Neil Warnock didn’t try to hide his disappointment on Wednesday when QPR were beaten to the signature of Ipswich Town attacker Jon Walters by Stoke City. But is it really bad news?
Right to be disappointed?
One thing that may have become apparent since the move to the new look site is that LoftforWords is now very much a nocturnal operation. The copy is written, and largely posted, at night so as not to interfere with my new job during the day. Sleep, as I have said before, is for the weak.
As a consequence of this the opinion pieces that appear after every transfer in and out of Loftus Road are often written well in advance of the signing, at night, and simply posted up when news reaches LFW towers that the player is definitely coming. Sometimes that’s after the official site – Paddy Kenny – and sometimes it’s well before – Bradley Orr.
The advantage of this is we have plenty of details about new signings ready to go online the moment the player signs, rather than simply sticking up a ‘more follows’ message and scrabbling round trying to put something together while at work or enjoying some quality family time. The disadvantage of this is occasionally a piece is written and never used. The ‘Darren Ambrose signs’ article remains forlornly saved in the LFW archive, probably never to see the light of day.
LFW has good connections at Ipswich Town. My former girlfriend is a season ticket holder there, one of my best mate’s from uni was a season ticket holder there, the Fans Network is run by an Ipswich Town fanzine editor and the TWTD website editor is in regular touch with bits of news and queries about QPR related stories. On Saturday the latter got in touch to say Roy Keane had said another Championship side had come in for Jon Walters and he believed it to be QPR. I laughed him off, saying we’d never pay the £3m asking price in a month of Sundays, and ignored him, while still putting a hypothetical article together on the off chance. Rather than see another hour of work sit in the archive indefinitely, what follows is a quick rework.
As it transpires it seems QPR were indeed well in the hunt for Walters, indeed it appears the former Blackburn trainee was Neil Warnock’s much talked about “number one choice” that he stated again after the Sheffield United win he was confident of landing this week. Warnock is understandably disappointed that he hasn’t signed Walters, although as he wanted to play in the Premiership and return to his native north west it’s difficult to see how QPR could ever have thought they stood a chance of beating Stoke to his signature, and rightly points out that as he can play wide right or up front, Walters would have plugged two holes in the QPR dam at once.
Should we, the fans, be too downhearted not to see Walters pulling on the blue and white hoops this Saturday though? To be honest, with Stoke paying a fee that could rise as high as £3.3m, I’m quite relieved.
Walters’ early career was unremarkable. He scored freely for Blackburn’s youth sides but never made the grade at Ewood Park and moved to Lancashire neighbours Bolton in 2001. He spent three years at the Reebok but only made one start and five substitute appearances in that time. The majority of his action while at Bolton came in various loan spells at Hull, where he scored five goals in 11 games, Crewe and Barnsley where he failed to score in 12 outings. Hull, then in League One, saw enough to spend £50,000 on him but the majority off his football there came from the bench – 30 sub appearances, 11 starts, three goals. Again he spent time out on loan, this time at Scunthorpe, before signing for bottom division Wrexham in 2005 and Chester in 2006.
It was something of a surprise when Jim Magilton paid £150,000 to take Walters to Portman Road in January 2007. Walters himself admitted he thought the deal was to join League One side Scunthorpe where he had played on loan and he couldn’t believe it was actually Ipswich interested. He played the best football of his career at Portman Road, bagging 32 goals in 134 starts and 14 sub appearances over the last three years. The 26-year-old was the subject of a protracted transfer saga last summer when Stoke City tried, and failed, to sign him and that has been repeated this year with Walters keen to move but Stoke unwilling to meet Town’s asking price.
So would his signing for £3m have been a statement of intent, or a foolish waste of money? I have to say I’m wavering towards the latter.
It’s a criticism often levelled at the QPR board, both under Flavio Briatore and increasingly now under Bhatia and Mittal, that they won’t get the cheque book out. “Spend some money” and “show some intent” are phrases often trotted out on the various QPR message boards. There seems to be two distinct vocal parties when it comes to QPR’s transfer policy – those in the national media who assume with such wealthy owners the big spunking of millions on big name players may only be days away, and those among our support base who believe the board are being tight with their money.
The truth lies somewhere in between. Our board has not been tight with its money, it has just spent it in foolish ways. The club’s mind numbingly stupid, unfathomable and completely pointless policy of announcing every deal as an “undisclosed fee” leaves them open to criticism from season ticket holders who say they’re not spending enough on the team. They are. Paddy Kenny cost £750k, Bradley Orr £500k, Matt Connolly £1m, Hogan Ephraim somewhere between £500k and £1m, Kaspars Gorkss £250k, Damien Delaney £750k, Ali Faurlin a high six figure amount that could potentially rise to £3m, Mikele Leigertwood £900k, Adel Taarabt £600k rising to £1m. These are not small transfer fees for a Championship club that gets gates of 12,000 at home games and was losing £4m a year on its old transfer and wage bills. As far as I can see only Middlesbrough spent more than us in the Championship this summer.
