QPR kick into Premier League gear with Caulker coup Wednesday, 23rd Jul 2014 00:32 by Clive Whittingham QPR have beaten London rivals Crystal Palace to the signing of 22-year-old Cardiff City centre half Steven Caulker for a fee in the region of £8m. FactsSteven Caulker, now 22 years old and born in nearby Feltham, is a graduate of the academy at Spurs. He was the borough 400m champion four years in a row while at school. Typically of players stuck in the system at White Hart Lane, where he captained the club’s Under 18s, he played much of his early football out on loan. He was in League One with Yeovil in 2009/10, missing just two league games all season as the Glovers finished fifteenth in the league. Caulker picked up four of the five Player of the Year awards at the end of that season at Huish Park and was subsequently named in Yeovil’s ‘Team of the Decade’ which was chosen to mark the club’s tenth straight year in the Football League — the only loaned player to be selected. A year later he stepped up a level and successfully battled Championship relegation with Bristol City after making his Spurs debut for Harry Redknapp in a League Cup defeat against Arsenal. He scored his first senior goal in a 3-2 defeat at Cardiff in October 2010 and followed that up with a thumping last minute header down at the School End to seal a 2-2 Christmas draw for the Robins against Neil Warnock’s title-chasing QPR side. He made 30 starts for City that season, won the club’s Young Player of the Year award and was on the shortlist for the senior prize. The 2011/12 campaign brought another season long loan deal, this time in the Premier League with newly promoted Swansea City. The Swans finished eleventh in the first term at the higher level and Caulker made 26 starts having missed three months in the middle of the season with a knee injury sustained following a freak collision with a goal post. Apprenticeship served, he then succeeded where so many young players at White Hart Lane fail and actually made the jump into regular first team action. He signed a four year contract in the summer of 2010 and went on to make 26 starts (17 in the league) and two sub appearances for Spurs that year, scoring twice against Aston Villa and Manchester City. His Premier League debut for Spurs came as a half time substitute in a 2-1 home win against QPR.
Caulker represented Team GB at the 2012 Olympics, making five appearances, has played 11 times for the Under 19 side and on ten occasions for the Under 21s. He made his full England debut in November 2012 and scored in a 4-2 defeat against Sweden in a friendly game. It came as something of a surprise, given the work Spurs had put into his development and chairman Daniel Levy’s preference for younger players with sell on value, that Tottenham then decided to accept an £8m offer from newly promoted Cardiff City for his services last summer. A fine signing for the Welsh side, and they looked all set to stay in the top flight for another campaign at least until eccentric owner Vincent Tan brought the whole club crashing down around his ears with a mid-season sacking of inspirational manager Malky Mackay who’d taken them into the top flight in the first place. Caulker made 39 starts — playing every single minute of their league campaign - and scored five times, again proving his prowess from set pieces, but couldn’t prevent relegation leaving him free to move to other clubs who agreed to meet the £8m fee Cardiff had paid for him in the first place owing to a clause in his contract. QPR got to the front of that queue and have agreed a four year deal which Caulker signed at Loftus Road earlier today after passing his medical. According to his Wikipedia profile — he’s a Brentford fan. That’ll go down well over at Griffin Park. Reaction”It was important for me to be back playing in the Premier League, and Harry Redknapp has given me the opportunity to be at this fantastic club. “Harry was a big factor for me, having worked with him at Tottenham. He was very keen for me to join and that was a big plus, knowing the manager wants you. Being able to play with Rio was also a big draw. He has been a role model of mine for many years, along with Ledley King. To have the opportunity to play alongside him was something I felt I couldn’t miss out on. “Our first aim this season has to be to get to 40 points, to make sure we stay up. That’s our first goal.” http://www.qpr.co.uk/news/article/220714-qpr-sign-england-defender-steven-caulke Steven Caulker “I know the ability he has and I think it’s an important signing for the club — for the here and now, and for the future. I had him at Tottenham and I was very surprised when they decided to let him go last summer, because I thought he had a big future there. “He’s young; he’s a good age; he’s already a fine player but he has so much more potential — it’s a really excellent signing for the club. When good players like Steven become available, who can come in and have a real impact, you’ve got to try and get them. I’m sure he will come in and show exactly what he’s capable of — he’s got everything to be a top, top centre-half, so I couldn’t be more pleased to have him.” http://www.qpr.co.uk/news/article/220714-qpr-sign-england-defender-steven-caulke Redknapp ”This is an