Twenty minutes Marti, you and the head of the cod – Column
Monday, 18th Nov 2024 16:34 by Dorse

With a season that promised so much for QPR now lying in something approaching tatters, message board regular Dorse put fingers to keys by way of a coping mechanism this international break.

Has anyone else been watching Masterchef: The Professionals? I love it, sitting there, eating biscuits whilst cynically criticising a professional chef struggling to make cheese on toast whilst Monica Galetti gives them a stare that would stop a charging rhino and shouting, sweaty egg-head Greg Wallace bellows ‘Whoah!’ whenever he catches sight of a frying pan.

In previous series, there has been a challenge wherein chefs’ skills are tested using ingredients that are basically the left-overs from a previous service. ‘Your challenge’, says Wise Man Number Three Marcus Wareing, ‘is to create restaurant-quality food from this…’ He whips off the gingham cloth to reveal the contents of the food bin from last night. Remnants of veg, half a cow skeleton, three kilos of coffee grounds etc. But wait...! Is that a fish head? Get in! The chef stops hyperventilating and starts riffing on a menu.

“Well, Marcus, I am going to be making braised cod-cheeks in a burned-butter sauce, use the fish bones to create a stock along with the veg peelings for a bisque, deep-fried bone marrow croquettes...” etc. Cue ten minutes of dramatic music and smash-cuts away to Greg gurning like a constipated chimp or Monica making a face like she's sniffed a pint of eight week old yak's milk, and we're done. Three plates of Michelin-quality nosh made from the contents of the skip behind Nando’s.

“This is excellent. You’re going through to next week and the opportunity of a lifetime...” grins Marcus. “You will join us at '¿Xffk/Öff#', at the top of the Ummagumma volcano, an experimental dining experience run by a 26 year old wünderkind restauranteur, who challenges guests' preconceptions about food availability through creative ingredients, methods of service and presentation...”

Cut to next week, with all the chefs trying desperately to understand the technique of serving soup in the dark to customers in a giant centrifuge, whilst hardcore gabba techno music causes strobes to induce a fugue-state and giant magnets replicate the effect of Jupiter’s gravity on the cutlery.

“Yes, I know it seems difficult for most people to understand,” says the owner, “but this is because they have been programmed to blindly accept what they have been told. What we are doing is actually better in every way, it's just they don't understand it...”

Meanwhile, 28 customers have been hospitalised through burns, epilepsy, blunt-force trauma, mercury poisoning etc but still left £1k tips because this is the future of dining. After the 19-hour lunch service, the chefs grimly wait for their judgement.

“Marti, your performance in the last round was exemplary. However, in this challenge, you were given the owner's signature Coal, Dog Semen and Prune Tarte-Tatin with Aspirin-infused Chantilly Cream to prepare. Guests reported that the jizz was corked but you didn’t pick up on this. At £300 a plate, this is inexcusable...”

This tortured metaphor is how I see Marti Cifuentes’ current experience at QPR.

Last season, he was given a bucket of scraps with which to create something that wouldn’t leave us puking so hard that we end up in A&E with all the blokes who were ‘...wearing a loose fitting dressing gown, slipped and fell on it’. ‘Hmm, nurse, fetch me a size seven cheek-spreader, stat!’

Let’s be fair to Marti, with the ingredients at his disposal, a couple of little extras and some vision he was able to knock together something that kept us all coming back. He surprised us with things like moving Dunne to right back after bombing out both Cannon and Kakay – in both cases, something we could all agree was probably for the best. He changed his natural approach to go pragmatic and get the best out of what we had. Our form during the last 20-odd games was simply fantastic. Achieved with the footballing equivalent of adding some ketchup and actually cooking it properly. ‘Please, Sir, I want some more…’ Just imagine what he could do with his own ingredients.

So, Chef, you think the last round was tough. Well, let’s see how you do with a lot of ingredients selected … by SCIENCE! Yes, we’ve got the empirically-proven statistics to show that these ingredients are the best for you and the customer. People will not understand. How could they? They are mere mortals, constrained by their material and temporal existence. We cannot explain to them how this works, for they would see the very face of GOD in the data… And so it goes. Once again, it seems to me – a fan, no more, no less – that Marti has been given the components of a team by a statistically sound data model but it is a model that is untested in this situation.

Everyone would agree that last season’s squad needed an overhaul. Begovic was not the answer, unless the question something quite rude. Kakay had blown it, as had Dozzell. Dykes and Armstrong’s performances were divisive, at best. Larkeche needed game time for development etc. All of these decisions, we could understand. Great. We’ve got some space and a whole summer. Let’s get building.

Any professional manager has an idea of how they would like set up the squad and the team. Marti will be no different. Now, when we look at his CV, you can see he favours a back four. This would lead us to conclude that he is going to need fullbacks. So, how on earth has he ended up with a squad that has no useable fullbacks on the right? And only a single left back, coincidentally, the exact same left back we’ve been trying to offload all summer? You cannot tell me that this is what Marti set up. He never has before – check the history. Why has the club gone into the season (again!) with so few options up front? Last year it was Dykes, Armstrong and, unaccountably, Kargbo! This season, at least we’ve got two experienced forwards but when one gets crocked..? We have ‘Tens’ coming out of our ears, all of whom added together wouldn’t weigh as much as the Happy Meals they still can’t finish, but no forward-thinking / passing midfielders. If the data says our signings are brilliant, I’m asking who you got your data from? If they were laughing when you paid them and they were wearing a Brentford scarf, I’d fucking worry about using it.

If we are going to keep asking Marti to create a five-star experience with ingredients that simply don’t work for the recipe, he is going to leave the competition (sad music, clears his locker, takes off his chef’s whites, talks about spending time with his kids etc) and we’ll be left looking for someone who was able to make licking a car battery into fine dining – and they’re not exactly common.

My hope is that the club can see what they have done and give Marti the time, and backing in January – get a fucking fullback! – to see the job through. This season is not scraps and leftovers from the previous service: these signings are decisions made this year that, individually, seemed to make sense and have a real purpose. However, do they fit the recipe? Do we really need kimchee if we’re making apple crumble? Kimchee is great but not with custard.

Can’t we just let the chef cook*?

* See what I did there? #downwiththekids

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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