A view from West London as our colleagues from www.loftforwords.co.uk answer a few questions on the situation at Loftus Road
1. Whats your opinions on Harry Redknapp, most Saints fans hate him for the way he moaned and groaned about things when he got us relegated in 2005 despite having a squad that contained a host of players who went on to play in the Premier over the next eight years including Peter Crouch, do QPR fans feel the same way.
I think Redknapp will pretty much get a free pass from QPR fans this season. He inherited a shambolic mess here from Mark Hughes, far worse than the situation he walked into at Southampton in my opinion, that was always going to require a pretty extreme turn around to save. We hadn't won any of our first 16 matches when he took over and the Southampton fans who were at Loftus Road for the last of those, and the last of the Hughes era, will know just what a state we were in. I don't think any team has survived in the Premier League era after not winning any of the first 16 games so he was always going to be up against it.
2. Has Redkapps popularity waned on the back of the results given that you are no better off than when he arrived. Do Rangers fans feel he is merely there for the money.
. Well I'd take issue with us being no better off than when he arrived. We are at least organised in defence now - we've actually got the best defensive record of the bottom seven teams and have recently kept clean sheets against Spurs, Man City and Chelsea. He's tightened that up and added Chris Samba so that's an improvement. He's also managed to register a couple of wins, including one at Stamford Bridge which we rather enjoyed, which is more than Hughes could. However, while I do think he'll be absolved of much blame by most if the seemingly inevitable relegation, there are murmurings of discontent here and there. We are absolutely toothless in attack - just eight goals scored at home all season and none in the last four home league games. He didn't correct that in January and quite often now we start without a striker at all - playing Adel Taarabt in a "false nine" position that has worked once but mostly just leaves us with a back four and then a six man midfield mess with nothing up front. He could do with getting back to the sort of football you expect from him - two strikers, two wingers, give it a go. He got stung by playing an open, attacking system at home to Liverpool and going 3-0 down before half time, since then we've been unbelievably defensive and cautious which risks us going down with a whimper if it continues.
3. How do QPR fans feel about the clubs owners, obviously many fans of other clubs will be aware about your old regime especially after ther tv documentary, how does the new regime compare
I would never pretend to speak for all QPR fans but from my point of view Tony Fernandes is a good but naive owner - one of my mates I go to the games with disagrees and thinks he's an idiot so there are different opinions about. Flavio Briatore is a supremely arrogant man who seemed to think he was just going to walk in, do exactly what he wanted, treat the fans like shit, the whole thing would be a runaway success and everything would be brilliant - obviously you saw in the documentary that he even thought he could manage the team. It was only when he took a back seat and Amit Bhatia started to run the club that we had a great 18 months under Neil Warnock and got to the Premier League, at which point Briatore swooped back in and spent the summer drawing out a takeover which meant Warnock had his hands tied in the transfer window. Since Fernandes came in he's played it rather like you would expect a naive supporter to operate - certainly not been afraid to back managers with loads of money, always in the market for a big name player. His biggest failing in my opinion is not having a really sharp, experienced football man alongside him as a CEO or director of football. Mark Hughes and Kia Joorabchian saw him coming - Fernandes even said that Hughes interviewed us as much as the other way around - and both they and a clutch of ageing professional footballers got very rich off QPR. I think his heart is in the right place but he's learning on the job and it's costing us. If I was him I'd have had somebody like David Dein on board from very early on.
4. Who have been your stand out performers this season and who have been the scapegoats, where are QPR's weak links
Julio Cesar is, as you would expect, very busy and performing heroics. Ryan Nelsen was bought as cover in the summer but ended up being our best defender and playing every week on bad knees but he has now left to take up a managerial position at Toronto. Adel Taarabt is the attack - teams have now realised that once he's out of the game we've got literally nothing. Andros Townsend has played reasonably well since coming in on loan from Spurs. Other than that the squad is divided into players of limited ability who came up with us from the Championship and seem to really care and be hurting but don't really have the ability to do much about it - Jamie Mackie, Clint Hill, Shaun Derry - and big name players, mostly approaching the end of their careers, earning a colossal amount of money and playing so far beneath the standards they've previously set it's embarrassing to watch them: Shaun Wright-Phillips, Jose Bosingwa, Anton Ferdinand, Djibril Cisse, Esteban Granero, Armand Traore etc. The dressing room is split, the team spirit is non-existent. Bosingwa is the big boo boy target because he was put on the bench for a game against Fulham and stormed off home - Redknapp fined him and revealed that the two weeks wages amounted to £120,000. He has just been recalled to the team but God knows why because he's actually not very good as well as being a tosser. Short answer - we have a great goalkeeper and one good attacker, everything other area is weak.
5.How do QPR fans feel about the new signings, has it been money wasted or money well spent, I heard on the radio someone expressing discontent that you let Cisse go and have no one that can score goals is this a popular opinion, has harry spent money for the sake of it
We brought in Loic Remy in January but we allowed Djibril Cisse to leave, so we're in the same position as we were before where we're totally reliant on the form and fitness of one striker. Cisse was great for us last season but seemed to lose heart and form this term. That said he did still pose a goal threat when serviced correctly. Remy has only managed to start twice - he seems very fragile - so we're now often playing matches without a striker at all. Nobody really understands why we keep loaning DJ Campbell out - he's not the answer by any means but he's better than fielding no striker at all. Six players came in in January and six went out and really - apart from possibly Samba - they don't seem to have improved us at all. Jermaine Jenas for Ale Faurlin is a prime example of a transfer for the sake of making a transfer. But then that QPR obsession of always signing another player rather than working on one you already have to improve him was there long before Redknapp arrived and is a big part of the reason our squad is such a shambles.