Chris Ramsey has today been appointed the permanent head coach of QPR on a three year contract. LFW weighs up the pros and cons of Les Ferdinand’s faith in the 53-year-old.
It seems a little rich of Liverpool to be complaining about the greed, lack of loyalty and poor motivations of Raheem Sterling as he courts a move to one of Europe's Champions League regulars, with all the riches and vagina that would provide him with.
After all it was Liverpool who shouldered Fulham and Man City out of the way and took Sterling from QPR's academy five years ago. Sterling, a Jamaican immigrant, had behavioural problems and had spent time in a special school when QPR got hold of him, provided structure in his life, professionally coached his supreme natural ability and offered to make him the youngest first team player in the club's history. But Liverpool could offer big promises, bigger money and even bigger watches and so off he went. That's how football in this country works.
That Liverpool are complaining that somebody else is offering even bigger promises, money and watches and they're potentially going to lose him shows a staggering lack of self awareness. But then football people can be a bit one-eyed and partisan at times, it kind of comes with the territory.
Take the QPR fans who, rightly, criticised Harry Redknapp for steadfastly refusing to countenance even a substitute appearance for any of the club's younger players during two years of reckless spending at Loftus Road. Redknapp would rather pick right back Luke Young at centre half for his first senior appearance in two years than give the place to the youth team centre back. Rather sign Oguchi Onyewu, a US international of 70 caps standing, to sit on the bench instead of Max Ehmer. It's the reason QPR managed to spend £108m during their last 12 months in the Championship and he was rightly pilloried for it.
When Chris Ramsey came in he immediately made it clear that youth players would be considered if they were good enough, if they trained well enough and if their attitude was right. Sure enough, when injuries struck at right back, Darnell Furlong was selected at Hull and performed admirably. But when Furlong was subsequently given a tough time by first Alexis Sanchez and then Yannick Bolasie — two finer wingers you'd struggle to find in the Premier League — Ramsey was criticised for it. "Well I wouldn't have picked him in that game" the argument went, as people suggested Karl Henry could have played there instead. Imagine the grief Redknapp would have been given for selecting Karl Henry at right back ahead of younger players who are actually naturals in that position.
You can't have your cake and eat it. It makes you look like Richard Littlejohn, who freely admits his job is to "sit at the back and throw bottles."
So it's difficult to be too critical of today's news that Chris Ramsey, as expected, has been made the permanent head coach at QPR on a three year contract. After all, it's clearly part of a plan, and isn't that what we've been begging the club to have for sometime? A plan? Haven't we banged on about the lack of a football person on the board? The lack of any QPR people, who know and understand the club, working at a high level at Loftus Road? Ramsey is Les Ferdinand's man, and this is Les Ferdinand's plan.
What QPR haven't done is improve players. Quite the opposite in fact — Stephen Caulker, Jordon Mutch, Junior Hoilett and others all come here and get considerably worse than they ever were before. The reaction to this is usually to give up and try to sign somebody to replace them.
Matt Phillips was nearly a prime example of this, and stands as a beacon in Ramsey's corner. Phillips was signed, at considerable expense, not even two years ago from Blackpool and spent the first 18 months here struggling with fitness, being bumped around the first team and reserves, playing in a variety of positions including as centre forward at Spurs back in August and generally impressing nobody. In January Harry Redknapp wanted to sell him, at a loss, to Wigan in order to tempt them to let him have Callum McManaman.
Through selecting him regularly, in his correct position, and working with him on aspects of his game, Chris Ramsey has turned Phillips around inside six months. Now he's a sought after Premier League winger, with more assists in the second half of the season than anybody else in Europe. QPR have needed somebody who's willing to, and capable of, improving what they have for sometime, not somebody tossing money around looking for quick fixes like some Fantasy Football manager. Given the potential financial constraints and transfer embargoes that may be inflicted on Rangers for next season, Ramsey's coaching ability has already shone through and could be invaluable.
