Another transfer window, another clutch of new additions for Sky Sports News’ new favourite club Queens Park Rangers. LFW assesses the business done at Loftus Road, and whether it can revive a seemingly doomed season.
It seems like such a short time ago that Harry Redknapp was shaking his jowls in the media room at St James’ Park, denying that QPR would be spending £7m on Newcastle’s Demba Ba, or any other player this January for that matter, and saying that as the club’s owners were nice people and had been done over by Mark Hughes and his agent friends in the past he wasn’t going to ask them to spend again. And that’s because it was a short time ago – just over a month in fact.
Redknapp is known as the journalists’ best friend because unlike many of the other Premier League bosses he always answers his phone, winds down his car window and has an opinion. Ask Harry anything you like and there he is with a seemingly honest and genuine answer. But even Sky Sports News, amidst the hyperbole and blustering self importance, must recognise that ‘Onest ‘Arry isn’t giving Gary Cotterill the time of day out of the goodness of his heart, or because he enjoys it, or even because he feels obliged to the Murdoch empire for keeping his witless son in Gucci suits so that he can say nice things about cousin Frank every Sunday.
Redknapp may play dumb when it suits him – even telling his tax avoidance trial a year ago that he could barely read and write let alone operate an off shore banking system in the name of his dog – but you’d have to pretty simple yourself to buy into the act. When Harry says he can’t see QPR spending £7m on a player it’s because he doesn’t want people to know he’s got £7m to spend, just like when he says he’s made an offer for Peter Odemwingie but it’s up to West Brom whether they want to sell or not what he really means is he’d like Odemwingie to know that the club that’s become famed for paying massive wages would like to buy him, pay him a signing on fee and play him in their first team. It’s like tapping up while hiding in plain sight. Why sneak around at the back of restaurants or relay messages through third parties when you have Sky reporters turning up at your training ground once a week for a press conference happy to throw individual names at you and ask for a response?
Redknapp has always operated like this, but it’s been hard to blame him for trying a few tricks this January given the situation QPR find themselves in. Persuading players to join the league’s bottom team has clearly been a trying experience for Redknapp, who was surely hoping that the R’s would manage to accrue more points prior to the window than they did to aid his pitch. He spent the month flying all round Europe nevertheless but found many players – Yann M’Vila and Joe Cole chief among them – reluctant to sign up for his fool’s mission.
Not Odemwingie though. Once Redknapp had gone through his “triffic lad, nice boy, good player, up to West Brom” routine the Nigerian requested a transfer, threw an almighty strop when it was rejected, took to Twitter to voice his desire to move, put out a statement accusing the Baggies of rejecting previous offers without asking him and effectively accused his club of denying him the chance to provide for his family. When all that failed he then, incredibly, drove to Loftus Road on deadline day and literally banged on the front door demanding to be let in.
West Brom said the player’s behaviour made it a point of principal in the end, but they can’t complain too loudly given that Odemwingie forced his move there in the first place in similar style. They are now lumbered with a high earner who will struggle to re-integrate himself at The Hawthorns. Redknapp said there must have been some “crossed wires”. I have my doubts.
Given all that, you could easily conclude that Rangers are best off without Odemwingie, especially as there seemed to be a suggestion that Junior Hoilett – potential unfulfilled – may have gone the other way. Give it 12 months and Odemwingie could be turning up on somebody else’s doorstep in full view of Jim White’s semi erect member, while Rangers would no doubt be pressing ahead with an £8m bid to buy Hoilett back from West Brom because he’s a “triffic lad who we never wanted to sell in the first place.” But with Loic Remy now apparently injured for some time the failure to get Odemwingie or an equivalent is nothing short of a disaster.
Remy is an interesting case. A 26-year-old French international with, until this season at least, an impressive appearance and goal record at Marseille. A reported fee of between £7m and £8m is colossal for a club of QPR’s size, a record fee for the R’s at the time, but in the modern day transfer market, where Daniel Sturridge is seen as something of a bargain at nearly twice that amount, it looks a reasonably good deal.
But Remy himself said before arriving: “When I’m 100 per cent I can do very good things but when there’s something not right in my head, something bothering me, then it becomes a bit difficult. My profile as a player is that when I’ve got a small problem, things become difficult. It might sound pretentious but the physios say to me that I’m like an F1 car. Whenever I’ve got a small problem, it’s straight into the pits.”
Since scoring on his debut at West Ham he has sat out the MK Dons cup tie, been a doubt for the Man City match with a hamstring complaint, and now missed a crucial game with Norwich – and it seems much more besides – with a groin injury.
Whether these are genuine injuries – and an absence measured in months as this latest one apparently is means it can’t be anything else – or not isn’t really the point. QPR have made an astonishing amount of transfers since they were promoted to the Premier League. This season 38 players have come in or out of Loftus Road permanently or on loan to go with 24 moves last campaign. How can a club complete 62 transfers in little over 18 months and still be in a situation where one injury to Loic Remy leaves them essentially without a centre forward at all?
Heidar Helguson has been flogged cheaply, and DJ Campbell now seems set to join Blackburn on loan even despite Remy’s injury. You can state a good case for them not being good enough for the Premier League or an answer to QPR’s problems but they’re better than nothing which - with Bobby Zamora’s own fitness worries, Jay Bothroyd’s lack of ability and Djibril Cisse also leaving this January - is exactly what QPR are going to have if Remy is out for a long period of time.
Fortunately, at the fourth time of asking, QPR have succeeded in addressing their problem at centre half. Bruno Perone was Neil Warnock’s first attempt, swiftly followed by Anton Ferdinand, which all made the decision to allow Kaspars Gorkss to leave seem strange. Ryan Nelsen was only supposed to be cover but ended up being the heart of the team as his body crumbled around him but finally, in Chris Samba, the R’s seem to have cracked it.
