The strange decision to award Kieron Dyer a new one year contract after he managed just four minutes of first team action in 2011/12 doesn’t detract from the importance of QPR’s most expensive ‘released list’ of all time.
Tony Fernandes and Philip Beard are, by and large, new to football. They were both keen supporters of the game prior to arriving at Loftus Road but with little prior experience between them of actually running a Premiership outfit. Few would argue that they’re not making a very decent fist of it so far but I wouldn’t be surprised if one of their frustrations is the pace of change.
Fernandes is famed for his use of social media websites to communicate with customers of his other businesses and has continued that with QPR fans. Of course this is the fan base that when previously granted rare access to the people at the very top of the club’s management system had representatives who felt it appropriate to waste valuable time bemoaning the water pressure in the ladies toilets and sure enough, when pushed, most QPR fans have, in the midst of a relegation battle, decided to badger our chairman about the colour of the kit and the design of the badge.
Fernandes therefore took some stick on Friday when the kits for next season were released sporting the Briatore-barnet badge and once again looking like stock Lotto had lying around at the back of their shop. The Malaysian owner was at pains to point out that Lotto require eight months notice on kits – astounding considering the consistently lousy design and quality of them – and it won’t be until next summer when changes to badges and a return to the club’s more traditional away strips can be enacted.
I’m sure it won’t have escaped the notice of either Fernandes or Beard that in an age of image and brand QPR not playing their away games in Hoops is a colossal wasted opportunity. They’ll also be acutely aware that their desire to start selling shirts all over the world will be severely undermined while the deal with Lotto they inherited remains in place because yet again next season QPR will play in kits of worse design and quality than many of our city’s Sunday league sides.
Change takes time, and proper kits we can be proud to wear must wait for another year. Season ticket prices out tomorrow will likely draw further complaint, I suspect Fernandes and Amit Bhatia will require tin hats in the morning.
The £50 refund, which I hope has been knocked off this year’s prices from the beginning, was something Fernandes pinpointed immediately after arriving. The other thing he did straight away was bring about the long, long overdue departure of Gianni Paladini from the club. The Italian had initially done well to keep Rangers going but latterly hamstrung the club with poor players on long contracts while taking hundreds of thousands of pounds out in wages, unsecured personal loans and what turned into an annual fine from the Football Association or employment tribunal thanks to his crass incompetence. Not to mention his persistent efforts to split the support base between the favoured few and the ostracised critics.
Today, QPR underwent their final stage of chemotherapy after the removal of that particular tumour with a release list including eight names that brings an era of chronic mismanagement at Loftus Road led by Paladini to a close.
The first three names on the list I’m sure QPR fans everywhere will join me in wishing all the luck in the world to. Danny Shittu, Peter Ramage and Lee Cook are all leaving Loftus Road at the end of their contracts having won many friends in W12.
Ramage is a limited footballer, reasonably impressive as a Championship centre half but often found wanting for ball playing skills in the right back position he usually finds himself in and was signed from Newcastle to fill by QPR in the summer of 2008. QPR fans were, rightly, happy to forgive his failings and search for positives because of his attitude to them and the club.
Ramage speaks well about QPR, his team mates, himself and the club’s supporters. He could never once be accused of not caring, not trying 100%, not doing his absolute best to make things better in some dark times for the club. A born and bred Geordie with a passion for Newcastle United, he nevertheless embraced the culture of Queens Park Rangers who play at the opposite end of the country and were in a lower division than the Magpies who he elected to leave in search of first team football. Whenever he wasn’t in the QPR team he would move out on loan to play games and both Crystal Palace and Birmingham benefited from his steadying influence this season. He was likeable, and I genuinely hope he gets fixed up with a decent club this summer. Championship sides requiring a centre back should certainly be looking at him.
Lee Cook and Danny Shittu deserve plaudits and admiration for their first spells with the club. Shittu was a colossal figure in every sense of the term in Ian Holloway’s QPR side that won promotion from League One in 2004 and cemented its place in the Championship. He impressed initially on his return for a second spell 18 months ago but seemed to lose form and confidence after being torn apart by Steve Morrison in a game against Millwall and was, like Ramage, only given a one year extension last summer because Neil Warnock panicked when he saw the budget set by Flavio Briatore and elected to hold onto what he already had.
