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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 08:48 - Nov 25 by Toast_R
No Chris Wright?
You'd have to say Richard Thompson. Yes he was an orthodox tight arse, but he run the books correct and did over see QPR's best Premier League finish as top London Club. Even after the debacle of Francis's departure, he listened to the fans and brought in Ray Wilkins as the replacement which was the peoples choice, and gave him money to spend after the sale of Les. Sadly that's what started the 20 year decline.
That is probably the reason I posted the poll. People hated Thompson when I was a kid and Wright was received like a god. But the team has been in lurching from crisis to crisis ever since Thompson quit. I was only a kid back then, so its hard to know how much or the vitriol against Thompson was justified , but there was the Fulham Park Rangers debacle and the Sinclair stupidity that he clocked the blame for, etc.
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 16:31 - Nov 25 by DylanP
That is probably the reason I posted the poll. People hated Thompson when I was a kid and Wright was received like a god. But the team has been in lurching from crisis to crisis ever since Thompson quit. I was only a kid back then, so its hard to know how much or the vitriol against Thompson was justified , but there was the Fulham Park Rangers debacle and the Sinclair stupidity that he clocked the blame for, etc.
Fulham Park Rangers was Jim Gregory and pre-Thompson.
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 16:31 - Nov 25 by DylanP
That is probably the reason I posted the poll. People hated Thompson when I was a kid and Wright was received like a god. But the team has been in lurching from crisis to crisis ever since Thompson quit. I was only a kid back then, so its hard to know how much or the vitriol against Thompson was justified , but there was the Fulham Park Rangers debacle and the Sinclair stupidity that he clocked the blame for, etc.
Can you imagine the Chelsea,Arsenal Liverpool etc etc owners putting all the best players in the club up for sale leaving players not good enough to keep them in the Premier league. Then selling the club and pocketing all the money from both the sale of the players and the sale of the club ( all the time watching your fav London team with your season ticket, not the team you own )
Thats what Thompson did and why he is hated so much.
As for the best Chairman in the last 25 years i will add 3 years to that and say Gentleman Jim
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 17:33 - Nov 25 with 1396 views
Thompson may be hated by some but that was probably the last time we were run sensibly as a business. We didn't have loans against the ground, were debt free and usually posted a profit most if not all years he was there. His problem was maybe being a bit inflexible in regards to always balancing the books.
You look at what the club achieved, how sensibly run it was, how good the return on player investment was, how good the players we could attract were, and you have to say Thompson, by a mile. I don't believe QPR were ever one or two players away from a title challenge (certainly not Ian Bishop or any of the names touted here, otherwise some of the actual title-challenging clubs would have bought them), but to have presided over QPR being a top five club is a remarkable achievement.
And, of course, it wasn't Thompson who got us relegated, it was Wilkins wasting the Ferdinand money, then playing himself in centre mid at a point where he had all the mobility of a static caravan.
The chairman's job is not to be popular. Or to exit the club in the way that keeps him popular. Or to throw money at managers. Or to go to the Crown and Sceptre. It is to run the club properly. Thompson did that.
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 16:38 - Nov 26 with 1181 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 15:59 - Nov 26 by NW5Hoop
You look at what the club achieved, how sensibly run it was, how good the return on player investment was, how good the players we could attract were, and you have to say Thompson, by a mile. I don't believe QPR were ever one or two players away from a title challenge (certainly not Ian Bishop or any of the names touted here, otherwise some of the actual title-challenging clubs would have bought them), but to have presided over QPR being a top five club is a remarkable achievement.
And, of course, it wasn't Thompson who got us relegated, it was Wilkins wasting the Ferdinand money, then playing himself in centre mid at a point where he had all the mobility of a static caravan.
The chairman's job is not to be popular. Or to exit the club in the way that keeps him popular. Or to throw money at managers. Or to go to the Crown and Sceptre. It is to run the club properly. Thompson did that.
"The chairman's job is not to be popular. Or to exit the club in the way that keeps him popular. Or to throw money at managers. Or to go to the Crown and Sceptre."
