The Neil Warnock/Amit Bhatia/Ishan Saksena reign at Loftus Road has made a flying start on and off the pitch, but a story in this morning’s gutter press is a concern.

A fresh start
Mark, a very good friend of mine who has been following Rangers a good deal longer than I have, travelling around to games with my dad over the decades, gave me a ring before Christmas after reading one of these columns and asked: “Don’t you get sick of writing the same old thing?” And the answer was of course, yes.

It was soul destroying to sit here week on week and write about needing stability, needing an end to the director of football system, needing an experienced manager and needing to let him get on with it. Less interference, less loans, less useless cloggers with friendly agents getting four year contracts on £18k a week, lower ticket prices, fewer cashmere sweaters, less talk of ‘Boutiques’, less talk of projects, more gunfire whenever anybody who was meant to care about our football club laughed and said they “thought it was a barbecue restaurant”, fewer useless foreign kids on loan from our chairman’s mates, fewer players forced out of the club by a bloke whose football knowledge could be summed up on the back of a postage stamp in a thick pen, no more Hull City mascots, no more pictures of Naomi fucking Campbell on the walls around the stadium. Less talk of £20 punters not having a say in their club.

Week after week after week I sat here and tapped away forlornly in the hope that one day things would change. Poor old Flav eh? What an absolute weapon that bloke is.

So having hailed the arrival of Briatore at our club initially as a great day, and with some even defending his “saving” of QPR right up to the announcement that he was stepping down as chairman when he’d clearly done nothing of the sort, QPR fans have every right to be a little cautious about the brave new era suddenly sweeping across W12. On the face of it we now have the dream ticket – the richest of the three board members, and the one that actually showed an interest in the supporters and the community side of the club right from the off, has taken charge and put a passionate, dedicated, highly competent and trusted colleague in charge of the day to day running of the place.

Amit Bhatia and Ishan Saksena have since embarked on a PR drive that has essentially consisted of taking everything I’ve moaned about on here for the last 18 months and ticking the complaints off one by one. Saksena says the supporters are the true owners of the football club and there has been talk of making tickets at Loftus Road more affordable to get it full and “rocking” again. An experienced manager has been appointed, set a budget and apparently left to it. The silly badge and mascot may be changed, fans forums could return, and all the major fans’ groups and websites have been invited to meet Bhatia and Saksena at Loftus Road on Monday as the club looks to improve its, frankly abysmal, communication with supporters. Even the team, that looked like it had never played the game before a couple of weeks ago, has started playing with a bit of heart and started to win. The R’s have taken nine points from twelve since the announcement of Briatore’s departure was made.

Nothing the re-arranged board has done so far guarantees success but by God they sure know how to make the right noises and hit all the right notes. Not a single thing that has happened in the last fortnight or so can be criticised and the atmosphere at Loftus Road on Saturday was markedly different – even before we started to pick West Brom apart.

It’s not often you get exactly what you want in life but we seem to have been presented with that at Loftus Road over the last month. Everything we’ve been asking for is now in place and whether Bhatia and Mittal are planning to throw bundles of cash at a promotion push next year, or simply run the club sensibly and try and maybe spend a bit if we get within striking distance of the play offs, it seems many supporters are just grateful that the ‘boutique’ era seems to have come and gone. To be quite honest personally I’m not actually that bothered about the Premiership, I just want to see a competitive and entertaining QPR side in this league. Something that’s pleasurable to watch at an affordable price. If Bhatia and Saksena can deliver us that I’ll love them forever.

For our part, as supporters, I’m hoping for a new era of tolerance and togetherness. I read the “rumours of big summer transfer budget” message board posts with my head in my hands. We must not, under any circumstances, repeat the mistake of two years ago when we built expectations of the 2008/09 season up to ridiculous levels, and then jumped on our own team from almost the first whistle against Barnsley. We’re there to support the team, let’s try and keep expectations in check and do just that.

Similarly I found the confirmation during the Gianni Paladini interview on Jnet Radio on Monday night that the “new striker signing, same nationality as one of our current players” teasers that are posted on the We Are The Rangers Boys message board do in fact come from Paladini himself to the owners of that site thoroughly embarrassing for him and the club, while not altogether surprising. I’m pleased he is no longer the Director of Football as our transfer policy with him in that role hasn’t worked, but if his new position is essentially meeting and greeting and “keeping people at Loftus Road happy” as he suggests then I’m pleased with that because I think, despite the temper, he is a good people person and will do well in that role. But the days of him leaking bits of information to message board owners simply has to stop right now – it does so much more harm than good in dividing the fan base, and raising false hopes, as recent abuse of the Q Block at home games shows quite clearly. Gianni, please, from now on, now more leaks to friends and message boards, no more mouthing off about managers outside the ground, think before speaking. Please.

The atmosphere against West Brom on Saturday was far, far different to that against Scunthorpe and Ipswich. Admittedly the performance was a world apart from those disasters but everybody seemed more tolerant, more supportive and more patient with the players. Mistakes were met with encouragement and shouts of ‘unlucky’, rather than tirades of abuse and booing. Please, please, please let this continue. Loftus Road has been a poisonous place for months now, not conducive to a good spectating experience or successful football team at all. Let’s make it a hostile place for visiting players rather than our own.