2 - Ramsey has already spoken about his desire to play an attractive style of football, on the front foot, and trying to win games. A blessed relief from the ultra-defensive, painfully slow teams Harry Redknapp put together here where a draw away from home was always a miracle and unless Charlie Austin scored a goal, nobody did.
There has been little evidence of this from Ramsey so far, save for one glorious Easter weekend in Birmingham, but he inherited that team Redknapp left behind — one with no options at full back thanks to the previous manager's foolish summer spent planning to play a back three, no options at all at left wing and only one fully fit centre forward.
Nevertheless, Ramsey got QPR scoring from sources other than Austin — Joey Barton, Clint Hill, Phillips, Leroy Fer, Eduardo Vargas, Sandro all notched during his tenure.
And while QPR were relegated because they weren't good enough, it would have been interesting to see how much more of a fight they would have made of it had Leroy Fer stayed fit. The role he played at Sunderland was the first time QPR had used him correctly, and resulted in a win, a goal and a man of the match performance. Had Fer improved in the same manner as Phillips, with Austin ahead of him, would QPR have been capable of doing a Leicester? All optimistic hypotheticals of course, but Ramsey certainly showed more attacking inclination than Redknapp ever did here.
3 - Ramsey and Ferdinand have spoken repeatedly about a "culture of excellence" at QPR. Players who have not kept themselves fit (Adel Taarabt), have not behaved properly (Armand Traore, Mauro Zarate) and have not trained properly (Eduardo Vargas) have not been considered for selection. While this, particularly the omission of Vargas, has weakened the team and at times, with the selection of Shaun Wright-Phillips, alienated the supporters, it has set much-needed standards in place that QPR have lacked for years and will benefit from in the long term.
In interviews with Reece Grego-Cox and Darnell Furlong to be published on this site next week, they speak about the difference it has made in training sessions right through the club to know that good behaviour, hard work and decent showings in training will result in first team chances regardless of your age, name, agent or resemblance to Niko Kranjcar.
For too long there have been factions in the QPR dressing room, the only difference between this season and 2012/13 is that Harry Redknapp couldn't help himself but leak things about Jose Bosingwa and others during the campaign, whereas this year it's been dealt with quietly and in house until the outcome of the season was known. Another tick in Ramsey's box. He and Ferdinand already know the problems here and seem keen to fix them, a new manager may have taken a further six months to figure it all out.
4 - Few of the alternatives mentioned excited too much, nor offered any guarantees. There isn't a queue round the block of wonderful managers waiting to come into QPR. Mark Warburton has performed excellently at Brentford, but Brentford are a very soundly run club with a lot of stability — Uwe Rosler did well at Brentford and then got found out at Wigan. Would Warburton do as well when plunged into the QPR circus? Would he have worked with Ferdinand or would we have had to tear it all up again?
Likewise Paul Clement, who has a wonderful coaching CV but has been used to working with the best players in the world at some of the biggest clubs in the world with all the money, facilities and options that brings. A long slog in the Championship, at a club with no infrastructure, with a team that needs rebuilding, in a division he has no experience of, would have been a hell of a gamble. And while his background and surname make him an exciting idea, as local journo Dave McIntyre says it's a bit like giving long-serving Man Utd assistant manager Mike Phelan the job, and there wouldn't be nearly as much clamour for that were it suggested.
5 - Ramsey may not have had a top managerial position in England before, but his CV is extensive and eclectic. He's coached England at Under 20 level and won leagues in America. He'll have a knowledge, through his work with England and the academy at Spurs, of the best young talent available and QPR are going into a league where the ability to pick up somebody like Patrick Bamford (as an example from this season) can be the difference between midtable and playoffs, playoffs and automatic promotion. He strikes me as a guy who wants to scout players and coach them, rather than collect whatever tumbles out the back of Willie Mackay's Range Rover at the end of transfer deadline day.
This appointing managers from a shortlist of one technique has so far lumbered us with Mark Hughes, who Fernandes says interviewed him rather than the other way around, and Harry Redknapp, who Fernandes says he was "star struck" by. The result was them both being allowed to dictate their terms to the club, which in Redknapp's case was always another signing, usually an old, expensive one, and in Hughes' was the appointment of Mike Rigg and his associated hangers on into the backroom and youth set up which set the club back years.
