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Reply | The game model
at 11:54 25 Nov 2024
Seems that Noury went to Imperial in 2019 to study for an MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management. This after doing History at Trinity, Oxford. Not an educational path that would normally bring a lot of humility with it and not a lot of football on that educational cv either. I am not sure where the data expertise was acquired. A hobbyist perhaps? So there's that.
I wouldn't bet against Noury having watched Moneyball and / or read the Michael Lewis book and thought "I'm very smart, I can make spread sheets that are works of art, I really like football and football is loaded with money, short of a lot of rationality and full of people promoted above their skill-set and intelligence. In that kind of environment I could be Pete *and* Billy rolled into one. I'll clean up!"
No one who goes to Trinity wants to be making their way into their stellar post- post grad career based on something as ephemeral as actual experience on the job. No one wants to be Art Howe, the schlubby guy who looks bad in the uniform, the guy who wants to stay in the game on his terms and by leaning on a skill set earned having done his 10,000 hours multiple times along the way.
No one who goes to Imperial aspires to be a man out of step with the Zeitgeist like Grady the chief scout. They want to be seen to be the smartest, most forward thinking person in the room on any given occasion. Contrarian by nature, they want to lead the future not chase the bandwagon.
Though a Grady might also once in a while find you a one season wonder Stuart Wardley in the rough. He might have seen enough with his own eyes to know someone who knows someone who knows that an Ebere Eze, or,a Jason Puncheon say, have far far more to offer than what their career paths to date suggest. A Stuart Wardley would never make a data-driven short list. Would Eze at the point just before he came to Rangers? Would Puncheon when Barnet picked him up from the cast off pile? I very much doubt it.
And there's the rub when you over-correct from a conservative, 16th-place-and-hoping-for-better- kind-of-works-for-now strategy. That has been a strategy that says leave-the-football-men-to-do-football-man-things. With all the hit and miss consequences you would expect.
Yet here we are doing a 180 on a cliff edge to chase a lets-give-the-disruptive-tech-bros-all-the-power policy the next. The guy driving this isn't even doing it with his own money.
Warbs is the nearest thing we have seen who more or less rides both those horses, even if his experience of using data to feed decision-making will be more of a Gary Stevenson risk management type than player assessment per se. His data-led decisions in the markets might even have involved similar amounts of money and more. Which will presumably teach you a lot about how to actually reach safe but progressive decisions based on multiple sources of information. Little of that nouse is found in text books and coaching manuals.
I would bet Marti is cut from similar cloth in terms of temperament but with the bias more toward the training field than the analyst booth. Thoughtful at the very least.
So, of course we will end up having fired them both in favour of chasing dreams of beating the EFL house on the dirt cheap. Too impatient to build, too keen on a lottery win solution to a nose-to-the-grindstone for five years problem.
Until we learn patience and true painstaking graft we are going nowhere. There might always be enough of a January parachute to stave off disaster but that's our ceiling right now. With this fan base (the most patient I have ever come across) that is more than possible. |
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Reply | What is your second sport.
at 09:22 4 Jun 2024
Ice Hockey and Rugby League are the only other sports outside of football that I have the time or inclination to follow in any detail. Like a lot of people of a certain age I got into both in the early 70s thanks to Grandstand and the one season stand of the London Lions, a Detroit Red Wings farm team, playing at Empire Pool in 73 (?).
As a non driver, with Romford and Streatham the nearest hockey teams worth travelling to pay to watch and the Broncos long since based back down in south London, these are both strictly armchair sports for me these days. |
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Reply | New manager
at 18:15 9 Oct 2023
If Chair, Willock, Dykes, Field are the solution isn't Warburton (preferably) or Eustace the logical solution? |
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Reply | New manager
at 16:06 9 Oct 2023
Not with the help of my money. I am not far from my 30th anniversary as a ST holder but that would be the end for me. I only renewed this year because my daughter loves going so much.
The last year has been like reliving the first month under McClaren over and over again. Madness to tolerate it. Renewing just encourages them. Surest way of changing anything is to withdraw our custom. Chanting against absentee owners and expecting change is the definition of futility. Time to go on strike or a Notts Co type descent beckons. |
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Reply | Ainsworth
at 13:31 8 Oct 2023
Eustace? Knowing us we'd make him manager and hire Warbs as his assistant. Very 1996. |
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Reply | Ainsworth
at 09:20 8 Oct 2023
An appeasement appointment has appeasement consequences.
