Right sort — preview

As QPR and Reaing face off on Sunday, LFW ponders why neither is running away with the league as predicted, and how the arrival of Ravel Morrsion might galvanise/destroy QPR during the remaining weeks.

Queens Park Rangers (3rd) v Reading (6th)

Old First Division, Old Old Second Division >>> Sunday February 16, 2014 >>> Kick Off 15.30! >>> Loftus Road, London , W12 >>> Live on Sky Sports 1

Sky Sports can be fingered (not like that) for many ills of the modern sport, and one of them is certainly the explosion in importance and coverage of the post-match press conference. There they sit, or stand, under contractual obligation — the managers of our various football teams - proffering waffley nonsense for the sole purpose of stocking the schedules of Sky Sports News.

After all, if they come out and criticise the referee they get fined, if they come out and criticise an opposition manager or player it'll be plastered across the papers and television for days and built up into what we're obliged to call a "war of words" in much the same way The Day Today used to declare an actual war, in fact if they come out and say anything of any interest whatsoever it makes headlines — so they don't. They trot out a load of bland platitudes — Paul Lambert an absolute master — or they make up a load of shit they don't actually believe themselves — which we're told we must call "mind games".

We now also get a pre-match press conference, which is of little use other than to hear the team news — which, again, isn't often given truthfully for fear of tipping the opposition off — and is almost always taken over by whichever goon Sky have sent along to ask their question of the day, leaving supporters of Aston Villa, QPR, Southampton and Newcastle wondering why their manager is spending five minutes of his pre-match briefing talking about Gareth Bale, diving in football, flooding in Somerset or the ever-increasing cost of renting a property in London. The answer is so Sky can cut five of the less mundane quotes together and fill another minute and thirty seconds of airtime while they wait for transfer deadline day to come around again so Jim White can re-appear with his rough glove.

But clearly, as ever, I'm on my own in thinking this is all a gigantic irrelevance because the whole thing is spreading like venereal disease. We now get pre-match interviews in the tunnel before the live televised matches — that's football players talking about a football match that hasn't taken place. Last week, before Liverpool 's demolition of Arsenal, home goalkeeper Simon Mignolet offered us this cutting insight into the mood in the Anfield dressing room: "Every game at home against a top four team is very important for us. We’re looking to get the three points, we’re playing at home as I said, and hopefully we can get a good result."

Who is listening to this? It's your fault it's happening. Stop it.

At QPR, with Harry Redknapp in charge, it's a particularly pointless exercise. Harry's economy with the truth is legendary and his conferences these days divide neatly between him saying what a super lad all the super lads are and how they haven't been a minute's bovver, and applying pressure to the QPR board to let him sign some more players, because despite not being a "fucking wheeler dealer" Harry does like to sign a player or six.

And yet still people still tune in and read things into what he's saying and panic if he sounds a bit down in the mouth after a 1-0 defeat at Derby with three hours on the M1 in the middle of the night stretching out ahead of him and so on and so forth.

The stock you can place in anything Harry Redknapp says while slurping his tea in front of the national media can be summed up nicely by the imminent arrival of West Ham's Ravel Morrison on loan — a deal he does seem confident of forcing through early next week.

Last summer, after the disastrous 2012/13 campaign in which QPR lumbered themselves with a vast collection of ageing, over-paid, mercenaries who might have made a half decent Premier League team in about 2004, and then wondered why they performed like ageing, over-paid, mercenaries who might have made a decent Premier League team in about 2004, a PR offensive was required. The QPR fans actively disliked their own playing squad, and those season tickets weren't exactly going to shift like hot cakes while the likes of Jose Bosingwa and Ji-Sung Park were still mooching around thieving an amazing living for a pathetic return.

Deliberately or otherwise Redknapp, and chairman Tony Fernandes, coined this "right sort" phrase which is now brought up intermittently by people like me who need to find something to write about once a week to judge the signings QPR make. And for a while it seemed like more than a PR ploy — Richard Dunne, Karl Henry, Gary O'Neil and others arrived. Good, solid pros, who know the game and the division and will sit on the bloody bench for a home match with Fulham if they're asked to.

Charlie Austin and Danny Simpson followed, which put Rangers on slightly dodgier ground given Austin's previous trial for assault after an unsavoury incident in a nightclub toilet and Simpson's ongoing taste for the trappings of big cities, hanging out the back of scummy smoke-riddled X Factor judges, and chasing mobile phone thieves around the place with an iron bar. But nobody can argue with either player's effort or commitment to QPR this season — prior to their nasty injuries in January they were right up there in the early Player of the Year voting.

But things have gone slightly awry as time has dragged on and injuries have mounted. Yossi Benayoun has arrived — ticking every single ageing, overpaid, nothing to prove, ex-Chelsea, final pay day box that Jose Bosingwa did with, so far, almost identical results. Rangers have accumulated seven loan players in a division where you can only pick five in a matchday squad and are apparently about to add a eighth which would mean that every week three of Niko Kranjcar, Little Tom Carroll, Ravel Morrison, Will Keane, Mobido Maiga, Kevin Doyle, Benoit Assou-Ekotto and the fat Brazilian will have to sit in the stand. Keane, in particular, must be fearing a total waste of six months of his career at Loftus Road .

In QPR's defence, however much money you have to spend no team is going to cope well with the long term injury of its four best players. Removing Simpson, Austin, Matt Phillips and Ale Faurlin from the QPR team for a prolonged period of time takes away its youth, its speed, its creativity and its goals. What's left behind is what we saw at Derby on Monday — the steady, solid, ageing, slow ballast which was meant to sit around the likes of Faurlin, Phillips and Austin and provide a stage on which they can perform. Teams with fewer resources would have to call on youths and reserves, and reflect on their tough luck. QPR simply go out and sign more players, so it's hard to feel sorry for them, but they've had a tough break with all of this.

But Ravel Morrison's apparent imminent arrival shines harsh light on not only the "right sort" rhetoric, but also Tony Fernandes' previous assertion that it's not financially imperative for QPR to return to the Premier League at the first attempt and they can potentially stay at this level for a couple of years and do the rebuilding that last season so clearly showed they require. If it was really true, then there wouldn't be eight loan signings at Loftus Road right now.

Ravel Morrison is a player even Alex Ferguson couldn't control. A player who, at 18, was found guilty of intimidating the witness in a mugging case. Sold by Man Utd for a fraction of his true worth because they couldn't stand to have him around any more and now, despite West Ham's lack of firepower and his impressive performances for them earlier this season, surplus to requirements at Upton Park as well because of a lousy attitude.

He comes with more rules than your standard Mogwai: don't feed him after midnight, don't get him wet, don't let him out into the city in a group of five or more people, don't let him have a sword, keep him away from fire, don't let him eat the blue smarties…

Hammers boss Sam Allardyce said this week: "Ravel is still complaining about the problem that's he had from before Christmas - that he's got a rumbling groin problem. He says he feels it occasionally. Instead of gritting your teeth and getting on with it... he's not the type. Lots of players throughout the country will be playing with a similar type of injury that the medical team say 'you can carry on, it's not a problem'."

It's a sign of desperation. Morrison has every single thing wrong with him that Harry Redknapp so hated about Adel Taarabt, and a whole load more criminal baggage besides, but whereas Redknapp had no time for Adel, now he's willing to take a chance with Ravel. Potentially an inspired move, if he can display his undoubted footballing talent and add creativity and goals to a QPR team that's really going to struggle without Phillips and Austin, but potentially a disaster waiting to happen.

Either way it's a final, definitive sign that you shouldn't pay any attention to a damn thing anybody in football says in press conferences ever again.

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