The release of QPR’s squad numbers for the new season on Thursday saw a big, but not entirely surprising, omission as Rangers attempt to reach an agreement to terminate Rowan Vine’s contract with the club.
Demise
Is it possible to ever feel sorry for footballers? Ashley Cole was so angry when he heard Arsenal were “only” offering him £60,000 a week that he had to pull his Ranger Rover over to the side of the road and calm down, and he was so devastated by the break up of his marriage (caused by his numerous, repeated indiscretions) that he prepared for England’s World Cup campaign by taking up smoking. The poor love.
When he got there he, and the rest of the squad, were apparently bored. They weren’t even allowed a beer. A squad of £120,000 a week footballers matched and embarrassed by the mighty Algeria because they were stuck for something to do in their luxury hotel without the bars, nightclubs and easy women they fall out of back home.
When even the clueless misfits that play for the likes of QPR earn more in a week than I do in a year it’s very, very difficult to relate to them whatever the circumstances. Earlier this week somebody decided that it would be helpful to go on Rowan Vine’s Twitter account and tell him he hoped he had bought new boots for the new season because the ones he had on last year were full of concrete. Vine retorted: “Nah mate, they were full of pound coins.” It’s normally this sort of brash arrogance from footballers on ridiculous wages that drives me to despair but to be honest, for once, I had some sympathy with Rowan.
It’s well known that the QPR squad has several members in it who were offered wages vastly over what their ability really deserved, on contracts often twice as long as they really should have been. These players are hard to shift, because nobody will pay them what we do, and hard to find a place for in the team, because in the case of Hall, Agyemang and Vine they’re simply not good enough. It’s not the players’ faults they are on these deals, they were offered immediately after the takeover when the club felt that a policy of not paying transfer fees but offering huge wages would attract something other than cast offs from Wigan and Preston’s reserve teams. These players now sit in the reserve team or treatment room essentially tossing it off with one pathetic little strain or niggle after another at the club’s expense. Not good enough for the first team, earning too much for the clubs at their actual level to match, and content to sit and do nothing on big money. They won’t have medals to show their grand kids, but they’ll have a nice car to drive them around in.
And here’s where my sympathy for Rowan Vine comes in. I actually think Rowan Vine does want to play. Somewhere, anywhere. He wants to play for QPR, or Millwall, or anybody, but he can’t because at the moment he’s not even as good at football as I am.
Rowan Vine was a genuinely exciting signing when we brought him in from Birmingham in 2007. I remember seeing him at Luton, first on loan in the division below and then permanently when Mike Newell’s side were a top ten Championship team playing attractive football. I remember a televised game at Christmas 2006 where Birmingham, chasing promotion, were outclassed at St Andrews by Luton led from the front by Vine who scored in the first half. How City escaped with a 2-2 draw, courtesy of a Neil Danns equaliser in stoppage time, I could barely comprehend. Birmingham signed Vine a month later.
The criticism of Vine was always that he wasn’t prolific enough. One 17 goal haul for Luton in League One apart he never looked like scoring more than 11 or 12 goals a season. But he was a super player to watch. His touch of the ball and effortless dribbling speed made him a menace. He was always at his best picking the ball up in a deep wide left position, cutting inside and running right at the heart of the defence. It was exhilarating to watch, even when he was playing for Luton, one of my most loathed clubs.
