QPR have ended weeks of speculation by confirming that Crystal Palace midfielder Shaun Derry will move to Loftus Road on a two year contract at the end of June.

Facts

Derry has taken the opportunity to move to Loftus Road on a free transfer at the end of his Crystal Palace contract, and has signed a two year deal with QPR. The 32 year old defensive central midfielder has been the Palace skipper for the past two years, clocking up 129 appearances for the Eagles since signing on a free transfer from Leeds in 2007.

That was his second spell at Selhurst Park – they originally signed him for £400,000 in 2002 and he made 99 appearances through to 2005. He scored three times in his first spell, and none in his second. In between he spent three months on loan with Forest and three years at Leeds United before dropping out of contention for a first team berth at Elland Road when then manager Dennis Wise accused one member of his playing staff of giving the Leeds team sheet to Crystal Palace officials before a match between the two – Wise never named Derry, but said the culprit would never play for the club again and Derry did indeed never feature again for Leeds.

This will be the third time Warnock has worked with Derry – who started his career with Notts County and then joined up with Warnock at Sheffield United in 1998 in a £700,000 transfer. A spell with Pompey between 2000 and 2002 preceded his first spell at Crystal Palace. He was the captain at Portsmouth, and promoted to the Premiership during his first spell with Palace. He was part of the Leeds United side that lost to Watford in the 2006 Cardiff play off final.  Leeds were relegated when Derry missed a large chunk of the season through injury – hernia and ankle problems.

Overall he has made 546 professional appearances and scored 13 goals. 

Reaction

Shaun Derry said: “I'm delighted to reach agreement with the Club. There's a very talented group of players already here. When QPR came to Palace at the end of last season, in my own opinion, they were the best side we played at Selhurst Park. That was the kind of performance Neil will want from us next season. The aim has to be to compete at the top - the top two ideally. We've definitely got the ability and the quality to get into the Premier League. Neil was a big sway. When he comes calling, you have to consider what he brings to the table and I really like working with him. He knows what he wants and he's got a way of getting the best out of people. Whenever I've played under him, I've played my best football and long may that continue." qpr.co.uk

Neil Warnock said: “I felt we needed another type of midfielder to what we already have. If we are going to be successful this season we need to cover every avenue. I know Shaun well. He is a very good professional who will benefit the team.” qpr .co.uk

Palace fans said: “cheers again for a great few years and the sheer amount of heart you've shown in leading this team to survival this year, even if your legs barely carried you at the end! You're a terrific captain, a lovely bloke and a great role model to younger players. Good luck at your next club and future off the field.”

“I am a massive fan of Derry and have had the pleasure of chatting to him and witness his fantastic role behind the scenes in a Captain capacity. He really did look like the archetypal right hand man - this was when Warnock was gaffer I should add. I haven't got a bad word to say about him as a man and a captain; as a player he is limited but brilliant at what he does.”

“Wonder if Warnock wants Lawrence ? Could give him a 2 year contract and a pay rise. He will only be 45 at the end of the deal. If I was a QPR fan I would be well pissed off with the quality of players that he is bringing in.”

“A great captain who worked his arse off for the club and provided the team with enormous passion and determination. Was key for us in getting his foot in and breaking up opponents attacks, but as with many in his position was lacking in passing ability, and sometimes left us exposed by playing too high up the pitch when we had the ball. We now need a new captain and a new tackling midfielder. This is probably a good move for us and Derry. He was a Warnock player and may not have held onto the captaincy - we now have a chance for a new captain with the new manager and Derry can try to hold a position with a Manager he gets on with. As for QPR, for a team that's favourite to win the league, I'm not convinced signing a player like Derry will do much to achieve those ambitions. We shall see.” Palace message board

Opinion

Supporters do not like defensive midfielders. For the common fan, and Kevin Keegan, the defenders are for defending and everybody else is for attacking and scoring goals. At QPR for several seasons, and with some justification, supporters have bemoaned the presence of Gavin Mahon and Mikele Leigertwood, and pleaded for players like Buzsaky to start being used in the middle of the park.