There were murmurings after the Plymouth game (which I did not attend) about Tamas Priskin’s performance and so far he has shown me nothing to suggest he should be in our team. But Warnock, that manager we wanted to come in and be given complete control, is picking him so please let’s just try and be as supportive and encouraging as we can. We don’t have to have a boo boy. We don’t have to have a player in the team who we all hate and have a go at. It’s not the law.

We appear to have got exactly what we wanted from a board that, like us, admits a change was clearly needed. Now let’s do our bit.

Don’t spoil it now
The general rule on the LFW message board is that if it’s in the Daily Mail, discount it immediately as a work of complete fiction. Nevertheless the right wing rag’s claim this morning that QPR could be at the front of the queue for Marlon King’s signature when he is released from prison sparked a lively debate.

Personally I think this story, the second saying similar things in recent weeks, smacks of an agent trying to get his client a club and just getting his name out there – although if the stories about King needing to remain in London under the terms of his early (does anybody serve a full term these days?) release would narrow his options somewhat if true. Either that or its newspapers with column inches to fill putting Championship standard striker together with Championship club near his home and coming up with a story that, it has to be said, included no quotes from Neil Warnock or anybody else.

If there is any truth in it, I for one would be very disappointed in the club. Neil Warnock has never been shy of giving players a second, third or fourth chance, or signing controversial characters, and having spent the last 18 months bleating on about leaving the manager alone to make his own decisions I cannot very well sit here now and say that Warnock should not be allowed to sign King should he so wish.

For those that don’t know Marlon King is currently serving an 18 month sentence for punching a woman in the face in a nightclub when she rejected his “do you know who I am” routine and didn’t immediately fall at his feet. Try Danielle Lloyd next time Marlon. Anyway King is a player with form having done time during his spell with Gillingham for nicking cars and is an all round bad egg, and not particularly wonderful player bar one great season at Watford. He has 14 previous convictions, and two prison sentences, behind him for offences ranging from driving a stolen car, criminal damage and driving without insurance through to his latest and greatest triumph.

The idea that he could soon be released and, aged 29, present a viable option for clubs in the upper reaches of the Football League bears similarities to the case of Lee Hughes who served three years for driving his car into that driven by a pensioner who he killed, fleeing the scene instead of calling an ambulance and then going into hiding for a day. Hughes can now be seen earning big money at Notts County and winding opposition fans up who like to remind him of his frankly despicable past by grinning and doing his old trademark hands in the air dance. I pray to God the widow of his victim Douglas Graham hasn’t had the pleasure of seeing what a Lee Hughes “full of remorse” looks like on the Football League Show. Does it make you cringe when you see Hughes grinning and dancing? Does it make your blood run cold? It does mine.

Now the argument goes that Hughes, and shortly King, have “served their time” and “paid their debt”. You may, with some justification, think that three years playing for a prison football team is no payment at all for taking the life of a beloved father and grandfather but if you do then you’re probably living in the wrong country - this abysmal standard of “justice” is common place in Britain today. Should we just ban Lee Hughes and Marlon King from doing anything upon their release? Should we make them collect rubbish and clean toilets for a living? Well, no. Clearly the idea that you should forbid every prisoner released, even from sentences for major crimes like King and Hughes, from ever working and earning a living again is ridiculous, unworkable and prohibitively expensive.

But for me the idea that football is ‘just another job’ which is trotted out in their cases, and in arguments about why Portsmouth players shouldn’t offer to chop ten per cent off their £50k a week salaries to help their stricken club, is completely wrong. Football isn’t a job, it’s a game and a hobby. If you’re privileged enough to play your hobby for a living, an unbelievably handsome living in many cases then you should view it as exactly that – a privilege. It’s not a job, it’s an honour. And for me when you use your status as a footballer to demand sexual attention from women and then smack them in the face when you don’t get it, or spend the wealth you get from it on fast cars that you then drive into pensioners, then you should forfeit that privilege for life.

There is a fit and proper person test for club owners (not that it’s particularly stringent, well enforced or useful as we have seen at Portsmouth) why not for footballers? Why not forbid clubs from registering players who have served time for crimes such as this?

I accept that’s never likely to happen and so it’s down to the clubs to make a stand. Oldham and then Notts County leapt at the chance to sign Hughes because he will score goals in their divisions, and I dare say King would bag us a few in the Championship fitness pending. We’re probably going to need a striker like him next season assuming we cannot keep Jay Simpson so football wise it might not be a bad option – it would certainly be a cheap one too. If Warnock wants him then we must back his judgement because we’ve been screaming for a manager that is allowed to get on with things his own way for months. However I would hope that Warnock, QPR, and every other club out there recognise that there is more to life than football. Amit Bhatia speaks very well and passionately about QPR being a part of a community – what example would it send to that community if QPR then signed a convicted woman beater simply because he might bag them a goal or two? What would father’s tell their sons when they ask who they new player is and where he came from?

I’m not going to pretend I would never go to QPR again if we did sign King, or sit on my hands and refuse to celebrate if he scored, but I do hope that our club, if it is considering this signing, decides against it and sends a clear message that being the scum of the earth is not acceptable just because you’re quite a good footballer.

Photo: Action Images

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