Rather than the two goals by Matteo Alberti or a ninth game unbeaten the big talking point to come out of the Forest game was the behaviour of Lee Camp during and after the match. So where does last weekend leave the young keeper?

Much ado about....
We are a fickle lot sometimes.

On the opening day of this season it took QPR fans less then a quarter of an hour and one Barnsley goal to welcome our new goalkeeper Radek Cerny to the club by singing the name of his predecessor Lee Camp. Camp had twice enjoyed very successful loans at Loftus Road and been named by supporters as the runner up in the player of the year vote in his first full season. We liked Camp, we didn’t like Cerny, we wanted Camp in goal, Flavio Briatore didn’t, everybody was unhappy. “Catch the ball, catch the ball, catch the ball” the QPR fans chanted at their new Czech goalkeeper at Aston Villa and Norwich and then we cheered ironically whenever he did.

Then Cerny, after a nervy start to life at QPR, started to play well. His miraculous display at Man Utd was one of the most astonishing ninety minutes of goalkeeping I have ever seen and he remained consistently brilliant throughout the autumn – taking this website’s player of the month awards for October and November. Suddenly QPR fans were signing Cerny’s name after even the most routine of saves. He waved at us, we waved at him, everybody was happy. Anyway that Lee Camp was always a bit dodgy on crosses.

Camp missed the first team football that had rather abruptly been taken away from him and went out on loan to get it at Nottingham Forest and while he was there some QPR fans talked about him as a troublemaker and spread a few stories about exactly why Flavio Briatore does not like him around the place. Any truth in them? When has that ever mattered before?

Sadly loan spells can only last for three months so the moany, sulky git was back at Loftus Road at the turn of the year. He didn’t get near the first team though, in fact quite the opposite – he spent time training with the QPR youth team. Good. Lee who? Pah, we’ve got Cerny now, although he did cost us two goals at Charlton. And one against Coventry. And one at Burnley. Still he’ll come good again, he is a quality keeper. If it wasn’t for Petr Cech and three or four others he’d have 100 caps for the Czech Republic you know. What do you mean it's the lowest form of wit?

Then Cerny pulled his hamstring. He travelled to Blackpool with the rest of the lads anyway but struggled in training and then withdrew from the squad completely. Faced with a choice of Lee Camp and Niki Lee Bulmer, by all accounts very talented but still old enough to rush home for the Bedtime Hour on Cbeebies, Sousa had to play Camp. 'Hooray' cheered the travelling fans at Blackpool. Camp the returning hero. What a bloody save at the end of that game as well - it would have been three one without that you know and not nearly as fun as three nil. Well done Lee, we never doubted you, that pillock Cerny cost us four goals over Christmas while you were gone. Good to have you back. I haven’t heard a welcome for a QPR goalkeeper so rapturous as the reception Camp got when he played against Reading at Loftus Road at the end of the week since, well, since Cerny came onto the pitch after the Man Utd match. Like I say we're a fickle, flirtatious lot with our goalkeepers.

Camp played again on Saturday against the club he was playing for a month previously. It turns out the Forest fans love Lee as much as we did when he came to us on loan. “Lee Camp is a Forest fan” they sung in an effort to forget his Derby upbringing and justify their love of him. Now that's fickle! Camp acknowledged them, as he did us when he first returned to Loftus Road in a Derby shirt, and was warmly embraced by a number of the Forest players before and after the match, as he was by the QPR players when he first returned to Loftus Road in a Derby shirt. Still, quite a few QPR fans who thought that was great at the time seem to have been upset by this.

One problem seems to be that one of his waves to the home crowd came when a section of the QPR support was trying to get Paulo Sousa to wave at them. Sousa was busy trying to organise our team at the time but, hey, waving is more important and Camp made us look a bit silly – the Forest fans gave loud cheers that they could get a wave from a QPR staff member and we could not.

Camp conceded one from the penalty spot – him diving the same way he had done when saving spot kicks for Forest against Derby and Bristol City meant McGugan’s goal was more a test of memory than nerve, but you could not fault him for that really. After half time he came for a cross and missed it altogether, then twenty minutes later he did the same thing again but did not get away with it and Forest were level. It was a poor bit of goalkeeping in truth.

