As expected, Ian Holloway was confirmed as the QPR manager for the second time in his career on Friday. Is this a sentimental appointment doomed to failure or more astute than it looks?
I’d have given it to John Terry personally.
Because we know how this goes. Or, certainly, we know how this has gone for all our recent managers in any case — including Neil Warnock, who many fans were publicly doubting was up to the Premier League when Tony Fernandes pulled the trigger on him in January 2012 and so set in motion this spiral of failed managerial appointments from which we seem unable to extricate ourselves.
It starts at the appointment itself, which some people will disagree with. Nobody simply disagrees with things any more though so this will manifest itself in people getting in touch with the chairman on social media to tell him he’s a "fucking joke” and such like, so sewing the seed of doubt in the first place. Some will say they’re never going back to Rangers as long as this bloke is in charge. It’s why Tony Fernandes being so open online can be so damaging. Running a football club, recruiting a manager, putting a squad together — these things are difficult enough, without the constant over-the-top input of people who have absolutely no experience of any of it.
Then there’s the new manager bounce — or lack of it. QPR rarely enjoy this, which along with the sheer number of appointments, and the vast difference in their styles and experience, and the continued flatline of results regardless, should probably hint at the manager not really being the main problem — a hint neither the supporters nor the board at Loftus Road have picked up on yet. Mark Hughes won one of his first eight, Harry Redknapp two of his first 14, Chris Ramsey three of his first 14, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink one of his first nine. That’s usually enough for a significant minority of people to decide the new manager is rubbish.
From that point on the chosen one is only ever four consecutive poor performances away from the sack. There’s no consideration of QPR’s size — 18,000 seater stadium, 12,500 through the door for the recent Bristol City game — or lack of infrastructure or what the manager inherited or how many transfer windows he’s had to correct it. The people of Shepherd’s Bush are now used to four poor performances equalling the sack and on the rare occasions the club does hold on beyond that, they start to get a bit aggy about it. The manager is often given a playground nickname — we’re probably about six months away from ‘Hollowhead’ — and there's a rush of online comment immediately after every defeat from furious masses, many of whom weren't actually at the game and none of whom you hear from after a win. If the sitting duck makes it to nine or ten months you’ll catch people saying things like "maybe it would be best if we do get thrashed at home by Reading just to get him the sack”.
And the guy stands down there, listening to the crowd doing their bit for the cause by booing his team off at half time and full time — or, in the case of the Blackburn home game this year, actually during the match, which I’m sure helped them enormously. Player cries off with flu the day before a game, or a family emergency on the morning of the match, or a hamstring injury, and the manager is branded a clueless idiot for not picking him. Then eventually — almost always after less than a year in charge, even Warnock barely got past 18 months despite everything he achieved here — the call comes and he’s put out of his misery. If it’s a young, inexperienced manager we say we need an experienced, crafty old bugger; and if it’s an experienced, crafty old bugger we say we need a younger, hungrier man.
Outright legendary club status is no barrier to any of this, as we’ve seen with Les Ferdinand who was one of QPR’s greatest ever players and provided a focal point for a team many now hark back to as the very best of the good old days. After handing Mark Hughes and then Harry Redknapp the keys to the safe, while also adding foolish but very marketable signins like Ji-Sung Park to the squad, it was said that QPR needed a football man, with the club at heart, to sit between the manager and the board. Neil Warnock said it, loads of fans said it, and they were/are all right. Ferdinand is that man, he’s got players moving out of the youth team into the first team for the first time in years, he’s reducing the playing budget year on year, there’s some joined up thinking in the transfer business done, he’s laying down standards of behaviour among players and staff (when was the last time a QPR player or employee other than the chairman caused us problems online or in the press?)… everything we needed and wanted basically. And for this he’s called "Tottenham Les” and accused of running a "boy’s club” for his "mates”.
So when people talk about getting Shaun Derry back in here, or Clint Hill, or Gareth Ainsworth I wince a little bit. You want to put those guys through this? You want to see a Gareth Ainsworth team booed from the pitch by a half full Loftus Road after a home defeat, and see the look in his eyes as the camera pans in for a final close up on the whistle, and read all the "I’m sorry, I loved him as a player, but he’s out of his depth” message board posts? Bollocks to that.