I was ecstatic when we signed him, initially on loan, during Mick Harford’s first spell in charge. QPR were at the absolute depths of despair at the time. Gianni Paladini had kept his plate spinning act going as long as he could. A club losing money hand over fist, on small gates, could only go on for so long despite the Italian’s insistence that we were “sailing in calm waters” and in 2007/08 it all caught up with the R’s. John Gregory, who had worked a miracle the previous season to keep the worst team in the league up by adding a steely spine of Camp, Cullip and Bolder to his line up, could not repeat the trick and the QPR side that started that season was the worst in living memory. Chris Barker, John Curtis, Zesh Rehman, Stefan Moore, Danny Nardiello – the long and inglorious list of squad members was depressing. Rangers were without a win from their first seven league games, had just been beaten 5-1 at West Brom, and were knocked out of the League Cup at home against Leyton Orient. It’s my belief that if that situation had continued Rangers would certainly have been relegated, and may have struggled to win a single match that season. The Flavio Briatore takeover came in time to keep the club in business, but too late to take advantage of the transfer window. The club snuck Mikele Leigertwood in at the eleventh hour but Vine was the first really exciting signing of the Briatore era. As with Akos Buzsaky a short time later QPR had actually gone out for the first time since the ill-fated Mike Sheron purchase and bought one of the division’s outstanding talents. He wasn’t getting a look in at Birmingham in the Premiership but his quality shone through the dim lights of Layer Road on his Rangers debut. Mick Harford’s first game in charge was not a conspicuous success – Rangers were beaten 4-2, Jason Jarrett played in midfield for the first and last time, an experiment with Mikele Leigertwood at centre half failed miserably. But Vine, and to be fair Hogan Ephraim as well, gave hope for the future with tremendous individual displays. They shared a goal each in defeat.
A week later the R’s won for the first time at home to Norwich, and although it proved to be Harford’s last stand they also went to newly relegated Charlton and won 1-0 on Sky. Vine was exceptional that day – collecting the ball in that deep lying left position and running the Addicks’ defence ragged. He won a penalty, which Rowlands missed, but kept going and going and going and it was an absolute joy to behold.
He settled down to a more consistent level of performance, as all players do after a time, and there was criticism of his bravery, heading and, again, goal scoring rate. But Vine still had that exciting streak in him, owing mainly to a wonderful ability to control the ball, and run with it at pace almost as if it was glued to his foot. Don’t get me wrong he was no George Best, he probably wasn’t even the best player at QPR at the time, but he was a good player.
The broken leg he suffered was a dreadful incident for so many reasons. Firstly it was all so meaningless – it happened on the training ground, right at the end of the season when we had nothing to play for, it happened in a challenge with goalkeeper Matt Pickens who was only on a short term deal at Rangers anyway, it apparently came after a heated session where Vine had got under Pickens’ skin and had the American walked away and taken a breath probably would never have happened. It wasn’t a standard leg break and Vine suffered complications and had to have several operations.
And, it seems, it’s finished him. It’s certainly finished him at QPR and his game needs to improve ten fold if he is to play in this league for anybody else. He is noticeably slower, and heavier. His touch is that of a park player and he literally cannot do anything with the ball. You can see it etched on his face that he’s trying, and he never hides, but it’s just not there any more. The balance, the poise, the touch, the threat, the ability – it’s all drained away and it’s heartbreaking to see as a fan, so God only knows what it’s like for him.
Neil Warnock said today that Vine would be treated with respect, but would not be involved with the first team. His number eight shirt has been given to Leon Clarke and he hasn’t been given a shirt to replace it. The club are now negotiating a settlement with him.
A sad end to what started out as a promising QPR career, and very frustrating because as it stands a fit and flowing Rowan Vine would be the best striker on our books and one of the first names on the team sheet next Saturday against Barnsley. Hopefully freeing up his salary will finally create room to sign an effective front man, and give Vine the chance to rebuild his career elsewhere.
A preview preview
It’s that time of the year again when I sit down and write the great big LFW look ahead of the Championship season that nobody reads. It will all (reams and reams of nonsense) be published on here from Monday to Thursday next week followed by a load of Barnsley preview nonsense on Friday. Oooh getting excited now.
Without wishing to pre-empt the preview too much I’ve found Middlesbrough the most interesting team to write up so far. Now my views on Scottish football have been aired often enough on here but to summarise for latecomers it isn’t actually a sport as I understand it. Sport is competitive, sport is enjoyed by people, sport is enthralling – Scottish football is none of those things.