This.
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 17:55 - Nov 26 with 1173 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 15:59 - Nov 26 by NW5Hoop
You look at what the club achieved, how sensibly run it was, how good the return on player investment was, how good the players we could attract were, and you have to say Thompson, by a mile. I don't believe QPR were ever one or two players away from a title challenge (certainly not Ian Bishop or any of the names touted here, otherwise some of the actual title-challenging clubs would have bought them), but to have presided over QPR being a top five club is a remarkable achievement.
And, of course, it wasn't Thompson who got us relegated, it was Wilkins wasting the Ferdinand money, then playing himself in centre mid at a point where he had all the mobility of a static caravan.
The chairman's job is not to be popular. Or to exit the club in the way that keeps him popular. Or to throw money at managers. Or to go to the Crown and Sceptre. It is to run the club properly. Thompson did that.
Yes, we attracted good players, but it was more like we turned them into good players - they were virtually all players no one else wanted much, or who were getting on (Wilkns), or we had developed ourselves (Impey), or who came cheap from lower leagues (Peacock, Olly). Barker and Wegerle were two of the few who had any sort of mild cache.
Thompson acted disgracefully to get rid of a club legend and arguably the country's outstanding young coach at the time - there's really no other way to put it. And that did, I'm sorry, hasten us towards relegation.
He also completely failed to see what was happening to football in the 90s with the advent of the Premier League. He should have been anticipating the riches that were on offer. And as a 'businessman' he had no real excuse: even I was writing a dissertation on how massively football had changed since 1989 as a result of Hillsborough, Italia 90, Fever Pitch, Sky, the Premier League and Fantasy Football as early as 1995. His intransigence in not allowing Francis even meagre funds to push on to challenge, if not for the title, then certainly for 3rd, even 2nd place (as Norwich did, a club roughly the same size) was extremely damaging. And the idea that he funnelled cash back into transfers all the time is just not true. QPR were a top 5 club in spite of him - he deserves no recognition for that at all.
Furthermore, had Thompson allowed Gerry to build even a little more, the loss of Les may not have been as keenly felt as it was. The fact that Gerry's only reserve for Les was Devon White is an indictment of the way Gerry had his hands tied (as effective as Devon was!).
And if you saw us destroy Coventry, beat Shearer's Blackburn, deservedly defeat Keegan's superb Newcastle side at St James's, completely take apart Everton twice in a season, put four past Spurs and Leeds, crush Arsenal at Highbury etc etc you'd know we really were close. Maybe not to winning the thing - but we were extraordinarily close to being genuine contenders. It was a fabulous side, and Thompson's actions and greed helped kill it.
Bare bones.
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 18:22 - Nov 26 with 1163 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 17:55 - Nov 26 by Antti_Heinola
Yes, we attracted good players, but it was more like we turned them into good players - they were virtually all players no one else wanted much, or who were getting on (Wilkns), or we had developed ourselves (Impey), or who came cheap from lower leagues (Peacock, Olly). Barker and Wegerle were two of the few who had any sort of mild cache.
Thompson acted disgracefully to get rid of a club legend and arguably the country's outstanding young coach at the time - there's really no other way to put it. And that did, I'm sorry, hasten us towards relegation.
He also completely failed to see what was happening to football in the 90s with the advent of the Premier League. He should have been anticipating the riches that were on offer. And as a 'businessman' he had no real excuse: even I was writing a dissertation on how massively football had changed since 1989 as a result of Hillsborough, Italia 90, Fever Pitch, Sky, the Premier League and Fantasy Football as early as 1995. His intransigence in not allowing Francis even meagre funds to push on to challenge, if not for the title, then certainly for 3rd, even 2nd place (as Norwich did, a club roughly the same size) was extremely damaging. And the idea that he funnelled cash back into transfers all the time is just not true. QPR were a top 5 club in spite of him - he deserves no recognition for that at all.
Furthermore, had Thompson allowed Gerry to build even a little more, the loss of Les may not have been as keenly felt as it was. The fact that Gerry's only reserve for Les was Devon White is an indictment of the way Gerry had his hands tied (as effective as Devon was!).
