Ask QPR fans prior to deadline day what the team needed most and ‘more central midfielders’ wouldn’t have been high on the list. So what’s the thinking behind the arrival of Tom Carroll and Niko Kranjcar?
Niko Kranjcar is a 29-year-old Croatian international who has worked with Harry Redknapp twice before at Portsmouth and Tottenham. Rangers agreed a season long loan deal with his present club Dynamo Kiev and forced the transfer through with ten minutes to spare on transfer deadline day last week.
Redknapp first signed Kranjcar for Pompey on deadline day in August 2006, paying Hadjuk Split £3.5m for the midfielder. While playing in his homeland Kranjcar won domestic Croatian league and cup honours with both Split and their fierce local rivals Dinamo Zagreb where he started his career as a youth team graduate in 2001. He scored on his Zagreb debut as a 16 year old and became their youngest ever captain at age 17.
He continued adding to his medal collection at Fratton Park, winning the FA Cup in his second season there, but that success came at a heavy financial cost for the club which has since seen them plummet into the bottom division of English football. Harry Redknapp, the manager who masterminded the finest period in the club’s recent history, jumped ship to Tottenham after the Wembley triumph and with Pompey struggling to pay the bills in 2009 he made another deadline day move for Kranjcar and paid £2.5m to take him to White Hart Lane.
He made 32 appearances in his first season in North London but found first team opportunities limited after that. In all he made 42 starts and 30 substitute appearances before he moved to Kiev in June last year. The fee was anywhere between £2m and £7m depending on which reports you believe.
He has represented Croatia at every level from Under 16s up to the seniors and has 79 senior caps and 15 goals to his name to date. Kranjcar scored for Croatia at Wembley in a 3-2 win in the lead up to Euro 2008 which of course meant Steve McClaren’s side failed to qualify for the tournament.
Little Tom Carroll, now 21, is a product of Tottenham’s academy system, which he joined in 2008. He signed his first professional deal in the summer of 2010 and then in January 2011 moved on loan to League One side Leyton Orient. Carroll was part of the O’s team that took Arsenal to a replay in that season’s FA Cup — he made his professional footballing debut in the first game.
He made nine starts and four sub appearances for Orient that season, and followed it up with a similar, but less successful, spell on loan at Championship side Derby for the second half of the 2011/12 season. At Spurs his appearances have been restricted mainly to the Europa League where he has nine starts and two sub appearances as opposed to two starts and ten sub appearances in the domestic competitions.
Benoit Assou Ekotto is a Cameroon international left back who spent ten years working his way through the junior ranks at French side RC Lens before making his debut in a 1-0 league win against Paris SG, aged 20, in 2003/04. He became a regular in the team after that, winning the Intertoto Cup in 2005 before moving to Spurs for £4m in 2006.
He struggled for a regular run of games at White Hart Lane initially. Partly this was down to a quick change of managers from Martin Jol (who liked him) to Juande Ramos (who didn’t) and then Harry Redknapp (who did). But he also suffered badly with injuries and sat out almost the entire 2007/08 campaign. Having become a regular under Redknapp he also broke into the Cameroon side regularly and, now aged 29, he has 18 caps to his name.
He has 198 starts and 13 sub appearances to his name at Spurs and will wear squad number 39. Kranjcar will wear 19 and Carroll the club’s famous number 10.
Niko’s a crowd pleaser — he gets people off their seats. He’s a top player and someone who will add great quality to the squad. He can play in a variety of positions — off the front-man, out wide on either side — and he’s always a threat. He gets at players and makes things happen.
"Benoit, for me, is one of the best left backs in the Premier League, so I’m delighted we’ve been able to bring him here.I really think he’s top class. He played for me every week at Tottenham and never let me down once. He’s a great lad and will add great quality to the squad.
"Tom’s a fantastic signing for us on loan. He’s a player I fully expect to go to the very top of the game — he’s a future England international. I played him at Spurs in Europe and he was fantastic for me. He’s got all the attributes to be a top, top player. He can pass, he can create, he can score goals — he’s a fantastic player and I’m confident he’ll flourish here for us.” - Harry Redknapp
"Once I heard QPR were interested and I spoke to Harry, I knew Loftus Road would be the best place for me to play this season. I think at this stage of my career, it’s all about getting experience and playing in as many matches as possible. I just want to enjoy my football and when you look at the QPR squad and the start the lads have made to the season, there’s nothing in my mind that says we can’t compete to go straight back up.” - Tom Carroll
Harry has always brought the best out of me as a player. I played for him in two separate spells in England, and I am delighted to be linking up with him again, this time at QPR.The Championship is a new experience for me but it is a challenge I’m excited about. I just want to play games and help QPR get promotion back to the Premier League.” - Niko Kranjcar
"It is fantastic to be linking up with Harry again. I enjoyed my best form at Spurs under him and am looking forward to doing my best for QPR.I know the way Harry likes his sides to play, and it is a style that suits me which is why I am excited about this opportunity. QPR have made a great start and I can’t wait to help them build on that during my time here.” - Benoit Assou Ekotto
It’s difficult to tell when Harry Redknapp is happy. His face doesn’t lend itself to the emotion well and a well-earned reputation for not being able to lie straight in bed mean few believe what he says when he speaks.
