A heart-breaking late equaliser by Wigan at Loftus Road last weekend looks to have condemned QPR to the drop. The knives are out for the club’s board among the media, and Tony Fernandes must tread carefully in the coming months.
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It all rather got lost among the sheer devastation of seeing Shaun Maloney lifting the last kick of the game over a rather half-arsed QPR wall and into the net, but thoughts earlier last Sunday had actually initially been distracted by Sky’s Sunday Supplement programme.
An occasionally interesting debate among white men who are never knowingly wrong, The Sunday Supplement has become early hangover fodder for the male payTV subscriber while he waits for Chris ‘Kammy’ Kamara and Peter ‘Reidy’ Reid to add their incisive, cutting, informative analysis of the previous day’s events on Goals on Sunday.
This week Mirror journalist Paul Smith snarled and scowled his way through a damning two minute indictment of the state of QPR that raised the hackles of the club’s supporters. Smith described QPR chairman Tony Fernandes as “the biggest joke in the Premier League” and advised him to “keep his mouth shut.” He said QPR were a shambles on the pitch, rubbish off it and an “absolute mess inside and out.”
Football fans are naturally protective of their own teams, and the QPR faithful have been right on occasions to rail against harsh criticism in the press which often had no basis in fact - The Sun proclaiming as fact that the club would be deducted 15 points at the end of their promotion season a recent case in point. And the way Smith screwed up his face as if the words actually tasted bitter in his mouth suggested his rant was more about sticking the knife into somebody he feels has wronged him, rather than expressing an honest and informed point of view on a football club. Some Rangers fans noted that Smith has been somewhat lacking in QPR exclusives of late having been the go-to journalist for supporters of the Super Hoops during the Ale Faurlin case when his inside line turned out to be so much more on the money than the sensationalist nonsense peddled elsewhere. Perhaps that Shepherds Bush phone number hasn’t been flashing up on his mobile phone quite so often since Gianni Paladini was finally levered out of the corridors at Loftus Road?
But put aside the vitriolic delivery, was Smith actually incorrect in what he said? QPR are a shambles on the pitch and a mess off it. In fact that can be proven mathematically – a league table clearly shows the former, the club’s accounts supports the latter. Describing Tony Fernandes as a joke who should keep his mouth shut seemed vindictive, but the example he went onto give was a Tweet sent out by the chairman in the wake of one of the season’s most lousy performances and results away at Swansea when Fernandes decided to praise the players for their second half efforts in a 4-1 defeat. Many QPR fans took to the message boards and social media sites that night to express similar thoughts to Smith.
Overall though, and the reaction to last week’s programme shows this, the Loftus Road regulars do seem happy to forgive the club’s owners for what has been a truly disastrous 2012/13 campaign. The sheer amount of money spent, the type of players brought in, the appointment of Mark Hughes and a vast swathe of his hangers on, the perseverance with him through a 16 match run without a win at the start of the season, the comment about Hughes interviewing QPR rather than the other way around – all of this has been the fault of Tony Fernandes and the board. They have however been seen as genuine mistakes, easy to pick fault at with hindsight, rather than actions taken out of malice.
Fernandes will do well to maintain this image as an honest, hardworking, football loving chairman learning on the job because it’s buying him time with a support base that has never been shy of turning on a chairman in the past. What a now seemingly inevitable relegation will do is provide a big, big moment for the Malaysian owner of the club and his CEO Philip Beard of whom questions are starting to be asked in the wake of the resignation of the Official Supporters Club earlier this year.
Flavio Briatore was a popular chairman at QPR once – the most popular club owner in London in fact according to a survey of supporters by the Evening Standard at the end of the 2007/08 season. That campaign ended with Briatore on the pitch, flanked by Gerry Francis, Les Ferdinand and an arsenal of flame throwers, unveiling a new badge and talking of a bright new beginning. He was cheered to the rafters. If Fernandes walks out after the last match of this season and tells the fans he’s made mistakes, he’s sorry, he’s committed to making sure the club is promoted straight back and he’ll never give in then I suspect he’ll get a similarly rapturous reception. Fans are still singing his name at matches on odd occasions after all.
Two weeks after Briatore’s pitch appearance the club released season ticket prices that were on the astronomical side of expensive for a Championship club. Long term QPR fans were immediately priced out of regular attendance in one fell swoop. Briatore spoke about being a boutique club, writing the complaining masses off as “people who come once a week and pay £20.” With the ground half empty and costs already spiralling the following September he then attempted – illegally as it turned out – to increase the walk up prices again midseason, and QPR fans without season tickets were left to rely on the first opposition affected by the move Derby County to take a case to the league and successfully fight for our rights. Briatore never really recovered from that in the eyes of fans – every subsequent story about him trying to pick the team was believed, every managerial sacking (however justified) brought howls of derision. You can do a lot to QPR fans, but beware raising their ticket prices.
