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Reply | Most dramatic fall
at 15:48 20 Dec 2024
Karl Ready won the player of the year 97-98 (in an admittedly dreadful squad). He played another 100 games or so for us after that and it's hard to think of good one. |
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Reply | McLean suspended for 4 matches
at 16:15 12 Dec 2024
i watched it in real time, you WUM. It was intentional, violent and I have absolutely no doubt very painful and shocking to Morgan.
Your view is entirely irrelevant to me therefore.
Just to add: Kenny McLean was sent off against Luton two years ago for an identical incident when he "accidentally" caught Tom Lockyer in the head with a straight-arm smash. He then also spent five minutes also chasing after the ref as he did Saturday. That's the player. This is his second four match ban of this season for violent conduct. |
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Reply | McLean suspended for 4 matches
at 15:20 12 Dec 2024
Morgan was "poleaxed" because he was blinded-sided by a swinging forearm aimed at his face. First, he was in agony. Then, shock when he got up and finally blind rage. I watched it unfold in R block. It was disgraceful.
Would love to get you together with Morgan to explain why in your judgement it probably didn't hurt as much he made out.
"I'm afraid I see it differently". Who cares? Are you on the disciplinary panel?
Why are watching clips of QPR and wading onto QPR message boards to pompously pronounce? Are you banned from Brentford fan sites? Understandable. |
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Reply | McLean suspended for 4 matches
at 11:29 11 Dec 2024
"If I'm playing inside Ossie Kakay I'm talking and encouraging him for 90 minutes, step, hold, get tight, not hanging him out to dry"
The "if" in this sentence is doing quite a lot of work. *If* I'm playing right wing for QPR, I'm placing at least ten perfect crosses a match on the striker's right foot and forehead and we win the league.
I wonder who Osman Kakay would've preferred to have playing alongside him as captain? Steve Cook or ParkRoyalR?
We'll probably never know. |
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Reply | Chair
at 16:12 10 Dec 2024
Chair's right footed. He's played there before and he's 10x the player Smyth is. Smyth has one assist and zero goals playing wide in a front three from eleven games. I reckon Chair can manage that.
There's a role for Smyth. But come on. Anyway, I'd play Chair in the middle instead of Madsen, working and swapping with Saito as he did best with Willock. Not sure Smyth will get away with overhitting passes to Chair and blaming him quite so often. |
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Reply | Chair
at 15:21 10 Dec 2024
If we're rotating Chair with Saito while picking Paul Smyth every week then we deserve L1 next season.
Chair is the best attacking footballer at the club, proven, acknowledged in our dressing room and opposition dressing rooms as such. One of maybe three players coveted by any other team higher up the pyramid. When he's fit, he plays. Marti knows this.
He's also capable of playing on the right, in the centre or obviously on the left. In a team where Ashby plays left back with only a right foot and Dunne plays right back, Chair can play wherever he's picked.
Probably starts on the bench initially, but he must play when fit - not least so we can sell him in the last-chance window of this summer. I'd say Madsen is most vulnerable, but I'm not a coach. |
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Reply | Cook.
at 18:15 9 Dec 2024
Exactly. Dave Webb left Chelsea who finished 17th in '74 to join QPR who'd finished 8th. And the season after he left them, Chelsea were relegated, while QPR finished 11th. He also beat Chelsea home and away with his new club, and of course came second in the league in 75/76 with Rangers - higher than he ever finished with CFC.
It was a step-up for Webb!
Frank McLintock, on the other hand, yeah - lower club when he moved (but career-saving move). |
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Reply | Nourry
at 10:58 8 Dec 2024
He's not happy and every week Marti's comments are increasingly more alarming than anything on the pitch.
It's imperative that QPR keep Marti here and happy. I'd rather anyone leave - players, staff/board member or certainly newbie CEO - than this manager who keeps us punching miles above our current weight.
As pointed elsewhere: to keep clean sheets against Watford away and Norwich, the two best attacks in the league, without our best centre back, our only left back on half a leg and a centre back playing RB (and scoring), while fashioning so many chances without our best two creative players and a recognised centre forward, with two teenagers with less than half a dozen full games between them starring...
It's incredible. He's earned whatever he wants. I am only interested in Cifuentes' "game model" and "marginal gains". Nobody else's opinion should count. |
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Reply | Nourry
at 09:15 8 Dec 2024
We're getting a lot of catastrophic muscle injuries, calves and hamstrings. We didn't last season, because the fitness and performance manager managed the players very well - what with being at the training ground. Worth noting the club's innovative head of medical and performance Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed left in Feb too.
