theory is Les and Lee have watched Money Ball a few times too many and fancy themselves as Billy Bean characters and are a little too enamoured of the idea of beating (or rather nearly beating) the casino and all the odds stacked against them. Might be possible in a binary sport that is built on the endless repetition of similar actions involving a limited number of possible outcomes. It is not going to ever fly in a team sport, especially at this level where it is really more a game of confidence and a game of mistakes than one of decisive interventions, and where 22 men and the officials more often than not conspire to defy all logic. You mess with momentum at your peril because you can't just go to the bullpen and find a hero to guarantee the big Hollywood ending. |
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Comment | QPR continue to state intent, adding Gray to attack - Signing
at 18:24:35
I think it is probably important not to expect total consistency on political and social matters from the people who occupy key positions on and off the pitch.
Would it be at all surprising if self-made men (especially those born in the early to mid 60s), who are effectively all wealthy freelancers with short careers in a cut-throat team sport, were a lot less interested in issues of social diversity and inclusivity in the work place than winning the next football match and the one after that?
Unless an issue touches them very personally it probably doesn't feature much on their radar. Certainly not their professional one and even if it does I am not expecting Lee or Les or Warbs to show up on Novara Media or in Tribune any time soon talking about the relevance of the Paris Commune or the Fifth International to the scheduling of midweek away games and replica shirt pricing. There isn't ever going to be an equivalent of Chris Hughton writing for the Morning Star at the height of the Thatcher era.
Point being is that I very much doubt that Gray's history even came up when they were thinking about signing him. 30 year old bloke has daft views on whatever subject is not exactly a surprise is it? How many of Geoff Cameron's personal opinions were wholly consistent with the Rangers brand as a diverse club in a very diverse part of one of the most diverse cities on the planet and did anyone care?
I doubt it ever got a moment's thought as long as Cameron kept it reasonably clean and kept the views about his country rather than this one. We won more often with him on the field. End of story for most of the executive and the coaching staff I would imagine. And of course for most fans. So there is that.
The other side of this is about marketing and about how the owners want to develop the club. The last few seasons my youngest daughter (now 25) has been coming a lot. She's gone from being an armchair fan of players rather than of a specific club to being a QPR full-timer at home and wanting to go to away games.
The post Grenfell community work, the stadium renaming, seeing the likes of Seny, Chair, Eze, Manning, Kakay and Bright et al come into the first team and thrive has had a lot to do with that. She certainly hasn't been coming for the wins until very recently and she sees the club as something she can support whole heartedly in a sport that she likes but otherwise thinks of as being a moral vacuum.
I am also pretty sure that she is not alone in being attracted by this dynamic and if you want a new younger breed of fan then you probably don't want to openly mess with it. I expect the owners and marketing people are very very aware of this. Though not everyone else at the club will think you need to do more than win games to sell tickets. That despite the fact that a lot of our relatively recent history (certainly post going all seated) suggests that this is not the case.
So there is a fine line being walked where a bunch of not entirely compatible outlooks within the club and in the stands have to agree to rub along for the good of the bigger picture. Seeing and yet not seeing the past indiscretions of Andre Gray is going to be a small part of walking that line. Meanwhile there is no one in the stadium booing the taking of the knee that I can hear from the upper Loft and that for me is definitely a sign of something somewhere heading in the right direction. |
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Comment | The perks of being a QPR fan - Report
at 12:56:22
Beautiful and resonant "Perks" reference there Clive. Football and music and the friends I have shared them with have been saving my bacon for much of the last 59 years. And that's the perfect quote for one of those rare, nigh-on unbelievably perfect nights. Bravo. |
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Comment | Super City show has QPR right back in the groove - Report
at 10:31:51
Once again Clive does for match reports what Paul Morley used to do for the NME's live reviews - you might not have been there but by the time he was done describing it you felt that you had been. Plus a sneaky Whitesnake reference. Here we are in the Vivarium of 16th place yet life feels rich. |
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