Portuguese coach Paulo Sousa is the latest man charged with bringing success to QPR, as ever LFW is on hand with the best and worst case scenarios for our latest appointment.
Pinch me I’m dreaming
"I believe in playing positive, attacking football. To achieve positive results you have to maintain a focused outlook and my team will aim to do this, both for ourselves and for the fans. I am looking forward to the challenge that lies ahead."
Hallelujah praise the Lord. Welcome Paulo, step right this way sir. Goodbye hoof and hope football, goodbye playing for draws against poor opposition just because we are the away team, goodbye long balls into the channels, goodbye not having a shot against a team with no goalkeeper for more than an hour, goodbye two goals scored away from home all season. Goodbye, farewell, good riddance.
If you were one of the hardy few souls that travelled to Swansea for that last wretched performance under Iain Dowie wasn’t Paulo Sousa’s insistence that we would be seeing a more attack minded, more skilful and more passing orientated QPR side from now on music to you ears? A focussed team, playing positive attacking football - you’ll have to excuse me I need to replenish the tissue supplies.
The man now leading our boys into battle has been there, seen it and won it. He won league and cup at Benfica after graduating from their youth set up and repeated the domestic cup and title double in Italy with Juventus in the mid 1990s where he also won the European Cup. He won a second Champions League trophy with Borussia Dortmund and also played for Sporting, Inter, Parma, Panathanaikos and Espanyol. He was part of a new generation of Portuguese players along with Figo, Nuno Gomes and others that made their national team a force to be reckoned with again and was in his day one of the most recognisable faces in European football.
Try as I might it’s hard to picture this once outstanding midfielder, oozing class and flair ,standing on the touchline at Loftus Road with his hair flapping in the breeze ordering his team to pump a long ball into the channel as we have grown accustomed to before and since Luigi De Canio was our manager.
As well as being a classy player who spent time under the guidance of Marcello Lippi (twice) and Ottmar Hitzfeld, Sousa has six years of coaching experience with Portugal’s junior sides and as an assistant to Luiz Felipe Scolari. He would have had to be blind, deaf and dumb not to pick something up from those three and he brings all that experience with him to QPR.
It is of course players that get managers the sack, see the effort and commitment suddenly being put in by the same Spurs players that could not give a toss a month ago, and Sousa is likely to have the immediate respect of our squad. Even if they only know him from Championship Manager, I'm looking at you Lee Cook, they will know him and when it comes to a 'show me your medals' competition Sousa is a clear winner. Our players have showed a willingness to quickly adapt to a new style of play over the past year with Mick Harford, Luigi De Canio and Iain Dowie all playing different ways with different priorities - they should have no problem taking advice and instructions from a man with such standing in the game as Sousa.
QPR fans look back with fondness on the reign of Luigi De Canio. The football we played on the attack with the Italian in charge was a joy to watch and many have hankered after a return to a continental coach since his departure. There were many problems with the team under De Canio, not least the defence, and these were exacerbated by his poor grasp of the language. Sousa does speak reasonable English and takes over a QPR side where the main strength now lies at the back. We wanted an English speaking De Canio and we may just have found him here. A man who can match our defensive steel and ability with a quality style of football and lively attack.
QPR have the basis of a good team. At the moment it is nothing more than a solid foundation but I wouldn’t swap Fitz Hall, Damion Stewart and Matt Connolly for any other defenders in the league at the moment and that is not a bad starting position. Radek Cerny has found form and in Ephraim, Rowlands and Leigertwood we have three players that excelled under a continental coach and style last season but have either underperformed or not featured at all in a more traditional English set up this season. People like Ledesma, Parejo and Tommasi who have struggled to fit into the systems and formations employed so far this term will also be relishing this change – none of the players I’ve mentioned in this paragraph are bad players. Far from it.
The squad has flaws without a doubt, most notably up front, but not only does Sousa bring the experience of a career that brought 51 international caps but he also has at his disposal a contact book that contains names across the continent including, dare I say it, a former colleague currently making waves just a couple of miles away from Loftus Road who has a huge pool of talent just waiting to be loaned out.