The club's endless fueling of nostalgia for 67, 76, 82, 04 is also part of the problem or rather an exercise in distraction. Forever Rs is a beautiful thing but also has a role in keeping people docile.
We needed a forward-thinking strategy, heavy on data and Individualised coaching with a high degree of risk-reward. We got the Dad Rock strategy instead complete with the endless repackaging of the back catalogue.
Right now we would struggle to get a Luke Garrard or even a Gareth Taylor ( speaking of nostalgia! ) to come here. Emma Hayes probably wouldn't even take the meeting.
Still you can always buy a 96 relegation season away shirt to cheer yourself up and all those home defeats now feel depressingly familiar. And dare.I say that was another season when owners were looking to get out from under at the least possible expense to themselves.
And we let Warbs go for this??? |
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Reply | "Our Rangers Back"
at 10:55 9 Aug 2023
The same thing happened under McClaren. The team was in a decent place (against all the odds given the general dysfunction) and fell apart when too many players were left dangling with no deal in place for the following season. For it to happen twice suggests an unhealthy disregard for the playing staff emanating from the DoF's office or the MD's or both. |
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Reply | "Our Rangers Back"
at 08:30 9 Aug 2023
It feels like that but I think it has happened six, maybe seven times, in the last half century. All of them before financial doping became the work of billionaires rather than millionaires.
The Rangers I would happily have back is the one that won up at Preston just before Covid or maybe the one that won at 'Boro in August 2021.
Don't care about trophies. Don't care about the Prem. Don't even care much about the play offs. Just want to watch something that makes the world seem a bit brighter and our personal loads feel a bit lighter.
You could double my season ticket price if it brought Warburton back as manager or DoF. |
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Reply | Season s Expectations
at 08:39 3 Jun 2023
Per someone rational I heard speaking on one of the Rangers pods yesterday - the final position will have a 2 in front of it. Couldn't argue with that.
Where we finish in that bottom five is probably going to be determined by FFP not points earned.
I have no idea where the dozen wins we will likely need are going to come from so I figure we are heading for 23rd without a point deductions elsewhere.
21st with. On goal difference. |
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Reply | Bhatia speaks
at 12:05 13 May 2023
Pro sports is how the mega rich keep score between themselves. Demonstrating the power of their wealth through sporting success is how they flex.
Used to be focussed on horse racing and F1 and it was far harder to break into football as owners of top clubs were very reluctant to sell. Especially if there was a family legacy involved in the ownership or a major shareholding. [Post edited 13 May 2023 12:12]
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Reply | To Renew or Not Renew
at 16:36 10 May 2023
Just a reminder again of Ainsworth's all-time record playing at home in the Championship
30 games
20 goals for (17 in 23 with WW)
40 goals against
23 of those games were played with his "own players" and the other 7 with a team allegedly giving their all.
The only incentive to renew is to ensure I keep hold of a seat that I really like having moved a few times in my 28 years as a ST holder. Is that enough? We'll see come June. [Post edited 10 May 2023 16:38]
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Reply | Season Tickets
at 09:43 9 May 2023
Yesterday felt like a taste of things to come in all sorts of ways so it is a wait and see for me.
Ainsworth's teams have registered just 20 goals at home (and 40 against) in his 30 attempts over two stints as a Championship manager. That is a very decent sample size with 2/3rds of the games contested with his own players.
His instinct is to not bleed-out on the field, to limit the damage as much as possible and hope to sneak enough points to finish above the one team that gets a deduction and two that are even worse than you.
No more than one of the teams coming up from L1 and none of the teams coming down from the Prem will be relegation fodder.
So I reckon we are trying to finish in the top half of a six or seven team league comprised of ourselves, Hull, Rotherham, Birmingham, Stoke, Huddersfield and also the side that comes up from L1 as long as it isn't Sheffield Wednesday. That's the job in hand.
The handful of players actually worth paying to watch are headed out the door out of necessity and are getting replaced by loanees, lower league prospects and seasoned head-bangers rather than the products of our own system
You can hang all the banners and wave as many flags as you like but it doesn't mask the grim reality - we don't have a single player who is legit Championship standard who is also "one of our own". From what I gather, other than Armstrong (who desperately needs a full season in the SPL or L1), there is not even a Paul Bruce or a Leon Jeanne on the fringes to pin our unreasonable hopes on.
Where's the incentive to commit to that? |
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Reply | Which is the worst QPR team? 2022/23 or 2000/01
at 09:10 19 Mar 2023
Man for man we have a far better squad of footballers available to us than in 2000-2001.