No, I’m all in favour of appointing people we hate and blowing a big failure through their CVs instead. Imagine Big Racist John down there on the touchline, piggy little eyes blank and fresh out of ideas (wouldn’t take long) as a crowd just north of 11,000 howl their disapproval at Karl Henry’s latest 40-yard ball back to Alex Smithies. Glorious. Give it to Gary Megson after that. Hell, let Ashley Young have a go. If we’re going to put managers through the ringer and sack them every few months let’s at least make it fun.
But no, we’ve gone for Ian Holloway. A club treasure. A man who seemed close to tears a couple of times just trying to get through the interview with the official website on Friday, so delighted was he to be given the chance to come back.
Rifle locked and loaded, Bambi’s mum firmly placed in the crosshairs.
This looks like the original, 3,000% heart over head appointment. Name me another club in the Football League, apart from Bristol Rovers possibly, where Ian Holloway would even figure in the betting for their manager’s job if it came up. As we’ve seen with Neil Warnock, experienced Championship managerial talent isn’t allowed to just sit around doing nothing for very long if it still has something to offer. Was Holloway even priced for the Rotherham job? Bottom of the league, six points on the board…
There is a pervading feeling that his time has been and gone. At Crystal Palace, having won only one of his first 11 games in the Premier League following promotion, he resigned. "This club needs that impetus of energy, but I just feel pretty worn out,” he told reporters at a draining press conference convened to announce his departure. He subsequently pitched up at Millwall, something of a surprise given it was only two and a half months since he’d declared himself "exhausted” on the way out of Selhurst Park, and although he initially saved them from relegation and won his first two matches of the following season he would leave The Den after just over a year in charge, with 14 wins from 62 games, and the Lions well on their way to relegation to League One. Again, he didn’t sound like Ian Holloway, or even much look like him any more. He even fell out with Danny Shittu while there — a player so tight with his manager when they were together at QPR the other players mockingly called him ‘Son of Holloway’.
He’s been on the television circuit ever since, where it could be argued the rascal dress sense and unique sense of humour is best suited. Even though he rebuilt QPR from the ground up, with five fit senior professionals and administrators running the club, promoting it within three years and securing it in a higher division, signing some modern day legends of the Loft and restoring a pride and work ethic sadly lacking before, there are plenty of supporters who will tell you it’s a myth that he did a wonderful job here before. They’ll say the signings were scouted by Mel Johnson, the team was coached by Kenny Jackett, and Holloway was never as good once they left for Spurs and Swansea respectively. They’ll say the football was poor, and that three years to finish second in the Second Division was no great shakes considering the players he had at his disposal.
This is, if not quite total bollocks, then at least extremely harsh.
I remember when Italian Luigi De Canio arrived at QPR one of the concerns was he’d had loads of clubs in his homeland — 11 in fact: Pisticci, Savoia, Siena, Carpi, Lucchese, Pescara, Udinese, Napoli, Reggina, Genoa and Siena again. Francesco Guidolin, first choice for Flavio Briatore at that point, had managed a dozen. The term "journeyman” was bandied around. The modern football fan talks about people being a "serial failure”.
Thing is, most Italian managers have CVs like this. Partly because Italian clubs sack managers all the time, but also because they don’t necessarily see a failure, or two, or three even, as a terminal thing for a manager. Maybe the chairman was mad, maybe he had a big injury crisis to deal with, maybe he inherited a mess and couldn’t turn it round, maybe he simply didn’t fit there — but that doesn’t mean that will be the case for us. Here, unless you’re Bryan Robson, you’re lucky not to be cast onto the scrapheap if you fail at a couple of clubs. If we’re going to sack managers at an Italian rate — nine gone in the Championship already this season — we have to think more Italian about how we judge their potential replacements.
Sure, Holloway was a disaster at Millwall. But so was Steve Lomas before him, and club hero Neil Harris isn’t exactly burning the barn down either — currently ninth in League One after a failed play-off tilt last season. Kenny Jackett resigned at The Den before that without another job to go to. Perhaps, as at QPR, the manager isn’t the main issue at Millwall.