Sadly, it’s an English trait to marginalise players such as Buzsaky as wingers, while the middle of the midfield is packed with what Ian Holloway would have one day called ‘piano carriers’. Holloway, that was, who thought Martin Rowlands was too attacking to play in the middle and used him wide while Marc Bircham and Steve Palmer forged a “dynamic” central partnership.

I’ve always used Juan Riquelme as a case study for this. A player so good on the ball that Villarreal forgave him his total lack of defensive ability and allowed to roam free in the centre of a midfield built to suit him. Whether West Ham will do the same for him next season remains to be seen – they have Parker and Hitzlsperger who would be well suited to protecting the Argentine but whether an English side will actually give him that freedom remains to be seen.

Managers love defensive central midfielders. An extra line of defence ahead of the actual defence and goalkeeper, a destroyer, somebody to fill that dangerous hole between attack and defence  - it’s normally only when a ‘dream’ central midfield partnership has failed time and again, as has happened with Lampard and Gerrard, that fans start to see the value of Gareth Barry. Or in QPR’s case when you have a Riquelme type character, Ray Wilkins in our case, who needs an Ian Holloway doing the work his legs can no longer cope with.

Every QPR manager in the past three seasons, and by God there have been a few, has picked Mikele Leigertwood in the middle of midfield. To a fan, the idea of somebody with such a wildly inconsistent passing game and frankly abysmal first touch being right at the heart of the team while somebody with the technical ability of Akos Buzsaky has to scratch around on the wing is pure madness. Yet all of our managers have done it. Ask QPR fans to name a team to start the season and I reckon most would have Buzsaky and Faurlin as the middle pair. Ask Neil Warnock to name three different sides for different occasions and I’m not sure they’d  be paired in any of them.

Shaun Derry is the ultimate fans’ enemy. First of all he’s slow - really, really slow. He cannot pass particularly well, he doesn’t score a lot of goals, he spends most of his time berating referees and at 32 he’s been in decline for several years. On a quiet day by his standards Adel Taarabt humiliated Derry with simple tricks on three occasions at Selhurst Park last season. He looked a tired man, a player who has lost his legs. Yet here we are, giving him a two year contract that eclipsed rival offers from Ipswich, Crystal Palace and Greece.

Derry is likely to replace Gavin Mahon in the QPR squad. Mahon has sat out the last nine months after a knee operation which is bound to inhibit his already limited pace and effect on a game and is a year older than Derry anyway. Mahon has been an enemy of QPR fans for much of his time here, another central midfield clogger who kept the darlings like Buzsaky out of the centre of midfield, but he has been an excellent signing – albeit one that was reported by the club as an emergency one month loan two and a half years ago and never updated since. Mahon, except when paired with Leigertwood, has been a fine performer for us for the last couple of seasons. He was a far better player than Derry before his injury and will be a tough act to follow if, as seems certain, his contract is not renewed after this signing.

On the positive side we do need a defensive central midfielder. A consistent one who can play us 40 matches next year – unlike Mahon who will do well to play 40 games in a season again or Leigertwood who can be brilliant one week and awful the next. We also need a leader, a talker, a force in the dressing room, somebody to provide arms round shoulders, protection and, when required, bollockings. At Palace last season Derry talked the referee into booking Dusko Tosic when he’d actually been sinned against while Leigertwood, alleged captain that day, stood by and watched. Warnock needs his own men at Rangers and Derry is undoubtedly that.

Sadly though he’s very one dimensional. Even the Palace fans with whom he was popular admit his legs have gone. It is possible, and in Martin Rowlands we have actually found one, to get a central midfielder who can be defensive, attacking and a leader. Sadly, Rowlands cannot be depended on next season because of the state of his knees. On the same day we signed Derry, Middlesbrough picked up the nearest thing to another Rowlands in the Football League – Nicky Bailey from Charlton – for £1.4m. Players like Bailey, and Ben Watson whose time at QPR turned out to be a disaster but could still be a tremendous signing for us, are hard to come by and most clubs have to make do with the likes of Derry. It seem such a shame to me that QPR once again seem to be missing the boat – taking cheap options like Derry and Leon Clarke when even a modest outlay could secure Nicky Bailey and Gary Hooper instead.