This seems to be much more of a Flavio Briatore appointment than Iain Dowie ever was. I always got the impression that the Dowie appointment came as a result of Flavio saying he wanted a manager who had experience of doing well in this league and being presented with Dowie by advisers. Briatore rarely looked or sounded convinced and ultimately the only surprise was that Dowie lasted 15 matches. Sousa is a big name with a big image, and smacks of an appointment that Briatore has had a lot to do with. As one of the main problems under Dowie was boardroom interference in transfers, tactics and team selection culminating in the row before the Reading match that saw the manager sacked it’s reassuring and encouraging to think that we may finally have somebody in charge that Flavio trusts to be there. If he’s allowed to do the job his own way we could be on to a winner here.
We moaned about the style of football under Iain Dowie, we complained about the mentality, the long balls and the lack of goals. We longed for a return to the De Canio days, only without the flaws, and with a younger English speaking version of De Canio now apparently in charge we seem to have that with bells on. Sit back and enjoy.
Oh God no, wake me when it’s all over
It has been reported in the national press this week that Flavio Briatore was actually giving serious consideration to appointing himself as manager of QPR in the wake of Iain Dowie’s departure - in Paulo Sousa he has the next best thing; a nodding dog. Sousa can simply be the chauffeur while Briatore sits in the back and gives the directions.
The club is not even denying that - once again insisting that Sousa is to be called the 'first team coach' rather than a manager. His job will almost certainly be restricted to the training ground with a say, but not exclusively so, in the team selection. Sousa will not be signing the players and will be under pressure to make sure the likes of Sam Di Carmine are in the team. Luigi De Canio was warned against using 4-5-1 formations because the owners wanted entertaining football, the idea that entertaining football can only be achieved with two up front in a 4-4-2 formation exposes the lack of knowledge in their chosen subject, and rows about transfers and tactics lead to Dowie's departure last month. The fact that Dowie had the team playing dire football and the results had dried up meant fans accepted and even welcomed the move, but it was made for the wrong reasons just like this appointment.
Sousa was undoubtedly a classy player in his day, and is the sort of big name appointment sure to attract the attention, players and sponsorship deals to QPR that Briatore longs for. However blue chip sponsors and former Italian internationals do little for you on rainy afternoons in the Championship as Rangers have shown recently on a run of three goals and two wins from seven games. What exactly is Sousa going to bring to our set up that Gareth Ainsworth hasn’t and couldn’t? The fact that Ainsworth would still be our manager had we beaten Burnley on Saturday and yet three days later he's not shows a disturbing lack of a coherent forward thinking plan for QPR. We're onto a fourth permanent manager in just over a year now and that shambolic rate of turnover shows no sign of abating with this puppet appointment.
Sousa has spent his time since retiring coaching the Portuguese under 15s side and backing up the message of a world class coach to world class players. He has never had to select a team, make a substitution, make a big decision or deal with professional players as a manager. I’m sure he is amply qualified, has learnt a lot from Scolari and has offered advice and thoughts on all manner of things but at the end of the day he has never stood there on the touchline in the 82nd minute losing 1-0 away from home and had to be the man to make the big decisions about how to turn that around.
He has no experience of Championship football, or English football at any level, either as a player or a manager. Let me ask you this, what can you tell me about Portimonense Sporting Clube, Clube Desportivo Santa Clara and Sporting Clube da Covilhã? Very little? Nothing at all? Did you even recognise them as football teams? Can you name any of their players? Any of their strengths and weaknesses? Those are three teams playing at the equivalent level of football to us in Portugal. Paulo Sousa is about to be faced with names like Doncaster Rovers, Sheffield Wednesday and Crystal Palace and, with all due respect to him as a coach and a former player, I’d be surprised if his knowledge of Richie Wellens, Mark Beevers and Clint Hill could fill the back of a postage stamp, even if he used a thick pen.
