Minutes from this week’s latest meeting between the fan sites/podcasts/groups and QPR’s CEO/DOF Christian Nourry.

Representatives attending – W12 Podcast, Open All R’s Podcast, Hoops & Dreams, AKUTRs, Planet QPR, Disabled Supporter Association, QPR Forever, QPR 1st Supporter Trust, Indy Rs, Hoopsa YouTube, LFW, R Generation.

- Further training ground developments. There is potential for a second phase of the training ground development (a load of the old buildings have recently been cleared) but realistically the bill would be around £15m so the club needs to be moving in a ‘positive direction from a revenue perspective’ to allow us to spend that. Lots of interest from other clubs in using the facility, recently hosted Germany’s women’s team. Trying to maximise proximity to Heathrow. Several teams playing FA Cup games in London this weekend expressed interest but need to look after the pitches in tough weather. The dome they use at Cranford School has been having a refurb putting further pressure on that.

- If we were a Cat 1 academy we could still lose players to clubs like Man Utd and Arsenal at 14/15 and the compensation isn’t that much different. “The conversation about going Cat 1 is really interesting though. Our costs versus other Cat 2 academies are higher because we’re in London. There is a cost per year analysis that goes towards you being assessed for Cat 1 status. We’re not super far away from that threshold. We’re actively considering it. Weighing up cost-benefit analysis. Hoping you’re seeing green shoots in terms of a sustainable trading model and playing younger players – Kieran, Alfie, Rayan, Liam, Karamoko, Jonathan… A young core in the squad that has potential and excites you as fans. We’re setting up that story and that narrative, which is always the hardest thing to do because if I call the agent of the best 18-year-old in France or Belgium and say ‘I’ve got a development pathway’ they’d say ‘you’ve sold one player for more than £10m in ten years, why should I believe you?’. Now we can point to Keiran Morgan, Jonathan, Rayan etc etc getting an opportunity and flourishing. The idea of going to Cat 1 is interesting. Our youth recruitment has changed drastically in 8/9 months, the department has gone from a more traditional scout approach to scouts who are also salespeople and ambassadors for the club, grinding and working hard every day to persuade the family of a boy with three or four Cat 1 clubs circling to come here instead. Our intention in general is at 17 if you don’t make our U21s it won’t work here because at 18 we want you in and around the first team. That’s the ambition.” The scouts carry a promotional film with them that features Raheem Sterling, Kieran Morgan’s parents, the parents of a kid who didn’t make it but had a positive experience, to show potential recruits.

- Injury list and Ben Williams working remotely. CN says the majority of Champ teams do not have a director of performance role, and certainly not of the background and experience of BW. “When it became apparent that personal reasons meant BW would have to be more remote we had a choice to make – do we continue to pursue the model of director of performance and try to hire somebody of a similar calibre with frankly what would have been a different philosophy, or is it more important for us to protect the performance philosophy we had in place which allowed us to achieve the best availability in top four leagues last season and continue to build on that. We have Mike (Main) on the ground as head of performance services. This season we’ve had the most contact injuries the club has had in a single season for five seasons – match setting or training, collision resulting in injury, Chair v Boro, Dembele in training. They’re nigh on impossible to prevent in strength-based conditioning. That has put pressure on the squad and the knock-on effect of that when you’re not a top eight team with a 30-strong squad, you’re working with 22-26 players, is you put more pressure on those players to play significantly heightened number of minutes than you would like and that results in more muscle injuries. There are lessons to take from this season from a performance perspective. We’ve been doing a deeper review since November. We will implement those going forwards. League comparison from the latest EFL report says we’re 13th for muscular injuries in the league, midtable in terms of injuries. We’ve felt it more than that because they’ve often come in the same position, and the contrast from last season when only Frey and Kolli were missing for more than 4/5 days.” The situation with BW working largely remotely will continue.

- Unbalanced summer recruitment. CN: “You shouldn’t underestimate the job we had in the summer trying to get ourselves into the position where in the majority of positions on the pitch we’re getting closer to the style of football we as a club want to play and the head coach wants to play. It was never going to be a case of doing absolutely everything perfectly in every position. Xavi, Marti, Andy and myself speak daily on the balance of the squad. The message from that group was clear about the ability of Colback and Fox to fill in at left back when Paal was unavailable, Jimmy being used as a RB was always going to be the plan before we looked at other right backs, Hevertton was a chance to develop somebody on a free transfer, Harrison Ashby is very different to Jimmy.”

- 11 players out of contract this summer. Negotiations underway. “Where players want to be at the football club and continue to contribute to what we’re building here we’re having progressive conversations.” Morgan and Lloyd subsequently announced. Confidentiality clauses in loan deals means can’t say any more than what’s been said about Saito.

- CN completely rejects the notion that contract announcements (JCS, Dembele, Marti) were saved up for the fan forum. Fan forum promise of “further opportunities where fans will be able to speak to people on the football side” is still the plan and announcement on that due shortly.

- In general not keen on loans where we don’t have the chance to buy the player at the end. “Ultimately you’re developing somebody else’s asset while paying their salary, they will be younger which means volatility in performance. Investing money for hopefully some short-term gain and even that’s not a guarantee. We want to avoid that. That said we have one of the league’s smallest budgets this season and the amount of changes we felt compelled to make to the first team it wasn’t going to be possible from a budget perspective to not have players on loan. We are building relationships with Premier League clubs. Had a deal set up for a Liverpool player in the summer which ultimately didn’t happen but a good process with them. Ronnie Edwards had 4/5 other clubs in for him but Southampton like our football and culture and thought he’d get a fair shot here.”

- No plans whatsoever to follow Premier League examples of getting rid of concessions. “Want to make it as welcoming as possible because it’s a difficult marketplace in London, want to make it as fair as possible for existing fans and attractive to new people.”

- “Football clubs are in a tight spot. The latest budget will make this club somewhere between 3.8% and 4.8% more expensive to run next season. Mainly changes around NI, and some of the rules impact people working part time.”

- Policy on not revealing contracts not changing. Did, however, apologise for saying Portsmouth and Sheff Utd do this at the fan forum when, as we showed, they do not. Since then however he says teams including Sheff Wed, Preston, Plymouth, Luton and Millwall have followed the same strategy. “It’s not meant in any other way than to try and maximise sales revenue. My experience is it has helped us.”

- “I want people to feel communicated with. Whether people feel that’s the case or not it has always been my intention.” Says the recent injury updates are only because we’ve got injuries to update on, previously “we didn’t have any injuries”. Did say there are rare occasions when an injury/illness/absence is more private and not appropriate to communicate.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

Geoff78 added 10:42 - Jan 16 Some interesting and fair points as well as some I'm less sure about. Particularly interesting on young players and Academy options. Thanks for this Clive. Very helpful. Did you feel CN was being open and convincing?
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