With QPR once more on a long losing run, tanking from top of the league in October to fourteenth in February, LFW met with the club’s director of football Les Ferdinand to put the criticisms of his performance to him directly.
LFW has been conducting written interviews with figures from QPR’s past and present for 20 years and publishing them free-to-view. To support both this site and the iconic AKUTR’s Podcast we have also recently been making the audio available to all three tiers of subscriber on our Patreon account. However, in this instance, given the significance and importance of the interview we have decided to make it available free-to-listen to all QPR supporters — it didn’t feel right paywalling this interview while the club is on fire. I hope our very loyal subscribers understand on this occasion. Everybody can therefore listen to the full interview for free via our Patreon by clicking here or read below…
The team was top in October, we’ve now had one win in 15, we’re not scoring, we’re down to fourteenth in the table — from your point of view why has the season taken the turn that it has?
It’s obviously very disappointing. As you said, in October we were top of the table, but then we lost the manager. A lot of the players had bought into Mick, he’d had a pre-season with them, he was developing the squad the way he wanted to. Unfortunately none of us envisaged that Mick would be gone after five months, but he has done. That has derailed the players a little bit. To be fair we had started to lose a few games under Mick before he left and I think there was a sense of ‘something is going on with Mick’ and it has derailed us. I think everybody in the Championship at one time or another has a bit of a blip, we were hoping the blip wouldn’t go on for as long as it has done. The new manager has come in, he’s trying to put across his ideas and I wouldn’t say they’re too far away from where Mick is but unfortunately when you’ve lost confidence, which we certainly have and it shows in the way we’re playing at the moment, it’s very difficult to get back on the winning track. That’s what we’re trying to do, I know it’s not great to watch at the moment but we’re working hard to get back to where we need to be.
That’s what I thought you would say, the obvious answer is ‘the manager walked out’, so let’s explore how we appointed that manager in the first place. It felt like an in depth process, we knew Mark was going from the end of April, Mick didn’t arrive until June, can you take us inside that process and how we decided to appoint him in the first place?
We were very clear when we appointed him that we looked at data; we put the same sort of algorithms we use for players as well and we did that for managers, things like our style of play… It threw up a load of names, some like Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola we couldn’t get, but the rest we looked at in depth and did interviews. In terms of where we want to go as a club, Mick was top of the tree.
On that point about analytics, what analytics are you looking for and at with a manager who has never managed a professional, senior game of football in his life?
When you look at where he’s been, who he’s been with, and what he’s done. It wasn’t just for managers, it was for coaches as well, the algorithms we put in and the numbers we got out showed that Mick was one of a group. He wasn’t the most obvious choice when we did it, he was one of a group we interviewed and it was the person who interviewed the best who got the opportunity and that was Mick.
Yes, as we know, he interviews very well, once he ‘gets you in the room’ everybody in football says the same thing. Have we had our pants pulled down there by somebody who’s very personable in the room?
Let me ask you that question, do you think we got our pants pulled down? I don’t think we did, no. Do you think we had our pants pulled down?
Well I think it’s interesting that Glasgow Rangers was not the first job he went for. I think he did go for the Wolves job and he did meet with Wolves despite what he said. Wolves said in The Athletic that he met with them twice, he was good in the room, they thought he would go there. I don’t think Wolves was the first one either, from what we’ve been told by a couple of sources. So I’m interested, does this guy just interview well in the room and there was something there that we should have picked up on? Was Glasgow Rangers ever mentioned in conversations with him because it seemed quite obvious weeks before he took it that if the job came up he would be going there?
I think when you employ a manager at any football club, especially where we are at the moment as a club, if they come in and do well then it’s like our players. Our players come through the door, we’re not buying out of Harrods we’re buying from Aldi or wherever it may be, and we’re trying to get them to the Harrods standard. If we do that people will come and take them, and it’s no different for the managers. If our manager comes in and does well I expect people to knock on the door and say we want to take your manager. I didn’t think anybody thought it would be within five months. When Mick comes through the door we’re hoping somebody does come and take him, because it means we’ve done the right thing and here’s a manager who’s doing the right thing for the football club. As supporters or somebody looking after the football club, we don’t want him to go, of course we don’t. But those are the type of people we want to bring through the door, people who will improve us, improve themselves, and people will come knocking. We’ve had a lot of players come through this door here who we had to pay to go. Instead, we got a bit of money for Mick in the end. We didn’t want to lose him, to say we got the process wrong I don’t think we did. If you look at the brand of football we played, where we were, where he was taking us, I think people would agree it was the right choice.