Cook has endured a second spell at the club beset by injuries. He was in fabulous form and the club’s reigning Player of the Year when he left for Fulham in 2007 but he was also suffering badly with a knee injury which he aggravated playing against Rangers in a pre-season game for his new club. He never appeared competitively for Fulham and struggled on loan at Charlton making QPR’s decision to bring him back on a long, lucrative contract in 2009 one born out of sentimentality and PR than sound footballing logic. Predictably Cook has struggled for form and fitness ever since, and will probably have to look to League One where he has been reasonably impressive for Orient and Charlton on loan this season, for his next contract. A man who paid his six figure signing on fee back to a cash scrapped QPR upon departure first time around is worthy of respect and fond wishes.
And thanks as well to Danny Gabbidon who arrived at our club last summer at a time of great turmoil when were grasping at any proven Premiership player we could find and did his best across 19 appearances. He’s not very good, so didn’t play very well, and the decision to sign him while selling Kaspars Gorkss was one of Neil Warnock’s worst, but he gave it his best shot and can leave with his head held high – almost certainly to the Championship or lower.
Which brings us onto the second half of the list: Fitz Hall, Rowan Vine, Gary Borrowdale and Patrick Agyemang. Oh Lord knows how I’ve waited for this day to come.
Let’s begin with the mitigation as I’ve had plenty of that chucked at me on Twitter over the past 24 hours since I confessed that I’m so delighted to see the back of these four that I’m considering holding a barbecue at LoftforWords Towers this weekend for 200 people with free champagne.
Firstly, the criticism that the chronic injury problems suffered by Vine, Agyemang and particularly Hall over their time with QPR could not be helped by the individual players.
Vine, as I have written previously, was indeed hugely unfortunate with his horrendous leg break suffered in training at the hands of some random goalkeeper Paladini had brought to our club whose sole contribution to our cause during a six month stay was to smash one of our better player’s leg to smithereens. He was also unlucky that the club then decided to take him to Dr Nick for the repair job; I wince at the memory of the official website article stating the revolutionary (nee sack of shit) treatment wouldn’t require a plaster cast at any stage so goodness knows how Vine must feel. The whole thing was a shambles that robbed a promising footballer of a career in the higher divisions.
But players have come back from broken legs before; indeed Jamie Mackie has actually improved as a player since returning from his this season. On two separate occasions Vine has been sent out to lower league teams only to have the manager question his fitness: Brentford last season who didn’t pick him once during a one month loan spell, and Southend who didn’t even go as far as a loan deal after a trial match a couple of months ago. You only have to look at Vine play to see the injury has finished him, he’s a shadow of the decent Championship player of old, but to not even have the fitness levels to try is poor. And all the while he’s been at QPR earning big money and contributing nothing.
Hall has even less excuse for his constant hamstring, back and calf injuries that occurred one after the other over and over and over and over and over again throughout his time in W12. The people in the front three rows of F Block held a Fitz Hall injury sweepstake during the one game in three he made it onto the field and 24 minutes was par for the course. What has Hall and the club tried to rectify this? Whatever they’ve done, if anything, it has failed.
The problem was at its height when Jim Magilton was in charge because he insisted on starting Hall whenever the player could walk unaided which meant the one part of the team you want to be settled and consistent would change one week to put him in, then change again a game and half later when he limped out again. If he’s genuinely injured and there’s nothing that can be done then that’s a shame for him, but having once watched Gareth Ainsworth attempt to run off a spiral fracture of his shin bone I do wonder. I’m drawn to a quote from a former member of staff at Loftus Road about another Paladini signing Marc Nygaard who would “ask to come off if he thought he might be about to possibly get injured”.