And at Palace, let’s not forget that Holloway saw them over the promotion line in the first place — inheriting a good team from Dougie Freedman yes, but far from merely knocking in an open goal from a yard. A very tough play-off semi-final against much-fancied Brighton was negotiated. There’s much talk about a wild summer of 15 signings and the effect it had on the Palace dressing room, but don’t forget that Wilfried Zaha was the star of that side and Holloway lost him to Man Utd that transfer window. Also remember that although Tony Pulis subsequently saved the Eagles from relegation, a performance deemed worthy of the Manager of the Year prize by his peers, Neil Warnock took over from him for the following campaign and, like Holloway, endured a miserable start (three wins from the first 18 league games) and got the sack as well. Warnock was brilliant for QPR before that, has been brilliant for Rotherham since, nobody counts his Palace failure against him when talking about him coming back to Loftus Road so why Holloway?
Holloway’s track record remains formidable. Several of the clubs he’s managed reached heights unprecedented in their recent history during his time in charge. At Bristol Rovers, where he discovered talent like Jason Roberts and Nathan Ellington, he had them in the Second Division play-offs — they’ve never been as high, and have been as low as the Conference, since. That QPR job, on and off the field, transformed the entire club from an incredibly low starting place. Rodney Marsh is prone to exaggeration and provocation, but he was right saying that QPR was heading to the Conference prior to Olly's intervention.
At Plymouth, Holloway had a wonderful team with the likes of Akos Buzsaky, Peter Halmosi, Sylvain Ebanks-Blake and others. They were great to watch, and in play-off contention, before basically being harvested for parts by QPR, Wolves, Hull and others. Argyle have dropped back down to League Two since, Ollie had them on the cusp of a push to the Premier League.
There was a dramatic, pronounced failure at Leicester but Holloway used the subsequent break to re-invent himself. He’d called his QPR team a laundry, because they rinsed and pressed opponents. Holloway admired Roberto Martinez at Swansea, and his tactic of keeping wingers tight to both touchlines so the ‘out ball’, when nothing else was on, went across the field to a wide man rather than simply long down the field trying to turn full backs around. He took his learnings into tiny Blackpool where he won an unlikely promotion to the Premier League and then, with a centre half pairing of Ian Evatt and Alex Baptiste, made a remarkable fist of the Premier League, scoring for fun and changing the whole division from a Jose Mourinho-influenced defensive bore-fest into one where teams realised they could attack and score goals. Pool won three of their first five away games that year, and did a double over Liverpool. They were relegated, but nowhere near as convincingly as they should have been (only a point in it), and to show it wasn’t a one-off he took them to a play-off final the following season and was desperately unlucky to lose to Sam Allardyce’s well-financed West Ham side. Blackpool now play in front of an empty stadium in League Two.
Nor is Holloway some crusty, old, out-of touch TV pundit who hasn’t been on a training ground for years. Most at QPR would have had Neil Warnock back in a heartbeat had he been available this time around — he’s knocking on the door of 70. Holloway is 53, with a record of improving players, with a record of playing highly-attacking football, with a record of scouting lower league bargains, with a record of promoting small clubs above their level, or getting them mighty close. Even without the QPR connection, it’s not difficult to make a case for this being a shrewd appointment.
The key to Ian Holloway not going the way of so many of his predecessors, to QPR not denigrating the legacy of a previous club hero, is to establish why exactly his predecessor was sacked.
Unless the board puts in ridiculous sums of money, which FFP now inhibits, QPR are a mid to lower-table Championship club. Their ground, training facilities, average attendance — every measure you take other than wealth of owners makes them a bottom half Championship club with occasional League One sojourns. Burnley have shown how you can punch above that weight with an excellent manager, but essentially Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink has been sacked for parring the course.
Hasselbaink was the hungry, young, hard working coach the club said it was looking for, with success in lower divisions, a desire to come to the club and do well and all the rest of it. He saw QPR as a big move for him, as opposed to his predecessors who’d frequently treated the club like it was beneath them. He worked the players hard - too hard in face, training them relentlessly. He gave youth teamers a chance in the first team. He integrated lower-league signings into his team.