immense signing for our club and exactly who we should be aiming for as first choice picks. In fact, it’s a bit of a coup. He's 22 (that's his age in years not his years as a professional), English (from West London at that), already been captain of a Premier League team, so you know he's the 'right sort' on and off the pitch. He also has all the playing qualities you need in a top level centre back: speed, strength (on the floor and in the air) and thanks to Swansea he can use the ball too. He learnt his trade through three years of loan signings before showing consistently strong performances in a poor and ultimately relegated Cardiff team. Thanks to the release clause the £8m we reportedly paid is a lot less than he is and will be worth. This is a young centre back that could well be first choice for England for the next ten years. AND HE'S A QPR PLAYER. Fantastic work from all involved, the best signing for a long time.” — Simmo ”Very pleased with this signing for many different reasons but none more so than a refreshing change in transfer policy. Will add much needed youth and pace to our defence and hopefully learn a trick or two from Rio. Welcome Steven.” —RangersAreBack “I was concerned because like many failures we've had, he seemed more interested in how much money he could make than actually wanting to play for us. I really think we can forget that and welcome him to become a long term player for QPR. A 22 year old centre back who has already captained a team in the Prem? Seems like great business to me and the fact that he has experienced one relegation, I hope, will make him determined not to let that happen again, so I see that as another positive.” —SomersetHoops ”Ok may as well put on record now, I'm not convinced he's that good. I thought he was one of those eye catching centre backs who looks dangerousish from corners, is a bit blood and gutsy in the big games, but when I've seen him - admittedly only five or six times - has lacked positional awareness which for me is the number one most important thing for a centre back. It's the equivalent of a TV save Seaman used to talk about - a really top class centre back makes few last ditch challenges because they have read he game and are already in the right place.” - Ingeminate OpinionJoey Barton, who seems to be quite settled at QPR these days after spending his first two years with the club trying to engineer a departure from it, said it best after May’s remarkable play-off final victory at Wembley: this can no longer be a place where good footballers come to die. Even Rangers will have to go some to kill off Steven Caulker. QPR have made these apparently too-good-to-be-true signings before in recent times and almost always fallen flat on their face. When Alex Ferguson agreed to release South Korean footballing legend Ji-Sung Park from Old Trafford, where he’d been United’s go-to man for the big games for years, for a modest fee of £5m it seemed remarkable that he should beat a path to the doors at Loftus Road. As it turned out, Ferguson was getting shot because Park was an entirely spent force, and QPR would have been overpaying if they’d offered a Monster Munch multipack for what was by this stage an entirely useless football good only for selling replica shirts. Then there was Julio Cesar: a Champions League winning goalkeeper from Inter Milan, a full Brazilian international destined to start for his country in a World Cup on home soil. Having been rated as one of the finest goalkeepers in Europe it seemed ridiculous that he would sign for QPR when his contract expired at the San Siro. Once he’d pulled the Rangers shirt on, however, he became little more than a better known, more expensive, foreign version of Tony Roberts - a terrific shot stopper, but completely deficient and at times terrifyingly bad at all other facets of the sport. Esteban Granero, a popular graduate of Real Madrid’s youth team, nosedived so sharply from a bright start in West London that you could hear him whistling through the air as he descended. Andy Johnson, best player on the pitch in QPR’s first two meetings with Fulham following promotion in 2011, quickly written off as a physical wreck. Likewise Bobby Zamora. Jose Bosingwa, another Champions League winner, turned out to be one of the sport’s genuine arseholes. Junior Hoilett went from sought after young prospect at Blackburn to a wildly inconsistent, horribly injury prone winger whose weight went up and down like a bride’s nightie and confidence seemed entirely shot. And so it went on. Chairman Tony Fernandes said he’d had his pant pulled down by agents and the management team he installed, led by Mark Hughes, his technical director Mike Rigg, and the omnipresent leech without portfolio Kia Joorabchian. The Malaysian owner said lessons had been learnt and mistakes would not be repeated, and the long-suffering QPR support speculated on what those lessons might be. QPR needed to start signing younger players - players with a future sell on value, players with lots still to achieve and prove, players with ambition. QPR needed to stop signing players with medical files that require a trolley to wheel them into the building, and start doing more stringent medical checks. Beware players who’ve played for the biggest