The value of an interview process can be seen in the recovery job Ian Holloway did here, restoring pride in the club and building a team full of passion and ability that everybody in W12 loved to watch. Holloway was well behind Dave Bassett and Steve Bruce in the betting and pecking order when Gerry Francis first left, but interviewed well.
If Chris Ramsey is the best man for the job, he'd have nothing to fear from such a process because he'd get the job. By not having one, it could increase the perception that he's simply got the job because he's Les Ferdinand's mate, and whether that's true or not you can bet it will be a stick used to beat him with next season if things don't go well. Given how tough next season is shaping up to be, the last thing Ramsey needs is more sticks for critics to arm themselves with. If anything, yet another coronation rather than an appointment at Loftus Road has made his job more difficult than a bit of competition and due process would have done.
2 - The honeymoon period is already over. There are those willing to accept a poor second half to the season, point to the mess Ramsey inherited from Redknapp, recognise the injuries to key players such as Fer and Vargas, and give Ramsey a clean slate and the benefit of the doubt with his own players. And there are certainly those who aren't. The opinion on today's announcement has split the support base right down the middle, almost 50/50. A new manager would have enjoyed a period of grace next season which would have given him time to bed in a new set up likely to have a dozen fresh faces in the first matchday squad on August 8. Ramsey is unlikely to be given this — if results are poor in August, don't expect many to be buying into "long term plans", the blood lust will return with a vengeance.
This isn't an exciting appointment either. QPR fans have been bored for a long time now, by the monotonous football on the pitch and the lousy behaviour off it. Paul Clement, for all the faults earlier, would have been an exciting appointment with a nod to the club's history.
3 - For all Chris Ramsey's talk of attacking football and playing on the front foot, often his team selections have been anything but. He's regularly selected centre halves at full back, and not ball-playing centre backs either — ignoring the importance of full backs in the modern game where teams use them to attack as much as defend. That, in turn, has seen the team go direct to Bobby Zamora more often than not which has been dull to watch and ineffective for much of the time. The caution shown to the West Ham game, which Rangers desperately needed to win, seemed odd.
I'm quite willing to accept at the moment Ramsey is working with what he has. Redknapp's ludicrous back-three idea last summer, abandoned after two matches, meant full back was never our strongest suit because he stupidly sold Danny Simpson and brought in Mauricio Isla who is a wing back. The Leroy Fer injury further hampered Ramsey.
But there's a nagging doubt that Ramsey might be one of those managers who wants his team to get rid first and foremost, and only start to play off a big centre forward once he's pulled it out of the air. A season of watching QPR punt it long to a Bobby Zamora equivalent — Kenwynne Jones for example — against Rotherham and Swindon at home appeals as much as virulent dose of venereal disease or a Coronation Street omnibus.
Is the attacking football stuff all fan-appeasing talk? Is the discipline stuff all talk? After all, given his television interview last weekend, and conduct on Twitter on Friday, should Joey Barton not have been sent to the naughty step and deprived the chance to play against his beloved Newcastle on Saturday?
4 - Neither Chris Ramsey nor Les Ferdinand have experience of managing teams, recruiting players or running clubs in the Championship. They're both novices in that respect. They've both been in the game a long time, know QPR and have strong ideas about where they want the club to go, but the rebuilding job required almost immediately on a QPR team where more than a dozen players are about to leave is one even the most seasoned manager would struggle with — as we saw with Harry Redknapp.
5 - There's another nagging doubt that all of the things I like about Chris Ramsey — speaking well in interviews, rewarding players for hard work in training, imposing discipline, representing the club well, putting behaviour standards in place, coaching players, working on set pieces — only seem so wonderful because we've been stuck with Harry Redknapp for the last two years who didn't give a shit about any of that. Wouldn't any manager who can still actually be bothered to do his job offer this? Was Redknapp so bad, that he's made Chris Ramsey look better than he actually is?
Start praying it works.
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