The wages QPR are paying are ridiculous. The story about Patrick Agyemang arriving from Preston looking for a two year deal on £6,000 a week and walking away with a four year deal for £12,000 has done the rounds. Agyemang and Vine, neither involved at all under Neil Warnock, command around £30,000 a week in wages between them – the amount that Jason Roberts wanted to move from Blackburn. Jobi McAnuff was reportedly offered £13,000 a week here, Wayne Routledge was reportedly on nearly £20,000 a week, Mikele Leigertwood £10,000 a week. All these figures are hear say and press reports, and therefore likely to be exaggerated, but not by much. Preston said our deal for Agyemang “blew them out of the water”, Blackpool said we had turned Gorkss’ head with a big contract offer, Kenny moved because QPR offered him substantially more money than Sheff Utd.
To say the QPR board since the takeover has not spent money is wholly wrong, to say they have spent it badly is absolutely right. While not shying away from paying these wages and transfer fees QPR have consistently failed to address the lack of a goal scoring striker that was a problem when Flavio Briatore arrived and remains a problem today. We won’t pay Jason Roberts £30,000 a week but we’re happy to pay it to Vine and Agyemang. We’ll accumulate mediocre Championship players for fees of between half a million and a million pounds, but we won’t push the boat out and pay £4m for Chopra. We won’t pay £2m for Chris Gunter when Gary Borrowdale is available for £300,000. It’s false economy and it has cost us more in the long run.
To suddenly depart from all of this and actually spend big money on one player who, as far as I can see, is no better than what we already have in his position would have struck me as the club once again throwing good money after bad. Jon Walters is an attacking midfielder. He’s not a good enough finisher or a prolific enough goal scorer to be classed as a main striker, that we desperately need, and he’s not really quick or skilful enough to play as a winger. He’s would have joined Hogan Ephraim, Akos Buzsaky, Lee Cook, Adel Taarabt and Jamie Mackie in competing for those three spots behind Helguson and Leon Clarke. It’s a position we have an abundance of players for.
Walters is not bad, but he’s not a lot more than that. He’s a steady Championship footballer - not better than Buzsaky, certainly not better than Taarabt. Had we bought him for the usual high six figure sum then I may say it’s a good bit of business, but at £3m as has been reported it seems ludicrous to me. I’m very surprised that Stoke have gone for him because I’ve never seen anything in him to suggest he’s a Premiership player.
He has done well at Ipswich, is one of their better players, and won the club’s player of the year award in 2009. But he is a bit of a darling of their fans. You won’t find a QPR fan saying a bad thing about Lee Cook when in reality he hasn’t been fit or in any kind of form for the thick end of four years now. In the same way I remember watching Ipswich lose at Hull City a few seasons ago. At that time Gary Roberts (now Huddersfield) was the target of choice for Town’s boo boys and that day he got dog’s abuse from the away end and a big cheer went up when he was taken off midway through the second half. Roberts had a mediocre game that afternoon, he tried things that came off and things that didn’t, but he tried and kept trying. Walters on the other hand did nothing on the opposite wing; he saw nothing of the ball, didn’t go looking for it and basically hid on an afternoon when the Hull fans were giving him some grief as a former player and Ipswich were playing badly. Nobody said a word against Walters and some of the Town fans around me got quite agitated when I pointed out that Walters had done far less for their cause on the day than Roberts.
Personally, had he signed, I think the QPR fans would very quickly have been left wondering what all the fuss is about. However having said that I must repeat the time honoured LFW line that we wanted a manager in total charge who would be allowed to sign his players and backed by the board and Warnock clearly disagrees with my assessment and wanted the player very badly, so we should be disappointed for him on that score. I only hope that the money is available for whoever the second choice is – and that it’s a real, genuine, quality striker.
Local football for local people
A few weeks back LFW published an appeal from Harrow Borough manager Dave Howell for fans to go along to the pre-season friendly fixture between his side and the QPR second string. Harrow are run on a shoestring budget and the money coming in from that friendly, and one a week later against Birmingham, is vital to their survival. Thankfully almost one thousand people clicked through the turnstiles that night bringing the club a handy few thousand quid at the same time.
But the pressure for Harrow, and the other non-league clubs that nestle among communities across the country, does not simply end with a couple of decent friendly gates. These clubs need people’s support to continue – and in times where people are watching what money goes out each week, and have plenty of football on the television to choose from, it’s a difficult game to play.
To try and increase attendance at non-league grounds up and down the country Saturday September 4 has been designated National Non-League Day. With England playing Bulgaria on the Friday night and the Premiership and Championship cancelled that weekend for the internationals thousands of football fans up and down the land will be short of a live game that Saturday.
Sadly for Harrow, they are away at Cray Wanderers so will not benefit, but ever keen to get new fans through the doors they are discounting tickets for two other matches either side of the Saturday.
So, on Bank Holiday Monday, August 30, when Harrow play Hendon at 3pm, and then on Tuesday, September 7, for the home game against Lowestoft at 7.45pm adults can get in for just a fiver with a QPR, or any other Football League, season ticket. Accompanied children can go in for a quid.
The R’s fans that did go to the friendly match between the two sides reported a fine atmosphere and set up with club house that could make for a decent, and cheap, Saturday afternoon out at some proper football. LFW will continue to shamelessly plug this event over the next week or so but please, if you can, get down and support one of our local clubs.