Samba is a terrific signing, even allowing for the rumoured £12.5m transfer fee and large salary package. For all Nelsen’s wonderful work a partnership between the New Zealand captain and Clint Hill lacked pace and required help from defensive midfielders, which made QPR a negative outfit that tended to sit too deep. Samba will change that - the need for the holding midfielder, certainly against the league’s lesser teams, is now not so great and the defence can dare to advance higher up the field safe in the knowledge that the giant Congo international has the speed to recover situations. Add in his ability to dominate the space in both penalty areas and he’ll certainly improve the Super Hoops’ play at set pieces both attacking and defensive which has been lacking for some time now. He is best described as a Premier League version of Danny Shittu and I’m very surprised QPR have been able to get him.
What impact Yun Suk-Young – a 22 year old left sided South Korean international defender from Chunnam Dragons – will have this season, if any at all, remains to be seen. He seems like one for the future. Cold Tuesday night in Blackpool concerns to be discussed as and when appropriate from May.
Which just leaves the Tottenham raggy dolls to assess. David Bentley, Jake Livermore and Michael Dawson were mentioned as serious targets before Jermaine Jenas arrived on a free transfer and Andros Townsend on loan until the end of the season. When you consider that Jenas made just three appearances (two from the bench) during a season long loan at Aston Villa last term and recently started just once for his boyhood club Nottingham Forest during another temporary spell in the league below, and that Townsend hasn’t impressed on or off the field during Championship loans with Birmingham and Leeds, it’s hard to shake the feeling that these were just signings for the sake of making signings. Redknapp likes to trade players, he felt the squad needed freshening up, so he moved the deckchairs around a little – it didn’t really matter who we got from Spurs, as long as we got somebody.
In fairness Townsend was excellent on his first appearance at the weekend giving hope that, now he’s been given a chance in the top flight under a manager who has worked with him before, the attitude and effort issues that affected several lower division loan spells may melt away. In fairness, Millwall is a difficult crowd to please and he seemed to get on well at The Den. It was hard to know what Jenas really did even when he was moving around Tottenham and Newcastle for big money and making the England team, but after an hour of Stephane Mbia’s wild rashness against Norwich he did make a difference with a more considered, cultured approach. There’s the ‘footballing brain’ we hear so much about these days there, if he can remain fit and motivated.
The question is though, how much stronger are Rangers for all of this activity?
The Samba acquisition lessens the impact of Ryan Nelsen’s departure, and actually improves the defence. I was delighted Nelsen got a good send off at the end of the Man City game because his professionalism and personal pride meant he performed to a consistently high standard throughout this season despite playing far more than he ever thought he would, often through the pain barrier in a team full of players that weren’t trying nearly as hard as him for little or no reward on the scoreboard. I’ve heard it said that his early departure at such a crucial time in the season, having signed a one year deal, is traitorous in its own way but loyalty is a two way street that many supporters are unwilling to walk.
Champagne corks were popping when Anton Ferdinand followed up his latest, and final, shambolic appearance against MK Dons with a move to Turkish side Bursaspor. If Nelsen had played as poorly as Ferdinand has since the infamous John Terry incident – barring one excellent performance against Chelsea this season – then QPR fans everywhere would have happily waved him on his way to Toronto with no mention of the remaining six months of his contract. Because he’s played well and become a key part of the defence, suddenly people want to talk about loyalty and obligations. Not for me, thank you Ryan and the very best of luck to you. As for Anton, I’m tempted to speculate on exactly what the notorious Turkish supporters may do to him if he continues to concede goals like the one he gifted Ryan Lowe in the FA Cup last week, but given that Bursaspor have happily put up with Scott ‘Calamity’ Carson in goal for the last 18 months I suspect they’re well versed in accident prone English idiots by now. A player who has earned a wonderful living because of his surname – if he was called Anton Smith he’d be playing for Barnet.
Further forward though, have QPR actually spent a good deal of money to remain pretty much the same as they were? I’m assured Remy is a far better player than Djibril Cisse, who has been loaned out to Qatar, and that the deal for the French forward – with QPR shifting his entire wage bill and getting a £500,000 fee into the bargain – is a good one. I personally doubt that Remy is that much better, and as he is injured now anyway it makes the decision to allow Cisse to leave odd, and the apparent deal that’s about to send DJ Campbell to Blackburn on loan absolutely mystifying.
In midfield the loss of Ale Faurlin on loan to Palermo as he continues to struggle to recapture his previous QPR form is a sad day for the club. Faurlin was brought back a month early from his bad knee injury, played five times in three weeks and then dropped when his performances declined. This pattern of playing him constantly for several games in quick succession, then dropping him for a few weeks, has continued all season and done him no good. Hopefully the loan to Palermo is part of a more considered, long term recovery programme but I fear we may have seen the last of somebody who has been – prior to this season at least – a real shining beacon of quality and the ultimate professional through the persistent gloom, and no little personal strife, at Loftus Road.
To replace him with Jenas looks, on the face of it, like the latest example of the club casting aside players without first working on what problems they may have on the training ground in favour of making a quick fix new signing instead. A full 62 permanent and temporary transfers later and Rangers apparently still haven’t learnt that a new face isn’t always the answer. The R’s now have ten players out on loan, including three big name signings made in the last 18 months. That’s a ludicrous situation to be in.
The January transfer window is increasingly becoming a time for agents to get rich by moving scores of mediocre players among several mediocre clubs – none of whom seem to get a lot better and several (QPR among them) who often seem to get a good deal worse. Samba apart it’s hard not to think that Rangers have thrown a good deal of money at getting involved in exactly that merry-go-round again.
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