Why was he so keen to leave?
You have to look at the size of the club he went to. Ok, Wolves were Premier League, but the cynical side of me would say Wolves were in a precarious position. Rangers might not win the league but they’ll finish second, he’s gone to a better opportunity for him. Can you blame him for that? If that was a player, as much as you don’t want to lose him, if you were getting the right money for him after five months you’d probably say ‘yeh, ok’. You wouldn’t want it, but it happens.
Was the situation he found here more difficult than he perhaps expected when he took the job? Was there stuff that wasn’t in the brochure when you guys interviewed him that opened his eyes when he got here?
I’d like to say no to that. I think everybody who comes through the door here we’re totally honest with them. We know where we are, there’s no point bringing somebody through the door and saying ‘we’re going to give you millions of pounds to spend’ because we know we haven’t got millions of pounds to spend. There’s no point glossing over that because, if you do, he’s going to be unhappy and we’re not going to get the best out of him because we’ve sold him something that isn’t quite right. We’re not going to do that and we would not do that.
The one thing I did know is he’d had a very good time at Rangers with Steven Gerrard, he really enjoyed it up there. I did find out afterwards that Rangers had offered him the job when he left with Steven, he decided to go with Steven because he felt it was the right thing. I found that out afterwards. In terms of the process we went through, and doing the right thing, nobody knew Van Bronckhorst was going to get the sack — they went close to winning the league and they got to a European final and nearly won that so nobody saw him going.
Who picked and chose the signings last summer?
There’s a process we go through at the football club about players we want to bring in and we make a collective decision. There’s not one person who says ‘right, we’re signing him and that’s it’, we all have to agree on that person being the right person for the club.
A lot of the signings we made did have a connection to Mick, and the way he is with the press and media he seemed to claim a lot of credit for those signings. Jake Clarke-Salter, Kenneth Paal, Tim Iroegbunam… he basically said they were his signings. I interviewed Mick back in June and I was once again on a call with a QPR manager talking to me about the agents he was talking to, which disturbed me slightly because I thought we were supposed to have gone away from that. They seem to be Mick Beale signings, he made out like they were…
I wish I could take you back and show you pictures of the boards in the room down the corridor here. Kenneth Paal was on that board. We’d been speaking to Kenneth Paal’s agent the season before, we couldn’t afford him at that point but we knew he was coming to the end of his deal. Mick came through the door, he sat in the room with the lists of all the players we’re looking at and he saw Kenneth on there, said ‘I know Kenneth, I know this one, I know this one’… Tim we didn’t know, admittedly, he was somebody he’d worked with at Aston Villa. Once he told us about him and we’d seen him we realised that the type of player he is would come in and improve us. Jake Clarke-Salter was on our list, he was going to Coventry for more money, Mick was able to persuade him to come our way. Leon Balogun, Mick had worked with Balogun, knew Balogun, but when we did our due diligence on him we felt we had a young side, here’s somebody with some experience in the same way Lee Wallace came in under Mark. There are loads of players Mick mentioned, loads of players Mark mentioned, loads of players Ian Holloway mentioned, who didn’t come through the door because we didn’t feel they were right to take us forwards.
Leon Balogun is an interesting one because if he plays he plays in front of Rob Dickie, Jimmy Dunne or Jake Clarke-Salter. He’s 34, he’s worked with the manager before, how does that fit having somebody like that playing ahead of three of your most sellable assets? Having one of your most sellable assets sitting out to pick a 34-year-old the manager has worked with before doesn’t immediately feel like what we should be doing under this model?
What we do as well is we have to make sure we’re getting the best out of our players. The games that Leon Balogun has played are the only time this season we have kept clean sheets — him and Jimmy Dunne. So he’s improved Jimmy Dunne. When he comes in and does that you don’t drop him just because you’ve got sellable assets, we want those boys to get back into the side by fighting for their position. We brought some experience we felt would help the team, when he has come into the side he’s certainly done that.