After the match reporters from the Nottingham Forest media team, journalists from the Nottingham press and national hacks asked him if he had enjoyed his time with Forest and if he would like to go back. Camp told them the truth. Yes and yes. He even offered a reasonable explanation; he only played on Saturday because Cerny was injured, he is out of the picture at Loftus Road and has been training with the youth team, he did not fall out with Billy Davies at Derby and would like to work with him again, and Forest know what to do if they want to sign him i.e. meet QPR’s asking price.

Boo Camp, booo. Traitor. His performance in the match, waving at the Forest fans and comments afterwards sparked an angry reaction on the various QPR message boards with some branding him unprofessional. Hero to villain to hero to villain to hero to villain. Our love affair with the former England Under 21 stopper has been on and off like a bride's nightie.

Everything in the world of the football fan is black and white – he’s crap, he’s great, he’s a Judas bastard, he’s too slow, he’s too fat, he’s clueless and so on. There is rarely any in between, even when that is where the truth blatantly lies. Cerny will be hailed as a God when he returns later this month, and then slated as a liability the second he drops his first cross.

Camp is neither the goalkeeping genius some have him down as nor the troublemaking, moaning flapper of crosses that others believe him to be. He is a good Championship goalkeeper, and one with time if not height on his side. He makes mistakes but he wants to play and he wants to learn. His desire for first team football led him to us in the first place, not a row at Derby despite what many will report as truth, and it led him to Nottingham Forest earlier this season where he played well and made many friends.

To acknowledge those friends and wave to the supporters on Saturday was no crime in my eyes. Neither was his decision to answer questions put to him by journalists afterwards honestly. How many times have we criticised bland answers to questions in post match interviews? How refreshing to have a player give honest answers to simple questions.

Nothing he said on Saturday was not true or worthy of criticism. If we are going to talk about unprofessional how about the way he was left out of our first team in the first place? Flavio Briatore recently admitted in interview that he argued with Iain Dowie over who should play in goal, the owner insisting that Cerny be given the nod as he is the best keeper in our league in his opinion. Whether Cerny is that good or not, it should not have been Briatore’s decision to make. Should a man usurped from his position and banished to the youth team on the say so of a man whose football experience stretches about as far as the average punter in the Q Block lie and say he does not want to join Nottingham Forest? If you think so, why?

Personally I like Lee Camp. I admire his forthright honesty and I admire his commitment to football over boozing it up and living the stereotyped London footballer’s lifestyle. I recognise his faults as a goalkeeper and I recognise the football reasons why Cerny should be selected ahead of him although if it had been left up to Iain Dowie as it should have been Camp would have started the season as number one.

With that in mind it would probably be best for all concerned if he does move on, to Forest or somewhere else, because his face clearly does not fit with some at QPR. Cerny’s advancing years and Camp’s relative youth mean we would be releasing a goalkeeper who could potentially play for us for a decade in favour of one who is only going to be keeping goal for us for another season or two at best but I cannot imagine Camp would be happy to be Cerny’s understudy until 2011 and nor should he be.

Assuming he is seemingly about to go on his way, let’s just wish him well and thank him for the work he did last season and during his loan spells with us. Saturday was a storm in a tea cup, stirred up by people who really should be old enough to know that the odd wave or rare honest answer in a post match press conference matter not one jot – especially after the way Camp has been treated by QPR this season. Point to the second goal as a football argument for picking Cerny ahead of Camp but nothing more than that.

Inter Milan 2 QPR 1
It may have proved an unpopular move with some but in hindsight it is probably a good thing that we got rid of the white shorts from our range of kits for this season. One can only imagine what the watching crowds at this week’s “prestigious Copa Carnevale” in Italy would have made of the brown stains that would have surely have been evident around the backsides of our youth team players when Inter Milan took just 50 seconds to score against them in the opening game of the tournament on Tuesday. Probably a wise decision for them to wear the all red number.

I’d love to know what the players said to each other as they returned to the halfway line to have a go at kicking off less than a minute after Inter had done it for the first time. Eighty nine more minutes against one of the best known teams in the world and already a goal down - “We’re not in Kansas any more Toto” perhaps? Or words to that effect.

Credit to the boys though. QPR fought back to equalise with a superbly worked and taken goal through Antonio German and were, by all accounts, unlucky to eventually lose 2-1. There are highlights online here and if you can ignore the terrible music they are worth seeing for German's goal alone. There is suddenly hope that our team can progress in this tournament with the difficult but slightly less daunting prospects of games against Palermo and Australia’s A.P.I.A. Leichhardt Tigers.