QPR’s current ticket prices are high, even by Premier League standards. At recent fans meetings and forums Phil Beard has pointed to the challenge of operating a club at the higher end of the British game in a stadium as small as Loftus Road. The temptation, on his part, is probably to freeze the current Premier League prices and spin that as a good deal for supporters getting extra matches in the division below next season – conveniently ignoring the fact that they were raised to this level following promotion under a promise of seeing higher quality football.
If the club do not get these season ticket prices right – and by that I mean a significant reduction to levels on a par with the likes of Millwall, Crystal Palace, Watford and other London-based Championship clubs – then the prolonged honeymoon period Fernandes and Beard have enjoyed will come to an abrupt halt. Mistakes they have made that have been forgiven and written-off by supporters will be seen in a different light.
The popularity of Flavio Briatore was killed stone dead by his crass insensitivity and misjudgement in this area and the current board must heed that lesson or prepare for a markedly more toxic atmosphere – in a half full stadium – in the second tier next season.
Referee: It never rains but it pours I guess. Just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse for QPR, their old chum Lee Mason is listed as official for a long-trek to the north. Mason is yet to send a player off this season, but showed no such restraint when dismissing Shaun Derry at Old Trafford last season in farcical circumstances. His full, and fairly inglorious, QPR case file is available here.
Elsewhere: A truncated Premier League programme this weekend with Wigan, Man City and Chelsea all involved in FA Cup semi-final action. The game of the weekend is undoubtedly Sunderland’s visit to Newcastle on Sunday. Always a fiery encounter that one, but with the added spice of Paulo Di Canio as the new Mackems boss and their perilous position at the bottom of the table it’s sure to be an absolute cracker. Aston Villa can heap the pressure on the Wearsiders a day earlier if they can continue their recent upsurge in form with a home win against Fulham that would put five points between Paul Lambert’s men and the relegation zone.
Stoke City, on a run of one win from 16 matches in all competitions, could yet be dragged into the dog fight and will go below Villa this weekend if the Birmingham-based side do win and Tony Pulis’ side fail to beat Manchester United at home on Sunday. Southampton v West Ham looks like a bit of a pointless exercise for all concerned but Arsenal can move above Spurs – who aren’t in action – and into the Champions League places with a win against Norwich at Ashburton Grove.
Everton: Having started the season with three straight wins and just three defeats from their first 21 matches, Everton certainly did a grand job of shrugging aside their reputation as slow starters. They haven’t quite been able to maintain that post Christmas though and have only won four of the last ten – including a home FA Cup replay success against Oldham. They were, quite spectacularly, beaten 3-0 by Wigan on this ground in the FA Cup but that was a blip in an impressive run of home form which has seen four wins from the last five against Man City, Stoke, Reading and Oldham and nine goals scored. Everton have only been beaten once at Goodison Park in the league this season – by Chelsea.
QPR: Harry Redknapp wants five wins from his final six matches to stave off relegation, but QPR have managed just four from 32 so far and it looks a tall order. He can take solace this weekend from reasonably decent away form since the turn of the year – three wins at Chelsea, Southampton and West Brom brought to an end a year-long wait for an away success and the R’s had actually only lost one of five road games prior to recent defensive disasters at Fulham and Villa. Their record at Everton is good. Tommy Smith scored their first goal, and secured their first points, back in the Premier League here last season adding to a run of one defeat in six visits to Goodison which includes memorable 5-3 and 3-0 wins in the 1990s when Les Ferdinand and Bradley Allen got hat tricks.
Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Nathan McAllister says…
“I’m writing this less than 24 hours after Shaun Maloney curled home that free kick in the fourth and final minute of stoppage time, and just reliving the horror of that moment - the moment where any lingering hopes of QPR staying up were bludgeoned to death before our very eyes – is still making me feel, frankly, nauseous. That it was one of the rare occasions that I’ve actually called the scoreline and scorer correctly this season was of no consolation whatsoever.
“Mathematically speaking, QPR are not down yet, but it would require a string of results so improbable that Bet365 are currently offering odds of 1/50 on Rangers being relegated. Any inroads into the seven point gap to safety that Redknapp took on with 25 games to go have been temporary, and with just 6 games left the gap is exactly the same as it was when he took over. It’s not that Rangers have continued showing relegation form under Redknapp – they are still 13th in the post Redknapp era Premier League table – rather that the first 13 games were such an unmitigated disaster that what Redknapp needed was top eight form rather than lower midtable form, and the team ultimately just hasn’t been good enough to deliver that.
“It is of course possible for Rangers to resurrect this lifeless bloody corpse this weekend should they somehow manage to grab an unlikely win at Goodison Park for the second season running. As unpredictable as Rangers are, at the final whistle on Sunday they really did have the haunted look of a side who knew the game was up. I just don’t see them being able to summon up the levels of self-belief and commitment required to test an Everton side still with an outside chance of a Champions League place. Of course with Loic Remy in the side Rangers now carry a very real goal threat, but with Fellaini and Pienaar both returning from suspensions for this one (not to mention Bobby Zamora beginning his), and Kevin Mirallas in sparkling form, I can’t see anything other than a comfortable victory for the home side.”
Prediction: Everton 2 QPR 0
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