So why has the team fallen apart? Why has the season fallen apart to such an extent after the manager has left? There is another team in the Championship with all the budgetary restraints we do, Luton, who also lost an inspirational manager at the same time we did and they’ve just kicked on.
When they lost Nathan Jones they were on a very good run, the new manager has come in and worked on that and carried on doing what they were doing. Unfortunately we were already on a bad run, four games lost under Mick, when the turnaround happened. If we’d lost Mick and Neil was coming in when we were winning it was an easy thing to build on. We’ve lost our way a little bit, we know we have. We’ve shown the supporters and everybody else what we’re capable of doing, we’re well below that at the moment. I expect everybody to complain and be unhappy, of course, because these boys set a standard for themselves and they’re well below that standard. We fell away at the end of last season too, terribly. What we do know is these boys are capable of playing football at the highest level in this division but mentally there is something wrong. We’re addressing that, we’ve brought a new psychologist in to help with that part because that’s the part we’re struggling with at the moment — under previous managers we’ve had this dip as well.
The director football system, is that not here to protect against exactly what seems to have happened here: players who knew the manager and liked the manager came here, the manager left, they’ve downed tools?
I would disagree with the assertion they’ve downed tools. If it was just those players… it’s the whole team. Are you saying all the rest of the players haven’t downed tools? Because they’re not playing well either.
No.
So, to be fair to those players… We’ve got 19-year-old Tim in the side, who will suffer from lack of confidence. We know he’s going to go there, he’s going to drop, we expect that throughout the season. What you expect is your most experienced boys who’ve played a bit more to carry him through that. Ethan Laird has come in, when he arrived he was probably the most exciting right back in the division. Every single player is suffering from a lack of confidence at the moment, so to just label the loan players, or the players who have come in under Mick, I think is really unfair.
There have been questions about attitude, application and character of the players. Neil has come out after a couple of games and questioned the mentality of the players he’s inherited here. Is that criticism fair?
Yes, I think we showed it at the end of last season and we were hoping we’d got rid of it. Sometimes things happen in football, I’ve played and been in that position — it happened to me at Newcastle where we lost the league and people questioned the mentality — when you lose confidence in football you play individually rather than as a team. That’s where we are at the moment. You’re trying to get your part right and you’re thinking ‘if I get my part right everything will be ok’, but then he's saying the same thing, and so is he, and we look disjointed. That’s where we are at the moment. Yes, we are addressing the mental side of the game, we are trying to work on that because we’ve shown we’re capable of being in the top half of this division but we’re lacking a major amount of confidence at the moment and I know how detrimental that can be for your football.
As you say it’s not just the loan players playing poorly, it’s difficult to pick somebody who is playing well at the moment…
Sam Field is. Kenneth Paal and Sam have been the two most consistent players for us this year.
…I wouldn’t disagree. However, on the loan players, you want to develop players. It’s a development model. Are we over reliant on loan players? Why are four or five of our ten outfield starters here on loan when we’re meant to be developing for ourselves?
I think what you have to look at is you have assets in the side and you want to enhance those assets as well. If the loan player is going to come in and do that and we feel he can do that then that’s the only reason they come here. We don’t become reliant on loan players, we only take them if we feel they’re better than what they’ve got in the building and can help the players we’re trying to advance.
Is it not something of an indictment that the five loan players, like you say, are better than what we’ve got?
It’s not a great situation, but that’s what we’re working to. We’re trying to improve. When you bring Ethan Laird in, Tim Iroegbunam in, you say to your players ‘look, this is the level we need to get to, this is where we’re trying to get you to’. It’s where we’re trying to get Ozzie Kakay to, where we’re trying to get Nico Hamailainen to, you’re showing these players what goes on and what it takes. Every single one of our boys wants to go and play in the Premier League. Those boys come in and you say ‘here you go, here’s the standard’. It’s all well and good me as an old fart sitting there and saying this is what you need to get to the Premier League, but if you can show people these are the levels… Those boys have come in and shown the levels and we’re hoping that it rubs off on one or two of our players.