To say that Sousa is a good appointment because he is an unknown quantity from abroad and Luigi De Canio was exactly the same and he was a success is the biggest example of straw clutching since the last straw clutching world championships, held three years ago in Stockholm. Did Juande Ramos fail at Tottenham because Christian Gross failed at Tottenham and they are, after all, both foreign? No Juande Ramos failed because he thought David Bentley was a right back and Christian Gross failed because he was a certifiable lunatic – it was nothing to do with their nationality or each other.
Do not read much into his mission statement today either – Iain Dowie promised us a fast, attacking and exciting team when he took over too.
The main problem at QPR at the moment is the blurred lines between boardroom and dressing room – who is in charge of the team, the transfers, the team selection and the tactics? Is the manager free to leave out a player like Sam Di Carmine for a reasonable length of time if he feels it necessary without panicking that it may cost him his job? Those that hoped for a strong, experienced personality to come in and take the task in hand with a firm grip bringing an end to this sort of nonsense will be disappointed with the appointment of a young foreign coach in his first club manager role.
It may be a cliché but in the cold and the wind and the wet at Blackpool in January when Ben Burgess takes a ten yard run up before jamming his foot up the arse of our best player – what on earth is a combination of Flavio Briatore and Paulo Sousa going to know or do about that?
Conclusion
Regular readers, hello to both of you, will know it is not normally like me to sit on the fence however I cannot see any other way to conclude another bizarre episode in the history of Queens Park Rangers. We simply do not know how this is going to turn out, and while it could be argued that this is the case for every managerial appointment in most instances you can at least hazard a guess based on history.
Nobody knew who Luigi De Canio was when he arrived but pretty soon through even the most rudimentary research fans discovered that he had a lot of experience in Italy of guiding teams away from relegation scraps and helping them to survive and prosper against all odds. He looked to be an appointment that resulted from a great deal of homework – somebody ideally suited to the predicament we were in at the foot of the table at that time. This proved to be correct and QPR joined Genoa, Siena, Napoli, Reginna and others on the ever increasing list of teams taken over and subsequently saved by the likeable De Canio.
Nobody knew what Ray Wilkins would be like as a manager as we were his first job but Ray had been a player with us for many years and we knew that he would have us passing the ball, but was probably a bit too close and friendly with the players and lacked experience in the transfer market. We knew that. Likewise Gary Waddock who was handicapped by the financial situation at the club and poor quality of the players, many of whom felt loyalty towards the previous manager – we knew what we were getting there; an inexperienced coach in an impossible situation.
With Sousa we have nothing like that. Very few QPR fans will even have seen the man play in the flesh, although we all know he was a fabulous player who enjoyed a richly decorated career. Even an in depth search of the internet reveals only his long term involvement with Portuguese youth set up and national team under Luiz Felipe Scolari. He has never coached or managed a club side of any note and has never played or managed in England.
He could be our Jose Mourinho, he could be our Christian Gross. Nobody knows, and anybody that pretends they do is a liar. We can barely make an educated guess. The players have to take to him for this to be a success, but more importantly Flavio Briatore must now let the man he has appointed to manage the team manage the team. Briatore should stay out of the dressing room, stay out of the transfer deals, stay away from the team selection and put his axe back in the cupboard. He needs to support Sousa, provide him with a budget for players of his choice, leave him to mould a team as he sees fit for a reasonable length of time. Personally I wouldn’t even consider reviewing the manager’s position for 18 months now – the last thing we need is more upheaval and instability.
If the boardroom interference in transfers, tactics and just about everything else continues then Sousa will fail, regardless of who he is and what he has achieved in the past. I have been saying for weeks that while we may have been glad to see the back of Iain Dowie and his negative football, he was sacked for the wrong reasons and the set up at QPR is not currently conducive to winning football. That set up must now change to give Sousa any chance of succeeding here at all. If it does not I shall be writing this article again about another new manager within four months – if that.