Photo: Action Images

qpr_ox added 22:37 - Jun 22 Not sure about this one. Where is the ambition? I know Warnock has his favourites, but surely this is his chance to ditch the bargain basement offers and go out there and buy some real talent! I do not relish a Derry & Legs partnership next season at all. If that bears fruit I will eat my complimentary Qpr scarf. Although, having said that, it will probably be a better central partnership than Gerrard and Lampard.

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DublinQPR74 added 00:14 - Jun 23 Dare I say it, but Quashie anyone? Not exactly looking like a team we can be proud of. QPR fans aren't known for tolerating semi-successful, unattractive football, so I think the only way Warnock isn't going to alienate the fans is with achiveing the playoffs. Mid-table simply won't cut it next year. These signings are worrying also from the wage bill point of view. Kenny's contract is going to cost about 3 million alone. Derry's probably in the region of 1.5 million (assuming 15k a week, which is a total guess). They're also going to inflate our wage structure. So when people say trust in Neil, we're trusting a lot in Neil. Also, there's a lot of talk on message boards telling people to chin up and not question the player acquisitions as Neil Warnock has achieved promotion x number of times etc. I hate this attitude and I think that discussion is great and if people want to voice their opinions, whatever they are, they should be encouraged (as long as they're not being total knobs). I think the Mackie signing is good as he is a very game lad by all accounts, and Paddy Kenny if we weren't paying him so much, but the other two seem to me like immobile players possibly looking for a payday. Excellent and clear-as-glass article Clive, although I do think QPR fans (and football fans in general) appreciate that there has to be cover for the back four. The issue people have, I think, is that when you have four in midfield, you can have both a creative and a defensive central midfield pairing, whereas there often seems to be two midfielders trying to do the exact same thing. It's up to the manager to clarify their roles I think. So if you're going to have, as per your example above, Faurlin and Buszaky as the central midfield pairing, one of them (Faurlin obviously) would have to be dedicated to the covering role. Realistically it's going to be something like Faurlin and Derry/Leigertwood/other, but I wonder if Faurlin will be encouraged to get forward. In fairness, the end of last season bodes well in this regard.

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Northernr added 08:52 - Jun 23 I do think we have to be careful talking about how much money Kenny is on. Some story went around saying he was on £20k a week which is nonsense. Sheff Utd put it around that we'd made him some unbelievable offer really to cover up the fact that they've lost a very good player. When he got his drugs ban United put him on vastly reduced terms, around 5k a week, and I believe we've doubled that. 10k a week is pretty standard stuff at our level - legs, helguson, vine, agyemang, hall, cook, gorkss, routledge are all on/have been on more with us - and kenny has been one of the division's outstanding keepers for years. It's a laboured point but I just don't want supporters to hang the guy for any mistakes because they think he's on twice as much money as he actually is.

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Swedish_Hoop added 23:55 - Jun 23 As often as I may agree with you, Clive, I have to take another stand on this one. I don't agree with your idea, that football supporters rarely understand the importance of a slow, hard-working and -tackling central midfielder with poor technical abilities and a restricted split vision; and that experienced managers often see something in them which the public don't (If I even understand you correctly). I think there are plenty of midfielders out there who master a multitude of situations in a match. I would even go as far as saying that Rangers could have had a defensive midfielder who would outshine Derry at his own game: the getting stuck in-kind of game, and furhermore, could master the art of passing the ball, reading the game like a 'regista' and being pacy and agile. We could have had an Isaiah Osbourne, a Jason Jarrett, an Owen Garvan, a Neil Danns or even an old-timer such as George Boateng, who's contract expires this summer.