We’re not adverse to going on bad runs at QPR. Last season we were pushing for second at the end of January and collapsed completely. Why was the decision made to change out the management team at the end of last season?
It went that badly wrong. It was about development, trying to develop players, and had we stagnated? Perhaps a little bit. That’s why the decision was made.
Why was John Eustace not offered the job here, given he’d been offered Championship jobs while he was here and has walked straight into another one at Birmingham?
John Eustace had a big influence on what happened here last season. He did a lot of coaching, did a lot of the speaking, and I think as a club we thought if we’re going to change Mark it might need a different voice. To be honest with you the decision we made was the right decision at the beginning because of where we went and where the players were going.
You said on TalkSport at the end of last season when it became clear Mark was going everything that’s being done "in the best interests of the club”. That is being brought up now and people are saying ‘well, things haven’t got any better’, in fact things might be worse now than they were then.
I think things did get better. Disappointment spreads a lot quicker than joy. Unhappiness spreads a lot quicker. When things are not going as you want them to then they look a lot worse. If you look at the start of the season and where we were, things had got better. Unfortunately the loss of the manager, which we were not expecting, has seen us go on this run. So, yes, at the moment we’re away from the points we had last year, but if you look at where we started and what we were trying to do I think we were going in the right direction. Well, I know we were going in the right direction.
Had relationships broken down here last year between the first team management and the academy and development side?
I don’t think it was the end of last season. It hadn’t been right from the start, that was never the problem. We were on split sites, so Mark never really saw the academy anyway. I don’t want to just point at Mark, the management team over there never really saw the players here because we were on split sites. The only boys on the first team site were the U23s.
So was it just a geographical issue or were people not getting on? I’m trying to get the bottom here of why last season went so badly awry and why Mark Warburton, who took over a bad situation from Steve McClaren and did well overall across three years, was changed out.
I think people are pointing at the situation at the training ground and saying ‘things weren’t right’, but what people have to take into account is we had Covid. That kept us very separated over a two-year period because we didn’t want cross contamination. That did cause a bit of a divide, but I don’t think it was because this one disliked that one, or that one disliked this one. The situation made it that way.
But there were situations last season, Bristol City away naming a short bench of five, Swansea two goalkeepers, instead of an academy player on the bench. That struck me as a bone of contention between you and the first team management last season. Am I wrong?
We were all disappointed that this was the case, and he felt he could only name five subs. Especially when you’re a club that’s trying to develop players…
That’s what I’m hitting at here, is that the nub of what happened last season?
…where we are right now I’m looking at Sinclair Armstrong and thinking if he’d got some time and minutes last year, would he be a better player this year? I don’t know. He might not have been. Mark chose to do it another way. Like I say, I think the pandemic had a lot to do with that, he wasn’t able to see the players on a regular basis because they were training on different sites.
Did we overspend last summer? We made 11 signings, some loans which I can’t imagine were cheap, no player sales. It looked to me, for QPR, quite expensive. You had the Eze money coming in, did we push the boat out? Did we overspend? Did we take a calculated gamble to make a push for promotion and, having missed that promotion, that limits what we can do now?
I don’t think we gambled. We had the Eze money, the way the team had started to play we thought ‘can we add to it?’ and keep us where we wanted to be. If we didn’t then I think the supporters would have wanted to know why we weren’t ‘having a go’. I’ve heard that this season, ‘why haven’t we had a go?’. So, we did spend a bit of that money, because obviously Watford and places lkike that didn’t give us Andre Gray for nothing. In terms of FFP/P&S, we have to do things strategically and that’s what we did. We felt we could spend perhaps a little bit more now, but at the same time not leaving ourselves in the position where we didn’t have anything for this year.
Is last season limiting what we can do now?
We’re always aware of the FFP and trying to work within those parameters. When you’re doing that you’re not just looking over one season, you look over three seasons. Has it limited what we can do this season? If you look at the Championship in January I think only four of the 24 teams in the division spent money — that tells you where the Championship is, it’s not just us it’s everybody. Teams that come down with a parachute payment have that luxury — I think Burnley have spent £90m. We’re not in that boat, nor are 20 other teams in this division. The model we have now is trying to develop players and move them forwards and that’s the only model for us.