There was not a single player back then who could have felt any real confidence about moving up to a better club in our division let alone rising to the Prem. They had all been found out in one way or another.
We had gathered a lethal combination of has-beens and never-could-bes. I believe Paul Murray was the only one who tasted football at a higher level after that and his career was already beset by injury.
Remember when Four Four Two projected Quas and Murray as England's starting midfield for the 2002 world cup? Funny now. Not so funny seeing that promise evaporate in real time. The depressives among us may see Willock and Chair as direct parallels today.
The biggest similarity is that there are a lot of players in both squads who would look perfectly fine in a good team but can't be relied on to save a sinking one. On the other hand this time around we do have plenty difference-makers (which were not available back then) but they are nearly all either injured or opting to stay out of the firing line. So there's that.
The most significant difference between then and now? In 2001 Chris Wright was desperately looking for a way out and in the process the whole club found itself in serious jeopardy. That is only the case now if a large enough section of the fans want it that way and turn understandable bile into "activism".
Ironically the mind set of the fans chanting "sack the board" now will be more or less the same as those chanting "Chrissy Wright Wright Wright" to almost the very last 22 years ago. There are no white knights coming to save the day and Wright somehow got away with being seen as one for far longer than was the actual case. He had decided to bail long before he actually showed his full hand and sucked up the adulation while a series of poor managerial appointments took the fall. If there is anything resembling a rescuer to be had today then they are already in-situ. If the abuse becomes personal and spills from social media into real life then this error-prone but fundamentally honest and well-meaning ownership group may become our worst nightmare. They wash their hands of us and League One is the least of our worries. [Post edited 19 Mar 2023 9:22]
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Reply | What a F ucking week.
at 09:44 5 Mar 2023
The choice is stark
Either stick with those who have stewarded the club into this turbulence, knowing that they are most likely continuing to fund the club more out of a sense of collective responsibility for the lost opportunities offered by the yo-yo years of 2011 - 2015 than out of any sense of burning ambition.
or
Find a way to live within our very limited means, while paying off the fine (and presumably some of the debt if we are to hang on to ownership of the stadium) with every danger that we plummet into the 2nd division or even the National before staging a revival.
There is no argument for relocation outside of London that will allow us to remain what we are if unmoored from W12 - we will be the proud owners of a fine history, a nice badge and a distinctive shirt template in a sport that has proven resistant to clubs
being transplanted hither and yon. How much of the fan base we would take with us is highly questionable and where exactly is this commutable community housing thousands of strangely uncommitted football fans that would welcome a slightly careworn football club into its heart. Starting a club from scratch MKD style is one thing, QPR playing out of Slough or Bracknell or somewhere something else entirely.
There are no white knights coming to save the day. Any investor will take one look at the ground, the lack of potential for expansion and put their money elsewhere.
All that is out there are the kind of shape-shifting mavericks whose plans will make Pete WInkelman's ideas seem almost desirable by comparison.
Sucking this up for now feels like the only option to me and anyone referencing the dog days of Chris Wright's tenure who thinks this is anything close to being as bad as that wasn't there. Could be if people starting thinking it is wise to run these owners out of town during a crisis. [Post edited 5 Mar 2023 10:03]
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Reply | QPR Finances released
at 14:46 1 Mar 2023
Does the reported gate money seem on the low side to anyone else?
Increasing the ticket sales isn't going to move the dial for us all that much in terns the bigger picture but that doesn't feel like a lot given the reported attendances. Suggests there are a lot more kids and OAPs that are season ticket holders than I would have expected. Or do our gate numbers include a whole lot of comps?
Looking around the upper loft this season the fan base is not getting any younger, myself included, which might explain a lot but, whatever the cause, the per attendee take is not looking all that healthy for a Championship side.
£5.6m x 1.2 = £6.72m inc VAT in 2021-22 season.
23 League games, 2 pre season *, 3 games in the LC and one in the FA Cup.
That's £232k per game on average or thereabouts inc VAT.
I missed the Man Utd and Leicester games so have no idea how well attended they were but assume they were better than the Atalanta or Union games for example. |
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Reply | Nobody listens to Neil
at 11:14 19 Feb 2023
Listening to the Ferdinand interview my biggest worry is the shrugging off of recruitment problems with a "we have plenty of names on the scouting white board" type comment.
I am having a bad dose of 25 year deja vu in that it reminds me horribly of the worst of the Ray Harford era.
Sinclair gone, Impey on his way? Call for Tony Scully.