The youth team has been boosted by the addition of first teamers Matteo Alberti and Angelo Balanta, but nevertheless to be disappointed not to draw with the tournament favourites is remarkable. Especially so when you consider that coming into this game the youth team’s last ten league games have been against Brentford, Northampton, Peterborough, Rushden, Wycombe, Northampton again, Southend, Wycombe again, Rushden again and Millwall.

Whether we had beaten Inter Milan 3-0 or lost to them by four or five times that amount it is a merciful relief to see our best young players finally playing quality opposition. Since our academy was disbanded due to budget cuts and the lack of an indoor training facility the only time our youth teams have played against anybody of any note is the annual FA Youth Cup defeat at Loftus Road – Newcastle United did the honours this year.

Over the last ten years we have produced Richard Langley, Dean Parrett and Ray Jones and that's about it, and the first two both played for some time in our academy set up when we had it. We should not be surprised at this. How can we expect players to move onto our first team after three years of playing Northampton Town's youth followed by progression into a reserve team that only plays once a month? Even when the reserve team does play it plays in a league with Charlton, Millwall, Reading, Southampton, Lewes, Aldershot and Gillingham. So three years of playing against Northampton ’s youth team followed by ten games against Aldershot or somebody similar and then it’s into the first team. That is no recipe for success.

It’s no recipe for attracting talented youngsters to QPR either. We are surrounded by academies at Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, West Ham and others. Even when they don’t pick up the best young talent just after it has learnt how to walk they just poach it from clubs like us. We lost Parrett to Spurs and Oliver Sprague to Chelsea (he was with Watford last I heard by the way and doing well), Bristol Rovers lost Sinclair to Chelsea, Notts County lost Pennant to Arsenal. Often I wonder if the bigger clubs are really bothered about bringing these players through to the first team or whether they just don’t want other clubs to have them – see Michael Mancienne’s lack of involvement at Chelsea even when their entire back four is on the treatment table.

Still, when offered a big name Premiership club with state of the art training facilities, top class coaches and a highly competitive league to play in against our own "centre of excellence" and its weekly match with Brentford it is not much of a choice. That is without getting into the alleged problems with kit and scouting that has been put forward to be raised with the club by concerned people with relatives in the current set up on our message board and others.

We will struggle to compete with Chelsea and their Cobham set up, but there is no reason why we cannot replicate what is being done at Crystal Palace. The talented products of the Palace academy meant Neil Warnock was able to turn around Peter Taylor’s ailing side simply by throwing five or six of them into the first team last season. In the end they went from a relegation battle to the play off semi finals.

If you want a quick guide to the work they are doing with the kids down at Selhurst and the impact it is having get hold of a copy of their overpriced but nonetheless excellent programme from our match there before Christmas. Start by counting the academy graduates in the first team squad on the back and then work your way through the match reports of the Under 18 match with Arsenal (top v second at the time), the interview with graduate Rhoys Wiggins, the feature on how the academy players are educated and given an opportunity to earn exams and qualifications to go with their football and so on.

If we can produce promising talent like Angelo Balanta and Ramone Rose from our current set up, imagine what we could do with our own academy again and imagine how much further along those two would be if they were playing Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs every week instead of whatever team Barnet can cobble together. Imagine if instead of loaning in Emmanuel Ledesma, Daniel Parejo and other people’s can’t-be-arsed teens we were able to bring our own talent through and run that in the first team instead. There is an argument that says people like Rose and Balanta should have been playing ahead of Ledesma and Parejo anyway but those two would have been better prepared for first team action by playing in Palace’s youth set up than ours. Balanta has had to go to Wycombe for three months to taste competitive action.

We proved with an academy last time that it is no guarantee of success, but we have proved more than conclusively since that our current set up is almost a cast iron guarantee of failure when it comes to producing players capable of playing for the first team. Palace brought in six players from their youth team last season, twice as many as we have managed in a decade.

It’s wonderful to see our lads going toe to toe with Inter Milan and the likes but it needs to be the norm rather than the exception and I look forward to the day that some serious investment is made in the QPR youth set up again. It could be a tremendous asset to our club. Best of luck to the boys in their remaining two group games.

Photo: Action Images

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