You can't do anything about impact injuries. You absolutely can about hamstring, calf and back injuries: the three injuries we didn't suffer much from last season but are being plagued with this season.
What's changed? Draw your own conclusions. Marti clearly has. |
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Reply | Kolli
at 08:26 8 Dec 2024
I've never listened to the guy's commentary, so I must assume he's good at that. But he is a dreadful interviewer, probably the worst I can recall even in the field of soft-ball football club employee interviewers. He is the pits. He never asks anything that could draw insight, about anything. The first three questions here are all variations on how did it feel to score (in itself a terrible question: the better question is to describe the goals). Ask him about getting back in the team! He makes Nick London seem like Nick Robinson.
To have him doing post-match interviews every week is like someone hitting the first man with every corner and never coming off corners. I know it's not important, really, at all, but it's just another weird thing at modern QPR. I'd love to know the internal staff gossip about this season. One day hopefully. |
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Reply | Willock?
at 11:46 29 Nov 2024
Harsh! All players are mercenaries: you'd struggle to pick an eleven from the top two divisions of players who aren't mercenaries.
Also "whatever that means for his career". He came to QPR for his career, to play regularly at a decent level. It was mutually beneficial for 18 months or so, but there's no question QPR's management of his body effectively broke his career. Warburton played him at Forest when he was injured and snapped his hamstring. Beale played him too often for too long when he wasn't properly recovered (but still winning games on his own, ie Millwall and Sheff U). His career will never be the same because of QPR's mismanagement of him.
Then we had the whole Ainsworth farrago of sticking him on at 93 min of games, playing Kelman instead, etc. What loyalty should he (or a concerned Dad?) have to QPR?
And going to Cardiff for a higher wage rather than staying at QPR: I mean, it's much of muchness, career-wise. Going to Saudi is mercenary. Going to Cardiff, a club who finished six places higher - not really a sell-out, is it? |
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Reply | Celar
at 08:34 28 Nov 2024
He's not a lone striker, is he? Bannister, Allen (C), Spencer...none of these were lone strikers either. All great number 9s but all would be lost pressing on their own or holding the ball up against CBs in this set-up. But great to see those finishes last night. Maybe when Dembele's back offering a bit more speed and Chair behind he may be better judging on last night. We still definitely need at least one more senior striker - no club can just have two. |
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Reply | Ownership of QPR
at 14:49 21 Nov 2024
Dave, come on.
We were in administration and Division 2 because Chris Wright did exactly you're saying you wish Richard Thompson did. He spent money on players we couldn't afford, then we couldn't sell (because they weren't worth what we had paid), signed every remotely promising youth player on long contracts, threw good money (ours, not his) repeatedly after bad, etc etc. He put the club at risk. that's why we missed boom time! Fulham did OK coming up while we imploded under Wright. RT oversaw consecutive top twelve finishes with a bottom three attendance. Not perfect, but prudent and successful. They were the QPR glory years, not a missed opportunity.
The only chance for QPR since the late 70s has been to do what Thompson did, what Gregory did: buy wisely, sell when at their peak (and fans demand you don't), then reinvest. You have to be good at it and we were, for decades: C Allen, Fenwick, Sinton, Ferdinand, Peacock etc.
If you buy Darren Peacock for £200k and sell him four years later for £2.75 million you are not asset stripping any more than selling Eze for £20 million is. It's economic management of an otherwise loss-making business. We should have been celebrating rather than sitting in. It's the only way for QPR, then, now, always. We tried a sugar daddy and it nearly broke us again.
We should remember the facts of our history and choose protests wisely (FPR, Winkleman: both vital). Because history suggests that whatever comes after Ruben Gnanalingam is likely to be considerably less benevolent. |
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Reply | Ownership of QPR
at 19:50 20 Nov 2024
But Wilkins was given the Les money and bought those two midfielders needed: they just happened to be Osborn and Zelic. They still cost £2.5 million! He also spent 1.25 million on Hateley, of course.
He spent £5 million quid that summer and they were all duds. Ironic that the one year we spent significant money we were relegated.Wilkins was a good man, great captain, one of my favourite players, may have been a good coach, but he shouldn't have been given that money with the ownership in flux.
It was less about investment and money, it was always about the people doing the recruitment. Same as now, really.