One would assume he’s reasonably happy at the moment. Back in May he was facing a summer of trying to shift a large group of feckless millionaires, not performing well enough to attract interest from other clubs and with no financial incentive to do anything other than sit tight at QPR and keep picking the money up. Redknapp would be fighting his way through rainforest armed only with a penknife, we assumed.
The reality has been somewhat different. Redknapp has in fact been like a farmer atop a mighty combine harvester, scything his way through a dry corn field. In all, 23 players have left Loftus Road this summer and only Julio Cesar and Samba Diakite remain of those the bank manager would probably like to have seen moved on. Not only that, but nine new players have come in and QPR have a team capable of winning four and drawing one of their opening five league games from a very tough looking August fixture list. Even the harshest critics of Redknapp and Tony Fernandes must doff their caps to them for their efforts this summer — although of course Fernandes must still shoulder responsibility for the hurricane of piss that caused the problems in the first place.
Ask the QPR fans what the team currently lacks and they’d probably say another centre back, where Rangers are currently totally reliant on the fitness and form of Nedum Onuoha, and another centre forward, where Andy Johnson and Charlie Austin have only children and the hapless Bobby Zamora available as cover.
But QPR are grinding out results at the moment. They’re staying in arm wrestles and relying on a moment of brilliance, a mistake or a set piece to win a scrappy game by a single goal. They’ve neither dominated nor been dominated in any of their league matches so far and could just as easily have no wins at all as four. They’ve been dull to watch, and the difference when a naturally quick and creative player like Junior Hoilett has been fit and on the ball has been obvious.
And that’s never been Harry Redknapp’s way at all. This is the manager who once paired Paolo Di Canio and Paulo Wanchope in attack at West Ham. More recently he was in charge of a Tottenham team that, playing a 4-2-3-1 system with Luka Modric at its heart, put in the outstanding opposition performance of QPR’s ill-fated two year stay in the top flight. Tottenham were so good that afternoon at White Hart Lane that Rangers had to be at their absolute best just to hang onto their coat tails and only lose the match 3-1. Harry’s tone after Leeds was one of a satisfied man, rather than an ecstatic one which is what he deserves to be after a super summer of wheeling and dealing. Winning QPR may be, but not in any kind of style that Redknapp has ever endorsed.
Which is probably why, on deadline day, Redknapp went out and bought two more central midfielders despite Rangers appearing to be stocked better there than anywhere else on the pitch. The significant achievement of getting left back Benoit Assout Ekotto to drop down a division on loan does at least alleviate some of the pressure on the central defenders, because it frees up Clint Hill to move back inside and compete with Onuoha and Richard Dunne for places, but it’s the arrival of Niko Kranjcar and, in particular, Little Tom Carroll that betrays Redknapp’s true feelings about what he has at his disposal and what he wants to do with the team. He already has Joey Barton, Karl Henry, Ale Faurlin, Jermaine Jenas, Samba Diakite and Gary O’Neil at his disposal as senior, experienced central midfielders, but the team has been more bump and grind than waltz and foxtrot and so two more cultured passers of the ball have been added.
Carroll has been at this level before and not done well. He signed on loan for Derby 18 months ago and, after Nigel Clough rejigged a midfield that was winning games at the time to accommodate him, the Rams immediately went into a freefall with five defeats and a draw from their next six games. The Derby fans said Carroll, whose build and appearance make him look more Operation Yewtree victim than professional footballer, struggled with the pace and physicality of it all.
QPR fans shouldn’t be overly worried. The Derby side he played in is vastly inferior to the current QPR starting 11, and Clough rather shoehorned him into the centre of the team by moving Craig Bryson to right wing thereby unbalancing the midfield. Redknapp has worked with Carroll before and knows his game, whereas Clough hadn’t and didn’t. And Carroll only had a dozen appearances on loan at Leyton Orient to his name prior to the spell at Pride Park whereas now he’s 18 months older and has looked very decent indeed playing for Spurs in Europe and the England Under 21s.
Carroll is the kind of player, physically, that the Spanish treasure and the English usually bomb out in favour of a less-talented, more athletic boy, but his eye for a pass is exceptional and his ability to move the ball incisively between the straight lines of the average Championship team could see him star in a more adventurous QPR set up.
Kranjcar we know all about — a remarkable signing for a Championship side to pull off - and the arrival of the pair, and QPR’s apparent willingness to allow Andy Johnson to leave on the final day of the transfer window, suggests that a five man midfield set up is probably the way Redknapp sees his team lining up in the coming weeks, probably in a 4231 set up. Karl Henry can sit deepest, Matt Phillips and Junior Hoilett can play either side of a main striker, and Rangers now have a whole host of options with Carroll, Kranjcar and Joey Barton at the head of the queue for the remaining spots.
Redknapp added weight to the theory by leaning out of his car window on Monday night and saying "we’ll play through Tom” before handing him the number ten shirt. You can’t do that in a 442 and Redknapp knows it. He’s rightly focused on functionality, solidity and getting points on the board during a time of great upheaval so far, and while you might say if it aint broke don’t fix it I think we will see a much more attacking, attractive, fluid, flowing ethos in the weeks to come.
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Pictures — Action Images