Secondly, the idea that if somebody was stupid enough to put a contract in front of me far and beyond what I was actually worth – as QPR undoubtedly did with all four of these players – would I turn it down out of guilt and honesty? Of course not, but applying real world logic to this situation as support for these four is a dangerous game to play because you risk undermining your argument immediately. Rowan Vine broke his leg three years ago and has never been the same player since while Fitz Hall has started 99 times in almost five years which means he’s been available one game in three. In my line of work, and most others I suspect, if injury or illness rendered me unfit to work for three years, or two out of every three days, I would have my contract terminated. Similarly if I was fit to work but my employers decided they no longer had any use for me I would be made redundant. I wouldn’t be allowed to sit in the corner of the office earning my money pissing about playing Solitaire all day.
Here in the real world a former colleague of mine, of similar age to me, took an afternoon off after print deadline one day to visit the doctor about a persistent cough and was told almost straight away that he had leukaemia. Six months into the treatment our company wrote to him in hospital saying the sick leave he was entitled to in his contract had expired and they would no longer be paying him his salary – three months later he was dead. That’s the real world. So let’s not get too wrapped up in “poor Fitz, it’s not his fault his hamstrings were made of chewing gum” while he picked up all that money shall we?
Ahh yes, the money. We’ve all heard the stories about Agyemang walking into Paladini’s office looking for a two year deal on £8,000 a week and walking out with a four and a half year contract for £12,000 and about Vine’s wage increasing upon the promotion to the Premiership which he’d contributed nothing to from stupid to really stupid levels and so on.
I’m always wary of player wages stories, because apart from the time Gianni Paladini handed me Nick Ward’s contract to have a look through I can’t imagine the fine details of who is paid what are known by many people. Joey Barton is quoted by fans and journalists as earning £80,000 a week, a load of nonsense taken as gospel since an embittered and heavily beaten Karl Henry mumbled something about it after our win at Molineux earlier this season.
It’s all mostly bullshit with a shred of truth buried somewhere within. But even if all four were on just £10,000 a week each during their four year spells with QPR (and sources suggest it was almost twice that amount for three of them by the end) that means they have taken in the region of £8.3m in wages between them during their time here. In reality it’s probably nearer £11m. Or one Rafael Van Der Vaart, if you want to look at it that way.
Patrick Agyemang was paid a salary at QPR far, far beyond what his ability, and career prior to moving here, should ever have been able to earn him. We know this for a fact, because he would arrive at each game in a Bentley with a personalised registration plate. Whatever we were paying him, for four and a half years, was ridiculous. It briefly looked like genius, when a tear in the fabric of reality saw him score eight goals in his first six appearances, and last year he bagged important point winning goals at Derby and Bristol City, but he scored just six others in between in four years and 75 appearances. He’s also failed to impress on loan at Millwall, Bristol City and latterly Stevenage. This is a dog of a footballer, handed an outrageous contract by an incompetent employee of a club that was suddenly newly flushed with money and didn’t know what to do with it.
And is that Gary Borrowdale I spy hiding at the back there? A player who, for 18 months regardless of who the QPR manager was, mysteriously kept cropping up in newspapers as a player QPR wanted to sign. Could it really be possible that John Gregory, Luigi De Canio, Iain Dowie and Paulo Sousa all fancied the same mediocre left back from Coventry’s reserve side? Or is it more likely that a certain member of the QPR board during that period – for legitimate football reasons I’m sure - fancied him rather more? Borrowdale was a unique signing, in that he arrived at the club in between managers and neither the departing man nor the new incumbent actually wanted him. Still, with a three and a half year deal in the bag he was last spotted by Neil Dejyothin and myself playing his part at QPR’s expense in Barnet’s 6-3 home defeat to Burton Albion earlier this season. He made 29 QPR appearances in three and a half years.
Is it the players’ fault they were always injured, or brought to our club behind the manager’s back? No. Is it their fault that they were paid money far and beyond what they were actually worth? No. And is it their fault that our club offered them contracts of ridiculous, unprecedented length? No. But you’ll excuse me if I’m not rushing onto their Twitter accounts, as some have done, to thank them for “everything they’ve done” and their “years of service” won’t you?
Somebody asked what kind of supporter delighting in the release of players made me. Let me tell you: it makes me a supporter who’s been paying for match and train tickets for the last four and a half years to see these four players (or more often and more to the point not see them at all) and is bloody sick of it.