What is our current FFP situation? Off the back of last season are we still within those parameters?
We’re within the parameters but I don’t want to sit here and tell you what that is - there’s a lot of other clubs I’d want to know what their parameters are too. I’m not able to divulge that information publicly because, in the same way I wouldn’t want them to know what we’re doing, we can’t find out what they’re doing.
If we don’t sell a player in the next 12 months are we going to have a problem here?
For us to move forwards, we need to sell players. I’ve said that from day one. I said it would be hard, I said it would be tough, and that’s exactly what it’s been. We’re trying to do the right thing by the players we bring through the door — nobody knew who Chrissy Willock was, nobody knew who Ebere Eze was, Ilias Chair, Seny Dieng. We’re bringing players through we hope we can develop, as much as I don’t want to lose them because we want a collection that will get us back to where we want to be but realistically we know that we do have to sell players from time to time.
We signed one player in the transfer window just gone, now two, given you’ve got a new manager and we’re in poor form why did we not do more?
Simply because of FFP/P&S. We have to continuously make sure we’re doing the right things. If you’re in the Premier League and you’re struggling you go and spend some money, like Chelsea have done. You collect these players, you can name a 25-man squad, they must have about 45 players. We haven’t got that luxury. The players we have here have shown us they are capable of being in the top half of the division, we have to get them back there.
It’s not good that while we’re in that situation we’re literally paying players to leave. Macauley Bonne’s interview when he went back to Charlton you’ll have read: "QPR changed my life in certain aspects, financially they did help me out, I went from not being on a lot of money to getting a good contract for a few years”. Given everything you’ve said to me and everything you’re trying to do that’s not great is it, a player you bought, and paid to leave, is then saying what a great deal he got?
I think relative to what we were paying before it’s very different. We have to take risks and one thing we do know is not everybody we bring in we’re going to get right. You have to be realistic about that. We hoped Macauley would come through, he came here on the back of scoring 12 goals in a season at Charlton in a struggling team, we’re trying to develop and unfortunately he didn’t develop. He’s gone out the door, we’ve had to pay him up. That won’t be the last of that, there will be others that happens to. We’re hoping the majority… we’ve brought boys like Chrissy Willock through the door for nothing and when they leave this football club they will leave for a profit. I think we’re in a far better situation. You will have the odd Macauley Bonne, whoever it may be, leave the club and we don’t get the money we were expecting and they haven’t developed as we expected to. That’s going to happen. But I think we’re in more credit than deficit on that.
You’ve signed Chris Martin, off contract, 34-years old, released by a team below you in the league. Explain that signing to me in terms of how it fits in with the ethos of what you’re trying to do here.
I think the circumstances around that are very different to just going out and signing a 34-year-old. Unfortunately, Lyndon Dykes got pneumonia. We have to try and fill a gap until he comes back. That’s the reason for doing it. It wasn’t us going ‘you know what, let’s go sign this 34-year-old because it fits in with what we’re doing’. We had a gap to fill.
Let me play devil’s advocate here, because a similar thing happened last season with your goalkeepers — I’ve never known a situation where five goalkeepers get injured all at once, unprecedented, nobody would hold that against you. But, if you’re a development club, and your main striker gets pneumonia, another leaves the club, the next cab off the rank should be, for better or worse, your B Team or U23 striker shouldn’t it? Last year Seny gets injured, unlucky, Archer gets injured, really unlucky, you then spent money bringing in David Marshall and again on Kieren Westwood before we got to Murphy Mahoney. If you’re a development club — you talk about pathways and I agree with you when you say it — should Murphy Mahoney, for better or worse, not have been in as the third choice?
I think where we were as a club at the time, as much as I understand what you’re saying, every single supporter if we’d put Mahoney in there…
…and lost games, I do get it…
… and lost games, people would have turned around and said ‘you haven’t brought anybody with experience in, look at where we are, no wonder we’re losing games’. And he would have got a load of stick, Mahoney would have got a lot of stick. As part of development we have to protect the players, I think that’s important too. I take your point, but we have to put them in when it’s right, we shouldn’t put them in if we don’t think it’s right for them. Where we were last season, the predicament we were in, where we were in the league, we felt we had to bring somebody in with experience and that’s why we did that.