And if you saw us destroy Coventry, beat Shearer's Blackburn, deservedly defeat Keegan's superb Newcastle side at St James's, completely take apart Everton twice in a season, put four past Spurs and Leeds, crush Arsenal at Highbury etc etc you'd know we really were close. Maybe not to winning the thing - but we were extraordinarily close to being genuine contenders. It was a fabulous side, and Thompson's actions and greed helped kill it.
He made some bad decisions, of course. But he made an awful lot fewer bad decisions, with less catastrophic consequences, than anyone who came after him. Football was changing rapidly at that point, but matchday revenue was still, then, the most significant part of the income stream for football clubs. The TV money was more than had come before, but it was a pittance compared to what would come later: the first TV deal was for £191m, spread over five years from 1992-1997. That's less than £40m per season, or to put it another way, when QPR sold Les, they got three times more than they got from Sky.
So he'd have had predictive powers rather more advanced than Nostradamus to have guessed how astronomically the TV rights market was going to grow. Instead, he had to base financial decisions on a maximum crowd of 22,000, paying around a tenner a game if they had season tickets, and not much more than that if they were turning up on the day. Where was the money to build this title-challenging team to come from? To keep QPR on an even keel, I don't see that there was any choice but to sell players. And that meant selling the players who were most desirable. To have built a team capable of a sustained challenge over several seasons at the top of the table, Thompson would have had to put the club so far in hock we'd have struggled to come back. The next chairman tried doing that, at the next level down, and we all know how that ended.
In 1992/93, we weren't setting a target that we could realistically then hope to better. We were punching way above our weight, just as the era when that was possible was coming to an end. The clubs who established themselves as the leaders of the pack in the following years all had one of two things (or sometimes both): substantial "sugar daddy" financing from someone who didn't care about losing money, or large matchday revenues. We had neither. Which is why, like all the other smaller clubs mentioned in this thread and some who aren't — Norwich, Ipswich, Blackburn and so on — we soon disappeared whence we came, after our moment of glory.
[Post edited 27 Nov 2015 1:45]
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 19:02 - Nov 26 with 1148 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 18:44 - Nov 26 by NW5Hoop
He made some bad decisions, of course. But he made an awful lot fewer bad decisions, with less catastrophic consequences, than anyone who came after him. Football was changing rapidly at that point, but matchday revenue was still, then, the most significant part of the income stream for football clubs. The TV money was more than had come before, but it was a pittance compared to what would come later: the first TV deal was for £191m, spread over five years from 1992-1997. That's less than £40m per season, or to put it another way, when QPR sold Les, they got three times more than they got from Sky.
So he'd have had predictive powers rather more advanced than Nostradamus to have guessed how astronomically the TV rights market was going to grow. Instead, he had to base financial decisions on a maximum crowd of 22,000, paying around a tenner a game if they had season tickets, and not much more than that if they were turning up on the day. Where was the money to build this title-challenging team to come from? To keep QPR on an even keel, I don't see that there was any choice but to sell players. And that meant selling the players who were most desirable. To have built a team capable of a sustained challenge over several seasons at the top of the table, Thompson would have had to put the club so far in hock we'd have struggled to come back. The next chairman tried doing that, at the next level down, and we all know how that ended.
In 1992/93, we weren't setting a target that we could realistically then hope to better. We were punching way above our weight, just as the era when that was possible was coming to an end. The clubs who established themselves as the leaders of the pack in the following years all had one of two things (or sometimes both): substantial "sugar daddy" financing from someone who didn't care about losing money, or large matchday revenues. We had neither. Which is why, like all the other smaller clubs mentioned in this thread and some who aren't — Norwich, Ipswich, Blackburn and so on — we soon disappeared whence we came, after our moment of glory.
[Post edited 27 Nov 2015 1:45]
Thompson was indeed a good businessman. Made a lot of money out of QPR and then fcuked off.
Strong and stable my arse.