clubs in the world, where the facilities are perfect, their team mates are world class and 95% of games end in a victory, because training at Harlington, scrapping against relegation in 18,000 capacity Loftus Road, and looking up to see Karl Henry as you only option for a pass in a tight situation can be something of a culture shock. Beware foreign players with over-active agents. One or two problems with this though. For a start, these young, hungry, medically sound, talented, English players with lofty ambitions, high sell on value and lots still to prove don’t exactly come cheap. We live in an age where Jake Livermore is worth £8m, Adam Lallana £25m and Luke Shaw £33m. Secondly, QPR are a newly promoted team with totally substandard facilities at the stadium and training ground, with a terrible recent reputation for just about everything a football club can build a reputation for. Last time the R’s were at this level the whole place was a laughing stock, with the club’s own captain going public on numerous occasions saying the dressing room was a poisonous place and the team spirit amounted to little more than betting with each other on who would win the latest changing room punching up. Persuading said bright young things to risk their career in a place like that is no mean feat. You would therefore have forgiven the QPR medical staff if the first part of the tests on Steven Caulker this morning consisted of little more than them walking slowly around him, poking him firmly with their index fingers to see if he is actually real — and really here. That, presumably, was swiftly followed by a thorough brain scan. Famous last words, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with this transfer. It’s a remarkable coup for a club of QPR’s size, and totally out of character with what’s gone before. Caulker is only 22 but has already amassed more than 160 first team appearances — a fine achievement considering he was groomed in the Spurs academy which seems to exist more to hoard young talent and keep it away from rival clubs than actually promote it into their first team. He’s fought relegation in the Championship while on loan with Bristol City, and in the Premier League last season with Cardiff. In between he spent a season on loan at Swansea after they won promotion to the top flight. So he knows about relegation scraps, and he knows all about playing for teams that have just come into this division, and about leading and captaining clubs too. All at 22. He also knows Harry Redknapp and how he works, just as the manager knows him. Honestly, I’m having to fight the urge to start singing Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.
At £8m he’s extortionately expensive for a club of QPR’s size, but not for a club receiving this year’s television money. Guessing that Caulker has, as he did with Cardiff, insisted on a release clause similar to what he was bought for should the R’s be relegated, it represents as much of a risk free investment as you can get — the curse of the QPR anterior cruciate knee ligaments not withstanding of course. If the R’s do stay up, there’s the potential for him to stay here for four years, or the R’s to make some decent sell on value from him, and if they go down there’ll be no shortage of suitors at the price. There will no doubt be talk of the ridiculous wages QPR are paying — more than likely from fans of Crystal Palace who thought they might buy Caulker themselves — but I’d say it’s unlikely that Caulker will be earning as much as the likes of Granero, Cesar and Bosingwa previously, nor that it’s excessive for his ability, potential and the television money that’s now coming into the club. Last season Harry Redknapp could have been accused on several occasions of racking and stacking players, making signings for the sake of making them, often in positions Rangers didn’t need to strengthen, and rarely with any idea of a final starting 11 in mind. Signing Niko Kranjcar, then Yossi Benayoun, then Will Keane and then Ravel Morrison who all play the same position for example. Or bringing in Kevin Doyle… and then bringing in Mobido Maiga. Or signing eight loan players when you could only use five in a matchday squad. But Redknapp has openly stated he wants to play with a back three this season and has signed players accordingly. Rio Ferdinand and Steven Caulker fit perfectly into that system with Nedum Onuoha and provide a Premier League quality base from which Rangers can build their season. The team lacks pace, and cover for Charlie Austin, and legs for the midfield alongside Joey Barton — Ale Faurlin’s return from two ruptured ACLs cannot be guaranteed and I’d be as enthusiastic about Lewis Holtby journeying across town to add tenacity and engine to the midfield as I am about Caulker signing for the defence if it were to happen. Sadly not even a sniff of that at the moment. But this is, like Matt Phillips and Charlie Austin before him, a proper signing. Good age, good price, excellent player. Exactly the sort of transfer QPR should be getting involved in. Perhaps, on the signings side at least, lessons have been learnt after all. The Twitter @loftforwords Pictures — Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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