Is it not an indictment though, you’ve been here eight years, is it not an indictment that we don’t have anybody capable of stepping in as a third choice goalkeeper or a third choice striker?
We did have a young, third choice goalkeeper in Joe Walsh, but he broke his wrist as well. He would have been third choice. So now you’re talking about fourth choice, and I’d definitely get hammered — I get hammered anyway — for a fourth choice goalkeeper going in while we’re top six. If I’d put a forth choice goalkeeper in there and we lost games on the strength of him… The situation with Chris Martin isn’t a situation where we’ve thought ‘you know what, let’s bring another striker in, we’ll go get Chris Martin at 34 years of age’. No. We’ve got a situation with Lyndon Dykes, we don’t know how long Lyndon will be, can we fill the gap? It’s not a long term contract, it’s to the end of the season, I hope people see through that and understand.
We should have players in our juniors and our academy by now, should we not, that are good enough to step into that breach in that situation?
Since I’ve been at the club we’ve lost 13 players from the academy where other clubs have come in because of the EPPP situation. We’ve had 13 players we lost for a combined total of about £750k. One of those players we lost is now being sold for a lot more than that. We can’t control what the EPPP situation means for us. With the new training ground we’ve got here, hopefully we can attract the players you’re talking about so that when the striker goes down we’ve got somebody coming through the system.
I’m not an advocate of the EPPP system, or the U21 system. Most managers - you’ve sat in that chair a long time and spoken to different managers coming through here — look to take on loans because they don’t think the U21 competition is strong enough. Hence why we tried to put a B Team in place because we get better games for those boys at a better level which means if we do get an injury that they can come in and play in their first team. I came through here because I came through the reserves and played men’s football. These boys, I argue it all the time, play 21s football against the same people since they were nine-years-old. That’s not progress. We have to send our players out on loan to get experience and then they come back and we hope they’re close.
I take your point, but there are circumstances around why we have to do what we do.
Tim Iroegbunam is 19, he’s from that same academy system, he’s come to learn on our time, he’s had some great games like Reading at home, and some poor games recently at Hull. Why is a 19-year-old kid from Villa able to come and develop on our time, for Villa’s benefit, while we’ve got players, some of whom are older than him, in our B Team and U23s, some of them playing quite well at the moment, not getting that spot? Given we’re losing anyway, one win in 15, how much worse would it be?
The managers have come through the door and looked at what we’ve got. Neil has been to all of the 21 games we’ve played, he has some of the boys training with the firsts. I get that’s where we’re trying to get to. Tim has come in and all of a sudden it’s given some of our boys a bit of a lift in the 21s, because they’re seeing a 19-year-old there at a Premier League club. When we bring those players in we’re bringing them in not to just play well for us but to enhance what we’ve got at the football club.
Are there financial penalties for us not picking the players we’ve got on loan? Do we owe their clubs more money if they don’t play?
No, not all of them. Some of them that is put in place. That’s not the reason why they’re playing.
How did we reach the decision to appoint Neil Critchley as manager?
The appointment had to come a lot quicker than the summer when we had plenty of time to make a decision, but we went through the same process and spoke to several different managers. In terms of where we want to go as a club developing players I think if you look at Neil’s pathway, Mark’s pathway, Mick’s pathway they’ve all had a similar background. We’re trying to bring a bit of continuity to what we’re doing rather than changing to this style or that style. We need to keep consistent. We believe in what we’re doing here, it’s not looking great at the moment I understand that but we believe in what we’re doing and the way we need to take the club. I can move out of this seat tomorrow, somebody else can come and sit in here, they will still need to move the club in the same direction.
How do you think he’s done so far?
The wins haven’t been there, he’s won one in nine, Mick lost three of his first five games and turned it around but he had a pre-season with the boys and Neil hasn’t had that luxury. I see Neil and his coaching staff working extremely hard, and they will continue to work hard to put things right. In the interview when he spoke about our players he knew how talented they were, in his interview we asked him how he set up against us because we saw how Blackpool played against us last season on the front foot. We know he’s capable of doing that. Unfortunately he’s come into a group of not very confident players and we need to change that around as quickly as possible.