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 19:39 - Nov 26 with 1129 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 17:55 - Nov 26 by Antti_Heinola
Yes, we attracted good players, but it was more like we turned them into good players - they were virtually all players no one else wanted much, or who were getting on (Wilkns), or we had developed ourselves (Impey), or who came cheap from lower leagues (Peacock, Olly). Barker and Wegerle were two of the few who had any sort of mild cache.
Thompson acted disgracefully to get rid of a club legend and arguably the country's outstanding young coach at the time - there's really no other way to put it. And that did, I'm sorry, hasten us towards relegation.
He also completely failed to see what was happening to football in the 90s with the advent of the Premier League. He should have been anticipating the riches that were on offer. And as a 'businessman' he had no real excuse: even I was writing a dissertation on how massively football had changed since 1989 as a result of Hillsborough, Italia 90, Fever Pitch, Sky, the Premier League and Fantasy Football as early as 1995. His intransigence in not allowing Francis even meagre funds to push on to challenge, if not for the title, then certainly for 3rd, even 2nd place (as Norwich did, a club roughly the same size) was extremely damaging. And the idea that he funnelled cash back into transfers all the time is just not true. QPR were a top 5 club in spite of him - he deserves no recognition for that at all.
Furthermore, had Thompson allowed Gerry to build even a little more, the loss of Les may not have been as keenly felt as it was. The fact that Gerry's only reserve for Les was Devon White is an indictment of the way Gerry had his hands tied (as effective as Devon was!).
And if you saw us destroy Coventry, beat Shearer's Blackburn, deservedly defeat Keegan's superb Newcastle side at St James's, completely take apart Everton twice in a season, put four past Spurs and Leeds, crush Arsenal at Highbury etc etc you'd know we really were close. Maybe not to winning the thing - but we were extraordinarily close to being genuine contenders. It was a fabulous side, and Thompson's actions and greed helped kill it.
blimey that's 2 posts ive agreed with you now Antti , well summed up
to NW5hoop , go back and check the league that year in 92 we were better than Arsenal,Spurs,Chelsea,Liverpool,Leeds,(champions the year before btw) and Blackburn who had really spent some dough Villa were the main challengers that year and if you compare our eleven to there's we were better , its just that they had a better squad, Im not saying we would have won the league but 3 signings would have made us strong challengers Thompson didn't , he stripped us off our best players undermined Gerry and fcuked us over when we were on the verge of actually winning something anyone who thinks Thompson was a good chairman needs there head examining
And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
4
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 20:44 - Nov 26 with 1108 views
His tenure may have been shorter than it should, but he is the only Chairman actually born in the Bush (White City Estate) and to this day a life long fan...
More importantly he put his own personal money into the club without ever having an expectation of it being paid back just wanted the club to move forward!
Tango and Cash and Thompson...no thanks!
[Post edited 26 Nov 2015 20:49]
I Say!
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 01:52 - Nov 27 with 1050 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 19:39 - Nov 26 by paulparker
blimey that's 2 posts ive agreed with you now Antti , well summed up
to NW5hoop , go back and check the league that year in 92 we were better than Arsenal,Spurs,Chelsea,Liverpool,Leeds,(champions the year before btw) and Blackburn who had really spent some dough Villa were the main challengers that year and if you compare our eleven to there's we were better , its just that they had a better squad, Im not saying we would have won the league but 3 signings would have made us strong challengers Thompson didn't , he stripped us off our best players undermined Gerry and fcuked us over when we were on the verge of actually winning something anyone who thinks Thompson was a good chairman needs there head examining
OK, I'll ask the question no one seems to want to answer. How would we have paid for those signings without selling players?
It's all very well saying that if he'd signed three players, we would have been real contenders, but how would we have paid for them? We had no sugar daddy. We had no substantial matchday income. We were a selling club, reliant on buying cheap and selling high to keep solvent. In the past few years we've done the opposite of that, and that's worked out well.
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 09:25 - Nov 27 with 1017 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 20:44 - Nov 26 by Dufster
I say..Billy Power!