Scottish football is not competitive - I can tell you which two teams are going to win the top division in Scotland for the next 30 years. It is not enjoyed by people – outside of the Old Firm grounds are rarely more than a quarter full. It is not enthralling – once Celtic and/or Rangers have embarrassed themselves in the European qualifiers in July and made a mockery of all their summer acquisitions who gave “the chance to play in Europe” as their primary reason for signing it’s back down to a league and cup system that means you will play Motherwell, Kilmarnock and Hamilton between 12 and 18 times during the year. Joe Ledley’s move to Celtic was funny because it did Cardiff out of a lot of money, but how much of a tit does he feel after last night’s result in Braga? Now all he has to look forward to is a league campaign where he’s never more than three weeks away from another game with Dundee United.
As a consequence, buying players from the SPL is a risky business. Shopping in a top flight where players like Leon Knight, Scott Vernon, Sam Parkin and Danny Invincible can ply their trade – Conference standard footballers – is like buying your meat from Lidl. There are exceptions – Graeme Dorrans and Charlie Adam were two of the outstanding talents in this league last season and we’ll face few better wide men this year than Chris Burke. But, generally, players who excel up north now rarely cut the mustard down here – Ivan Sproule and Scott McDonald are two of the higher profile disappointments.
McDonald signed for Middlesbrough for £3m last season – that’s £750,000 a goal, or £250,000 an appearance if you’d prefer. This is a player that scored 59 goals in 103 domestic games in Scotland. He may well fire this season but he looked mediocre at best last term. That hasn’t put the former Celtic manager Gordon Strachan off though. Boro have also brought in Willo Flood, Chris Killen and Barry Robson from Celtic, Kevin Thompson and Kris Boyd from Rangers. They had Lee Miller from Aberdeen as well but he really was crap and has already returned. Nicky Bailey apart they’re shopping exclusively north of the border.
In a rank looking Championship next season I have Boro going up in second place behind Nottingham Forest but Strachan has taken a massive gamble on buying players from a poor league to return Middlesbrough to the top flight in England. It remains to be seen whether he is successful.
The LFW preview of the Championship season will be online from Monday, starting with a look at the six new teams in the league this season, and looking back at the six who left us one way or another in May.
The Stig
And finally, because I always try to end on something quirky, a copy and paste from the message board. Thoughts on Alessandro Pellicori from a warped mind.
Some said that Pellicori would surprise us all. And they were right - somebody that slow playing professional football is a surprise.
Some say the plan all along was just to sign him for six months then sell him on and we actually made a small profit when he left in January. Except he's still here, one year into a three year deal.
Some say he can smoke more cigarettes in a day than the Marlboro man himself, and when researching the signing last summer LFW staff looked him up on Facebook and his profile shot was him with a cigarette in his mouth.
Some say that he remains at Stamford Bridge today, still chasing a through ball knocked into the channel for him by Alejandro Faurlin five minutes from time in the cup tie last September.
Some say that one day man will build a spaceship so powerful it will be able to reach the surface of Mars in 260 days. This is, coincidentally, Pellicori's best time so far in the 100 metres.
Some say that in 2004, he missed three months of action with a broken bone in his foot after tripping over grass that had grown so long in the time it took him to reach the penalty box from the halfway line that it tangled in his boot laces and tripped him up.
Some say that in 2006, an Italian football magazine programme pitted Pellicori against an obese badger in a true test of speed between man and beast. Pellicori was so slow that the badger completed a lap of the track, grew old, died, was reincarnated as a stone that eroded over many decades and was then reincarnated as a slimline warthog that found Pellicori still running and beat him by 38.7 seconds.
Some say that when Veronica Pellicori saw her son play football for the first time, she was so horrified that she cried for forty days and nights, and that now she visits the Vatican every Friday morning to pray for forgiveness from football fans whose clubs have spent the fans hard earned season ticket money on his services. Incidentally, this is where she met Gianni Paladini who offered a three year contract on the spot.
Some say Pellicori is so slow he has to empty rain water out of his football boots twice a week, and that Pellicori actually means "unbelievably slow" in seven different African languages.
Some say that when Pellicori used to run out of the tunnel at Avellino, the tannoy announcer would play the music from Chariots of Fire.