A massive hole where Wilkins, Barker and Holloway used do their work? George Kulscar is just the man.
Brevett, Bardsley and WIlson plying their trade elsewhere? There is a shirt all ready with Ian Baraclough's name on it.
All of them nonsense signings built on a fundamental errors of judgement. One of them might have paid off but to pack a 1st division (2nd as was, Championship as is) squad with a whole raft of players who were (at best) 2nd division journeymen had only one likely end result. Players yoked together that individually might have looked perfectly ok in a good team (Tim Breaker being the all time best example of this phenomena) but were never going to lift a poor one. Names on a board of wholly unremarkable and apparently interchangeable parts that were supposed to be able to do a job but rarely managed it all at the same time.
And then there is the issue of who is emerging from the development side of the club.
The crop of youngsters that won the Combination in 1996 also turned out to be substantially less than the sum of its parts despite all the new contracts that were thrown around off the back of that somewhat meaningless trophy. Challis, Lockwood and Brazier had pretty reasonable careers. Chris Plummer and Paul Bruce too to a very limited degree but Mark Graham was not a young Franz Beckenbauer however much John Hollins wanted to believe that was true. At least it was no more true than the frankly demented idea that Karl Ready was a doppelganger for Tony Adams (you can thank Bruce Rioch for that one).
And lets not even get started on the fact that there was no money to even make an offer for on-loan Mark Kennedy (a QPR player if ever I saw one) but plenty in the bank to reward Ruddock and Jones for being masters of the hard-to-watch score draw in the inglorious crawl to 21st place largely off the back of the surreal night we scored 5 against a Boro side who were actually promoted two months later.. That was one of just two wins after Christmas btw. Stop me if this starts to sound familiar.
And where are we now? A badly built squad with some interesting parts, some young players on loan who probably wouldn't be here if they could be relied upon over the 46 game slog and a very small handful of what might prove to be future Forever Rs. The trap door beckons and if these owners lose interest and start to fund us at near austerity levels the way Chris Wright did then the drop down from there could be vertiginous. |
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Reply | Qpr v Burnley...match thread.
at 09:30 12 Dec 2022
I know it was freezing, I know it was midday, I know it was the (late) morning after the night before of an England world cup exit when a lot of people would have had a few but the support was woeful. The least inspiring (certainly for the players) post-manager departure crowd reaction I can remember going way back. Calling Michael Beale or the officials every name under the sun isn't support. If anything giving the officials stick of that nature is probably counter-productive. The place was a morgue at the start and stayed that way. Even Laird trying to gee folks up in both halves went nowhere very far. That was as much part of a very year 2000 experience as the performance itself. Though on the upside (and I am grasping at straws here) if Laird cares that much maybe he isn't off in the new year after all. |
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Reply | Michael Beale — Patreon
at 10:29 14 Jul 2022
On the basis of what I have seen / heard he is the most engaging and credible communicator we've had in the hot seat since Ray Wilkins (who I loved dearly as our manager and whose departure was massively premature). Though I thought the same about MW until the wheels came off and he started to be somewhat defensive in interviews and more than a little economical with the truth regarding the team's performances. Especially in terms of what was going on contracts wise (players and staff). It explains so much. Though anyone paying attention since Holloway's last season could probably have guessed as much.
On a related topic (and apologies if this is old news) Barbet seems to be without a club still. With Bordeaux's demotion due to financial irregularities seems either the club or the player had second thoughts. |
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Reply | Warburton, Stick or twist?
at 10:09 24 Apr 2022
No, they can. It is isn't about the run itself, it is about what happens recruitment wise in the close season ...
Memorably Gerry went 2-0-8 at the end of the 1998-99 season , kept his job and lifted the club to 10th the following season with a rag bag squad bolstered by youth and some shrewd acquisitions and one of the more unlikely scoring double-acts in Rs history.
Harry went 1-2-7 at the end of the 2012-2013 season. Austin, Dunne, Simpson, O'Neill came in as permanent signings (only one for a transfer fee). No promotion without at least three of those four.
For balance Holloway went 2-1-7 at the end of the 2016-17 season and kept his job when he probably shouldn't have and yet to prove the point recruitment was awful that summer. Bright the best of the bunch and then he played less than half the games. Though, on the other side of the coin, despite the slumps, they were still able to attract Eze, Chair, Freeman and Dieng to the club the same season so they were getting something right.
It's never purely a binary stick/twist. There is no such thing as stick in any case as fitness, form and the market changes everything every close season even with the same management in place. It's the strategic "and then what" that matters. |
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