When I asked you why we changed the manager last season you said it was primarily because of the terrible run we went on, I think four wins in 20 games. We’re now on a run of one win in 15, one in 14 under Neil…
No, that’s unfair, Neil has only been here nine games. Paul Hall took the Burnley game, and the run started under Mick.
…you’re right, the run started under Mick. The run itself though is not dissimilar to last season.
If you look at last season we had a lot of losses in a row, we have had draws this time. If we’d have held out against Swansea and Sheff Utd you and I probably wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. But we are, and I do understand it, we’re not performing to the levels we know we can perform. When you don’t, people are going to be judgemental and say things aren’t going right and I totally understand it.
Without a category one academy here, you mention 13 players lost for just £750k, it’s going to be very difficult to follow through on this development plan that we’ve got?
It’s the only plan for QPR. We have got unbelievable owners who are willing to invest in this football club. It’s not the for the want of wanting to put money into the club that they’re not able to. The system and the way it works means they’re not able to put money into the club in the way they want to put money into the club. They’re working hard in other ways to get the club to where it needs to be. They want to be successful, they’re not putting their money into the club to be unsuccessful. I go home on a Saturday and I feel worse when we lose than I did when I was playing, because when I was playing I could perhaps do something about it the next week but now I’m stuck there like everybody else not being able to do anything about it. I know those boys, the group of players we’ve got at this club, when you said about ‘downing tools’, when I first came to this club I’d have said yes to you about that, but certainly not this group of boys. If they’re not playing well it’s a lack of confidence and a lack of all the things I spoke about, not because they’re downing tools and don’t want to play for Queens Park Rangers.
Is that academy currently producing players in the quantity and quality that we need? It is well staffed, Chris Ramsey has worked everywhere in the game and been our first team manager, Paul Hall is an international football manager, we’ve got Alex Carroll an academy manager, people like Andy Impey, Micah Hyde, Paul Furlong who were terrific players… all of these people. For the money that is costing is this academy currently producing players in the quantity and quality we need?
Of course we want to produce more. What we have to understand is where we are in the pecking order in London, being able to attract those players. This training facility will do us the world of good. Three years ago after losing Eze we were the club people wanted to send their players to. We lost that, we’ve lost that a little bit, and we need to gain it back. We need to show that this is a club you want to come to, you’re going to play, you’re going to be successful, and if you do things right you’ll move on and that will in turn move us into the places we want to be. We look at the academy, we’ve got good people working in the academy, if we didn’t we wouldn’t have had 13 players leave the club because, again, before I joined the club players were just going out the door and there was no money coming in. Ok, £750k isn’t a lot of money relative to what we’re spending but we’re doing something right if people are coming in and taking our players.
That’s what I mean though, it must be heartbreaking for you guys to lose that amount of players for that little money, what I’m saying is other clubs have abandoned the idea entirely because if you haven’t got a category one academy in the EPPP era and you’re surrounded by category one academies you’re pushing piss up hill a bit.
Yeh that’s what we have to look at, and we have to look at it seriously. As you’ve said, pushing piss up hill, is not a nice place to be. Losing those 13 players, not every single one of them but 75% of them we’d identified as people who could play for this QPR team. The question you asked me about having players in place to play for the first team if something happens to your first choice player, we’re not getting the opportunity to see the light of day with these boys because unfortunately they’re being pinched by the system.
One of the other players we have is with contracts, getting players you’ve got through the door, and are doing well, and are sellable assets, running their contracts down. I gather there were extenuating circumstances with Ryan Manning but Bright Osayi-Samuel did that and are you going to tell me that will be any different with Chrissy Willock?
Certainly we’re hoping so. We don’t want to let it get to that place again. He’s coming into his final year, we’re looking at it to see what we can do.
Coming back to us spending money last summer has that put us in a position, and FFP position, where we can’t offer attractive enough contracts to retain the players we’ve got?
We have to be realistic about that yes, they may be offered better contracts elsewhere. But then I know players — one of the biggest problems in football is egos — who have left this football club having not signed a new contract, gone elsewhere and signed for less money. At the time they thought they would earn more, and because of their ego they couldn’t come back and say ‘you know what, I’ll take what you were offering’, because it shows they weren’t getting better than what we were offering. Other players have gone and, yeh, earned better, but not many.