QPR have said it’s important to consolidate in the Championship and arrest both the haemorrhaging of money and the decline in standards on and off the field among the players. Hasselbaink saw Rob Green, Ale Faurlin, Charlie Austin, Clint Hill, Leroy Fer, Matt Phillips and Junior Hoilett leave the club during his time — a huge percentage of the club’s wage bill — and he couldn’t have tried any harder to get rid of Sandro. He brought in £4.5m for a player, and two were sold for £5m. Conor Washington at £2.5m was the biggest outlay. The wage bill, the playing budget, both have been reduced exponentially, and the team has maintained a spot in the middle of the Championship throughout.
On the face of it, he’s done everything he’s been asked to do, and he’s been sacked for it.
What, therefore, is expected of Holloway? It’s important to establish, because at the moment his appointment can’t be spun as anything other than "hey it’s Ollie, you guys like Ollie right?”. Certainly the whole idea about building slowly, looking down the divisions, giving a young manager a chance, giving managers time, being patient, consolidating, that’s all gone now after giving Hasselbaink ten months and sacking him while he was achieving the targets the club said they wanted from him at the start. The media team's cupboard has been stripped bare.
Is this Tony Fernandes’ second annual ‘promotion means everything to me’ moment? Are the owners hoping that the inevitable lift in atmosphere and mood that this appointment, and the subsequent arrival of Marc Bircham as assistant, will bring to the place is enough to bounce the team into play-off contention? What happens if he doesn’t get there? That doesn’t feel like a realistic expectation to me. It also feels like Les Ferdinand and Lee Hoos’ remit and work goes out the window this time every year when the Malaysians basically say "yeh that’s all well and good, but the Premier League TV money is where it’s at lads”.
Are we simply tagging an extra condition to the job advert? We want the playing budget reduced, we want the age of the squad reduced, we want youth teamers given a chance, we want you to integrate signings from across Europe, we want you to give lower league signings a chance… oh, and we want you to play entertaining football while you’re doing it. It has been dull as hell watching Hasselbaink’s QPR. Attritional, grinding, boring, snooze-fest. Have we sacked him simply because we’re bored? If so, are we now doing a Darragh McAnthony at Peterborough, and making ‘style of play’ a key question in the interview process? How is this judged? Is this entertaining? Is it entertaining enough for me? Again, that feels like a bit of a hiding to nothing.
Are we simply trying to keep the supporters happy? They didn't much care for Hasselbaink's style of football, attendances are dropping markedly, the season ticket renewal forms will be going out in time for the New Year, Tony's notifications inbox was filling up with abuse, so we've acted. Another disaster waiting to happen if so because even a supposed unifying figure like Holloway isn't universally liked, and even if he was you can never please all of the QPR fans all of the time. There will be plenty of Monday morning quarterbacks lying in wait to tell the club what a(nother) terrible idea this was in no time at all if results don't turn immediately.
Or are we saying, without getting all bombastic about play-off pushes, that we feel this group of players should be a bit better than this. That we’ve bought players — like Washington, Massimo Luongo, Jordan Cousins — that we were hoping would impress and be sold on at profit who have been suffering under a manager determined to run the legs off everybody and pick those three and more out of position.
Hopefully it's this, because if anybody is ideal for getting that little bit more out of players, for convincing them they’re better than they are, it’s Ian Holloway. While I fear for a couple of current regulars, Tjaronn Chery likely to be pressed into service as a winger which never works for him for instance, Cousins feels like a perfect Ian Hollloway central midfielder, Washington playing off the shoulder of either Polter or Sylla could get a new lease of life and so on.
If it’s just that — a bit better, a bit more entertaining, a bit more heart and soul to it, players expressing themselves and playing beyond their level rather than being run into the ground — this could work. But equally it’s hard not to see me sitting here next November and writing another runners and riders piece. And if that’s the case, it doesn’t bare thinking about what it will do to Ian Holloway.
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