Re Cole: obviously, with hindsight, you'd spend £500k on Andy Cole in 1992 if you could go back in time. But he'd played one game for Arsenal. Went down a division to get games at Bristol C, played for six months, scored loads and Newcastle bought him. I listened to a podcast with him and he said he had other offers but knew someone at Brizzle and was guaranteed games. QPR came fifth that season with Les Ferdinand, Bradley Allen (who had a great season), Gary Penrice, Dennis Bailey, even Garry Thompson. Devon White too! 20 year-old Andy Cole may not have got those games he needed had he joined, and probably wouldn't have signed for that reason...
Ifs, buts and maybes.
Enjoyable debate, everyone. Totally kiboshed my work deadline. |
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Reply | Ownership of QPR
at 18:38 20 Nov 2024
Chris Wright was an absolute disaster in 1996 and would have been a disaster in 1993, too. What in his CV or work suggests otherwise? The worst chairman/owner we've had. More ruinous than even Fernandes. Every decision he made was a calamity.
I mean, in one respect I guess history might have been different if Wright was in charge in 1993: he may have been able to sell his dream of a joint QPR/Wasps 40k stadium somewhere beyond Heathrow as the next big step that would have allowed us to compete with the big boys. What fun.
Meanwhile, "Blackburn won the league signing players from Southampton, Norwich and Middlesbrough."
Or, Blackburn won the league because they were bought by a man worth £600 million and broke the British record signing Shearer from Southampton, while spending the same again on Sutton, Ripley and Sherwood, never mind Wilcox, Le Saux etc...
It's fantasy to imagine QPR were anywhere near that. Walker spent tens of millions, while we were losing a million quid a year.
We had a bad season, fuelled by Wilkins's rotten buys. Happens, as you suggested may happen to Brighton. The 'what if' moment was the next period: we had the squad to come back up quickly, few adjustments and right coach needed. Just in time for boom time. Chris Wright wrecked that, chasing bad decision after bad decision until the club went bust.
Surely none of this is controversial. It's all historical fact! |
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Reply | Injury Updates
at 17:43 20 Nov 2024
Squad is completely fcked, though. |
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Reply | Ownership of QPR
at 17:37 20 Nov 2024
Here's a thing about P.O.R.T. Whole thing seems a bit Life of Brian (no relation, obviously!). Splitters!: https://www.indyrs.co.uk/2011/07/when-rangers-fans-vented-their-anger-at-qpr-cha
We live and learn. I think if there'd been no protest and he'd stayed he'd have fired Wilkins that winter of '95. Who know who he'd have got in, but he was much more shrewd with hirings and transfers than Wright.
That interview with him above pretty much mirrors what I thought was going on. It chimes correctly. Fundamentally, it comes down to protesting against this:
"When you look at the player departures under you, you can list them out, Seaman, Parker, Wegerle, Peacock, Sinton, Ferdinand, at the time you were accused of asset stripping, how would you defend that?
RT: The club was always losing about £1m a year, then you had the capital expenditure on the stadium which was probably another couple of million or so. There's no question profits were made on players, although we did replace them all we absolutely had a big surplus come back into the club. If you take the losses and the CapEx that surplus probably covered that sum, it wasn't any more or less if you look at the numbers in real detail.
We did spend money on players too, of course we made some bad mistakes with the likes of Ned Zelic and Mark Hateley. I would always argue there was no asset stripping, it was just funding the losses of the club and of course players were brought in too, so it wasn't all one way.
We spent about £10m on the club in terms of buying it, investing in it and at that time that was quite a lot of money, people now probably think '£10m that’s nothing', but back then it was a lot. " |
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Reply | Ownership of QPR
at 16:47 20 Nov 2024
Fair enough. But if we assume the point of the protests was to chase Thompson out and replace him with someone who could take QPR to the next level, can we agree that those protests were at best spectacularly unsuccessful? |
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Reply | Ownership of QPR
at 16:20 20 Nov 2024
Fair play, we live in an era of disagreeing with facts. But those are the facts.
I definitely knew the protests were wnk at the time, too. It's not revisionism. I remember meeting a Leeds fan I worked with and his mates after the Leeds game. There'd been a pitch sit-in and loads of leaflets and protest outside after. I was young and slightly in awe of the work guy. In the pub he asked "what was all the protests about?" I replied, "They're annoyed we sold Darren Peacock..." and they all just laughed in my face and took the mick. It all seemed so tinpot.
Interestingly, the fans group who organised the protests that day was called QPR P.O.R.T = which stood for Piss Off Richard Thompson. The forebears of QPR F.O.L.F = FcK Off Les Ferdinand, no doubt. Another great protest group. We got rid of Thompson for Wright, Ferdinand for Nourry. Who will step in to write Ruben's cheques when he's chased out, I wonder... [Post edited 20 Nov 16:25]
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