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Swedish_Hoop added 08:13 - Jun 24 Some of the players I suggust above may be past their prime. I could't think of any other British players to fill the criteria. Swedish classy defensive midfielders? I've got five or six good prospects in mind, but what's the likelihood?
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Northernr added 09:07 - Jun 24 Supporters want to be entertained at the football. I would say the majority of QPR fans would forgo the presense of a defensive central midfielder if it meant getting Buz and Faurlin together in the middle of the park more often than not. Whereas managers go into games not to lose generally, that seems to be the modern trend, and will anchor the midfield to death more often than not. Occasionally a manager will see the value of just going for it, occasionally supporters will decide we're missing Gavin Mahon, but not often on either count.

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DublinQPR74 added 11:18 - Jun 24 A team that many people admired (me included) a few years ago was Arsenal with Patrick Viera, and for that matter, France with him in the holding role. He didn't have many tricks and was often one of the less technically gifted of the Arsenal midfield, but he was very strong in challenges and gave the team a real backbone. He was wise with his passes, although without that many assists and although not the paciest he often won the ball through his footballing acumen. He was also one of the most popular and valued members of that team in terms of the fans. You can say others will be remembered more, but every team that plays good football needs a bit of grit. I doubt we're getting that with this acquisition and I think that's why people are less than impressed, not that Derry's a defensive midfielder, but that he's not a very good defensive midfielder for this level. Maybe he will turn out to have a great year for us, but again, it's a gamble. Would be nice to do things by the orthodox route and sign players with potenial and players with a track record who still have a lot to offer for once. We do occasionally do this (see Faurlin and Mahon) but we also tend to buy a lot of dross, which the fans end up paying for.

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derbyhoop added 12:38 - Jun 24 If, and it's a big if, we're going to write off Gavin Mahon, only to replace him with a similarly aged player, who is even slower, would we not be better off trying to bring on the likes of Joe Oastler or Max Ehmer. They might not prove to be good enough but most of us are convinced that if Shaun Derry is the answer, we must be asking the wrong question.
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Swedish_Hoop added 15:56 - Jun 24 I apologise for the lack of coherence in my first comment. When it was written, I had had a few of those cold and soothing Heineken. Clive, your arguments make perfect sense; and as always, your thougts and your words are clear, coherent and spot on. My comment was a poor one - in many respects. I do maintain though, that the likes of Vieira - as mentioned above - represent what we mean when we refer to a classy defensive midfielder. Vieira had it all, and you can't expect Rangers to bag one of his caliber. But still, we should be able to do better than Derry (unless I'm mistaken about him). And if we don't, we should walk the path that 'derbyhoop' implies: rely on our own young products already at the club.

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Northernr added 15:59 - Jun 24 True, if we could ever bag us a Veira type player that would nullify the point. However in the meantime I'd rather we looked for another Rowlands, rather than another Mahon. Mahon did well for us but was pretty limited, derry is very limited indeed, Rowlands can defend and attack. Nickey Bailey going to Boro is a player I would like to have seen in W12.
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Swedish_Hoop added 18:39 - Jun 24 Northern, I couldn't agree more: I pick A Rowlands-type over a Mahon-type seven days a week. And I would play TWO Martin Rowlandes at the heart of the midfield if I was given the chance. What is Rowlands’ physical status at this moment? Will he captain the side this season?
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JB007007 added 08:17 - Jun 25 Neil Warnock's teams are normally pretty tough and difficult to play against and beat. Firstly, he obviously wants to achieve this for us and by signing players that have made this work for him was always on the agenda I suppose. I havent seen enough of Derry to really criticise. We certainly shipped far too many goals last season beacause there was no insurance policy in front of the defence. Secondly, he knows we lacked goals as well so It will interesting to see who he adds to the front line. With that, we must be patient as we are not even into July yet.

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WestbourneR added 12:41 - Jun 25 Couldn't agree more about Bailey - he has been outstanding for a while and will be a big payer for Boro next season. Good age too. Irritates me we aren't snapping these people up.
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