Let me add, when you look at what’s going on in the Championship now I think the predicament at the end of this season will be very different to what it’s been in recent years. Like I say, only four teams out of 24 spending money in January. I think you’ll see the same this summer.
So as we’re trying to develop players to sell, and that market for Championship players is at best suppressed, are we pursuing a model and a plan here that is a pre-Covid plan when you could get £5m-£6m for a Championship player and now you can’t. Is our plan outdated?
I think you can get £5m-£6m for players in the Championship if they’re playing well and are good enough. The £15m-£20m is more difficult now. If I’d said a summer or two ago I was selling Chris Willock for £6m what would you have done? If I’d have said to QPR fans we’re doing that what would have happened?
It wouldn’t have gone down very well.
I’d have got lynched.
Do you not have to just not care about that?
We have to do the right thing by the club. The market has now suppressed a little bit more than everybody was expecting. Does that change in the summer? I don’t think so.
So do we have an alternative plan?
Well you were talking about contracts and people going elsewhere for better contracts, I think that will not be quite the case in the way it has been in recent years.
But is buy low-sell high the only way we see ourselves getting out of this?
Because of the FFP and the constraints we have on us… I would love to say let’s spend £5m here, £10m here. The truth is we have owners that would do that. They are restricted in what they can do. I don’t think people understand that. I think you understand it, I’m not being disrespectful to any of our supporters, but when people support a football club they expect the owners of that club to spend money regardless. We could bring the Saudis in here, the Qataris, and say ‘you take over QPR’. They would not be able to spend the money. They might say we’ll spend it, we don’t care, but what they do now is give clubs points deductions. It’s not a fine, it’s a points deduction. If you come in, flout the rules, spend £x, they say ‘no problem, we’ll take x points off you’. Our owners, as great as they are, are not able to spend the money in the way supporters would like.
Other clubs that have had similar problems and issues to us — crap ground, low attendances, Brentford, Luton are fifth again now — seem able to deal with it and are accelerating past us while we’re stagnating. If Luton can do it why can’t we?
I totally agree. They’ve brought players in that have worked for them. We’ve done the same thing, we’ve brought players in here that have worked, some have and some haven’t. At the start of the season we were in a much better position than Luton. Luton got relegated to League One and built from there, we don’t want to get relegated to League One.
We’re down to the bare 750 QPR fans now at away games, people who would go to the moon to watch QPR, I speak to a lot of these people each weekend and a lot of them are dismayed at what they’re seeing on the pitch at the moment. What would you say to those people?
I understand the dismay. They’re our loyal supporters, that’s why they go, and we’re forever grateful to them. We know we’re not producing the sort of football they’ve become accustomed to watching. They’re sticking behind us and that’s what we need right now, we need people to stick behind us, any football club is only as good as its supporters. I know there is not a lot to appreciate at the moment, but the players are very aware of that. I’m aware of it, the owners are aware of it, we’re all aware the support we’re getting is absolutely fantastic and we appreciate those 749, 753 however many it is. Even the ones that give us stick and are disappointed where things are at the moment, we know they care. We all care about the football club and we want to see it back to where it was a year ago.
What reasons for optimism are there for those people?
The boys have shown what they’re capable of doing. The reason the support is so great is they’ve seen the capabilities of this squad. Those capabilities have not changed. Unfortunately the performances have because of confidence. That’s the optimism, knowing we can get back to those levels.
I am sorry but I am going to have to ask it to finish the interview, given the level of criticism that you personally are getting now, have you considered your position in the light of what’s gone on here over the last 12 months?
Well you mention the last 12 months, but I’m always looking at my position.
It’s funny, when the team is doing well nobody says ‘Les picked a good team today, Les has done well’, when the team starts losing all of a sudden I start picking the players. Maybe people just like having a go at me, I don’t know.
But, no, yes of course I’m always looking at my position. I only want the best for QPR. I’ve worked hard, really hard. The budget now is probably 80% less than it was when I first came here, not because I want it to be that way but it’s the way it is. I’m not going to abandon the ship because things aren’t going well at the moment.
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