His tenure may have been shorter than it should, but he is the only Chairman actually born in the Bush (White City Estate) and to this day a life long fan...
More importantly he put his own personal money into the club without ever having an expectation of it being paid back just wanted the club to move forward!
Tango and Cash and Thompson...no thanks!
[Post edited 26 Nov 2015 20:49]
I was told by someone close to the board at the time that Paladini mortgaged his house to raise money to buy into QPR and eventually got his money back and plenty more and that Billy Power donated money to the club when it was on its arse and needed it most to pay wages without ever expecting to get it back!
Don't think any of the others with perhaps the exception of TF would have done the same!
[Post edited 27 Nov 2015 9:30]
I Say!
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 09:39 - Nov 27 with 1072 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 01:52 - Nov 27 by NW5Hoop
OK, I'll ask the question no one seems to want to answer. How would we have paid for those signings without selling players?
It's all very well saying that if he'd signed three players, we would have been real contenders, but how would we have paid for them? We had no sugar daddy. We had no substantial matchday income. We were a selling club, reliant on buying cheap and selling high to keep solvent. In the past few years we've done the opposite of that, and that's worked out well.
Thompson was worth around 320 million at the time , if he wanted to he could have easily have given Gerry 2 million for signings, all he wanted was the cash , he tried many times during that season and before to flog Sinton, Les, Macca to spurs and Arsenal, instead of kicking on and actually competing we flogged everyone we could until the well ran dry , the fella couldn't of given a rats about QPR or ambition just the money in his pockets as I said go back we were better than Spurs , Arsenal , Chelsea , Liverpool , Leeds we could of became stronger than some of those clubs especially, spurs & Chelsea who were really in the doldrums , we had the best young coach , a great one to eleven, still could have devolved the ground or got a new one during Thompson reign of terror , we lost Parker , Wegerle, Fenwick, Seamen, Sinton, Peacock, where did all the money go ?? it didn't go on the stadium or the youth team, Thompson screwed the club and I cannot for the life of me get my head round any QPR fan who actually sticks up for him
And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
2
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 09:48 - Nov 27 with 1067 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 09:39 - Nov 27 by paulparker
Thompson was worth around 320 million at the time , if he wanted to he could have easily have given Gerry 2 million for signings, all he wanted was the cash , he tried many times during that season and before to flog Sinton, Les, Macca to spurs and Arsenal, instead of kicking on and actually competing we flogged everyone we could until the well ran dry , the fella couldn't of given a rats about QPR or ambition just the money in his pockets as I said go back we were better than Spurs , Arsenal , Chelsea , Liverpool , Leeds we could of became stronger than some of those clubs especially, spurs & Chelsea who were really in the doldrums , we had the best young coach , a great one to eleven, still could have devolved the ground or got a new one during Thompson reign of terror , we lost Parker , Wegerle, Fenwick, Seamen, Sinton, Peacock, where did all the money go ?? it didn't go on the stadium or the youth team, Thompson screwed the club and I cannot for the life of me get my head round any QPR fan who actually sticks up for him
Can you stop it PP, you keep saying what i want to say...
I would add that thompson looked like JR sebastian from' Bladerunner ' 25 going on 85.
the nosferatu fk bag.
bishop was an wonderful player for a couple of seasons, around then , it may have been his, 'Habits' that stopped him getting a move to a bigger club.
[Post edited 27 Nov 2015 9:52]
The Duke Of New York. A-Number One.
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Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 09:54 - Nov 27 with 1059 views
Who is the Best QPR Chairman in the last 25 Years? on 09:48 - Nov 27 by Discodroids
Can you stop it PP, you keep saying what i want to say...
I would add that thompson looked like JR sebastian from' Bladerunner ' 25 going on 85.
the nosferatu fk bag.
bishop was an wonderful player for a couple of seasons, around then , it may have been his, 'Habits' that stopped him getting a move to a bigger club.
[Post edited 27 Nov 2015 9:52]
He definitely had that smarmy yuppie wine bar 1980's look about him
shame he never ran into Patrick Batemen eh
And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
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