Only in football, and only at QPR, would those four individuals have been allowed to earn what they’ve earned for as long as they have done for the return they’ve been able to offer. Today is a great day for the club, and the mistakes Rangers made with these four must never, ever be repeated.
Few players are more deserving of a new contract offer than Clint Hill, who has been offered the chance to extend his stay at Loftus Road by 12 months. Hill may yet refuse, with Leeds leading a host of interested Championship clubs who may be willing to give him two years, but it’s right that he’s been made an offer by QPR after an outstanding end to the season.
Neil Warnock picked Hill at left back more often than not, and rightly deduced after promotion that he wouldn’t cope well there in the Premiership. Warnock brought in Armand Traore, loaned Hill out to Nottingham Forest, and that looked like being that. What Warnock had failed to realise was that in amongst Fitz Hall, Danny Gabbidon, Anton Ferdinand and Bruno bloody Perone, Clint Hill was actually the best centre half we had. Not only that but he was a leader, a talker and a captain who marshalled a defence that had failed to keep a clean sheet in 23 matches into three shut outs from the final six games. Hill won the Player of the Year award from both supporters and players and richly deserved it. Having been stunned at his original signing – he’d been dreadful in previous performances against QPR for Palace – I couldn’t have been more impressed with him since he arrived here. Hill is a consummate professional and a credit to our club.
Likewise Radek Cerny who has many faults as a goalkeeper, and plenty of problems with his back as well, but has calmly backed up keepers at Loftus Road without a hint of complaint for several seasons now and will be given the chance to stay for a further year and do so again next season. The Czech stopper was awesome in pre-Christmas games with Liverpool and Man Utd when called upon last term and is worth keeping around rather than shopping for another third choice keeper who would likely be an inexperienced kid of half the ability.
Akos Buzsaky I could take or leave but he too has been offered another 12 months. He’s another who has struggled badly with serious injuries and although he’s shown up well in several games this season they were all against sides in rotten form at the time: Everton, Swansea and Wigan. Buzsaky is unlikely to start next season and, as with Cerny, is probably only worth a one year deal because finding a player of similar experience and ability willing to come into the club merely as cover for others would be hard work and expensive. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned us down and went elsewhere to be honest. Having seen him pre-injury carving up the Championship I’d dearly love to think a glorious return to form awaits, and knowing our luck it will come in the colours of somebody else, but sadly I don’t think he has it in him. Useful to have around, but out of his depth against the better teams in the division.
This leaves only Kieron Dyer, who has understandably devoured the shock one year contract he’s been offered like a starving man would a meat feast pizza. Dyer is no doubt aware that no other club in the world would be stupid enough to take him on, and he’s probably as surprised as the rest of us that QPR want him to stick around after a 2011/12 season in which he was on his feet and on the field for a grand total of four minutes. He was stretchered off in that game against Bolton with what was initially diagnosed as a bruised foot, and hasn’t played since – nine months and counting.
Theories abound. Personally I wonder whether he’d been promised a contract extension if the club stayed in the league and he’s held them to that. Others have suggested he has some scandalous pictures of somebody somewhere or is on a deal where he only gets paid if he plays. The official line from the club today praised his attitude, commitment and influence on the younger players. Seemingly he’s matured since the days when his sex video, filmed by a friend and featuring the whispered line “what, what’s wrong with you now?” could readily be found online.
Fun facts to trouble your colleagues with tomorrow: Kieron Dyer has started just 17 matches in the last five years, and finished only one of those; the Loftus Road squirrel, the Blackburn chicken, and the Anfield cat were all on the field longer than him during the 2011/12 season; the West Ham accounts revealed that he cost the club £406,666 per appearance during his four year spell at Upton Park. My favourite line about repeating the same actions and expecting different results being the definition of insanity would seem to apply here.
Mark Hughes knows the player better than any of us, and sees him around the training ground every day so if Hughes believes he’s worth keeping around we must trust him on that. But by God this looks a strange decision at face value.
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Pictures – Action Images