Adel Taarabt’s free transfer to Benfica last week brought to an end a six year stay at QPR that few who witnessed its highs will ever forget.
Warnock’s immediate predecessors had agreed. Paul Hart, who Ale Faurlin describes as the worst manager he’s worked under in the UK, picked Patrick Agyemang in attack instead of Adel Taarabt. In fact, in one memorable second half against a relegation-threatened Bristol City team when QPR played for half an hour with two right backs, two left backs, three centre backs and two defensive central midfielders he picked only Patrick Agyemang in attack. Mick Harford who followed him recognised the stupidity of that, but responded by loaning in Marcus Bent and Tamas Priskin rather than turning to the mercurial talent within. Jim Magilton had tried, and in one glorious fortnight when Barnsley, Preston, Reading and Derby were all vanquished and seventeen goals were scored the potential shone brightly, but it all blew up in his face — or rather, on the end of his forehead.
Neil Warnock is not a noted lover of temperamental, flair players. Warnock is the former Sheffield United manager who used to make Phil Jagielka stand up in the dressing room so everybody could look at their role model during his team talk. He’s the man who, needing a win from the final two matches of the Premier League season to stay up, went to Aston Villa who had nothing to play for and played with a single striker and lost. Ronnie Jepson, who Warnock had at Bury and Huddersfield, is Neil Warnock’s sort of striker — one headed goal, three elbows into the gob of the nearest centre back, five cigs in the changing room after the game and back on the bus home. Warnock made Jepson his reserve team manager at QPR.
But Neil Warnock is a man who knows how to win promotions — QPR’s fabulous, tear-jerking 2010/11 season would be his seventh. In Adel Taarabt, one afternoon at Deepdale, Warnock saw a man who could win him that title, and how he could get him to do it.
QPR were just about safe by the time they journeyed north to face Preston North End, and given the money they’d spent and the quality of player available to them it was ridiculous that this was the sum total of their ambition. Only the arrival of Warnock, the upturn in results he brought, and the meltdown occurring back at the club he’d left behind in South London made it so. The QPR fans, who’d seen megalomaniac Italian owner Flavio Briatore rattle through seven managers in two and a half seasons prior to Warnock’s arrival, were grateful for small mercies.
Preston were 2-0 up just before the hour. Pretty standard stuff. But QPR, with Taarabt playing a withdrawn role behind a central striker, came roaring back in the second half. The game finished 2-2 and QPR should have won it. Taarabt assisted both goals and the names of the scorers highlighted the quality of the balls played — Peter Ramage and Tamas Priskin. Taarabt had been so good, even they couldn’t miss. Preston couldn’t cope with him, it was a total one man show and they had no answers to it. Such a single-handed demolition job was a spectacle even the most loyal fan of either team would struggle to recall happening before. It was something the Championship would quickly become used to.
With a minute to go, Warnock took Taarabt off even though the game, locked at 2-2, was still there to be won. The Moroccan didn’t stick around for the stoppage time — instead he walked straight down the sideline, into the dressing room, quickly showered, and left. The QPR fans who scooted out on full time and took taxis back to the railway station were surprised to see their man of the match for the day had beaten them there and was racing down the platform to catch the next train to the airport, leaving his team mates behind to head off to sunnier climes for a few days.
Warnock had hit upon a formula — build a team around Taarabt on the field, and indulge him more than he ever had any other player before off it.
Cardiff had spent big money of their own, bringing Craig Bellamy out of the Premier League to play in a shiny new stadium in his home town. He scored that day, as did Jay Bothroyd with a ripsnorting 25 yarder, but Taarabt was unstoppable and scored two different, but equally wonderful, goals of his own. "If QPR didn’t have Taarabt we’d have won,” said typically graceful City boss Dave Jones afterwards. True enough, but QPR did have Taarabt and my what a wonderful old time we all had as a result.
Things could have been different. On day one, at home to Barnsley, the visitors had two extremely good looking penalty claims waved away, and missed another golden chance when goalkeeper Paddy Kenny, on debut, strode confidently off his line to collect a high, long, straight ball into his area and missed the thing altogether sparking a melee in the six-yard box behind him. But Taarabt won one spot kick for Rangers with a mazy dribble that Heidar Helguson converted, then smashed in another of his own in a 4-0 success.
There was another little twist that day — Akos Buzsaky, who had the potential to be every bit as good as Taarabt but had suffered several terrible injuries, was due to start at the base of the midfield in a 4-2-3-1 alongside Ale Faurlin with Taarabt ahead of them but pulled up lame before the game and was replaced by Shaun Derry. Derry’s experience, pragmatism and no small amount of ability balanced the sublime Faurlin and the miraculous Taarabt perfectly, giving them the freedom to express themselves knowing there was a wild old fox waiting behind to commit a tactical foul or swoop in with an interception if necessary. When speedster Wayne Routledge was later added to one flank it became the best midfield there has been in the second tier since Paul Merson and Paul Gascoigne were swashbuckling around for Middlesbrough a decade previous.
A fortnight later, at Derby, the hosts went 2-0 up and Taarabt, nullified, was substituted — but Jamie Mackie came up trumps with an equaliser in stoppage time. Momentum built, and Taarabt rode the wave.
Initially Taarabt was a footballing cake icer. QPR were uncharacteristically, consistently brilliant and swept all before them. Jamie Mackie scored eight goals in the first seven league games, Hogan Ephraim was in the form of his life, Heidar Helguson was finally playing in Hoops as he had done in Watford yellow — Taarabt chipped in with the odd penalty here and a steady stream of assists. It wasn’t until November that he really took centre stage.
QPR were starting to be taken seriously as title contenders. Sky Sports had, belatedly, televised the R’s for the first time in an away game at Bristol City where Taarabt had played up to the cameras, tried to do the whole thing himself, fallen flat on his face and been substituted — Dave Jones, the studio guest that night, couldn’t hide his smugness as Rangers were lucky to scrape a last minute equaliser from a corner after Jon Stead’s annual barnburner. But when the going got tough against a decent Reading team a fortnight later — Rangers had Bradley Orr sent off before half time — Taarabt took the Royals apart by himself, winning and scoring one penalty and assisting another for Tommy Smith. Two ridiculous goals against Preston followed before he scored the winner in a key clash with Cardiff, winning a tackle (really) wide on the right before dribbling into the area, selling the defenders this way and that without ever actually touching the rolling ball and dispatching it into the top corner.
Against Swansea at Loftus Road on Boxing Day, with the game won, he scored a goal the likes of which you’ll never see again. Backflicking a pass gratuitously to Kyle Walker and receiving the ball back was just cocky enough to rile visiting midfielder Joe Allen and get him to commit the cardinal sin against Taarabt — diving in rashly. Taarabt, in trademark style, ushered the ball between Allen’s legs and collected it on the other side. The Welshman, who would later cost Liverpool the thick end of £10m, continued towards the South Africa Road side of the ground to execute his tackle, only to drop his head and mouth "for fuck’s sake” when he realised the ball and the Moroccan were no longer there. It was an outrageous moment by itself, to then move the ball out of his feet and bend it round the goalkeeper and into the far corner for 4-0 was something else entirely. The noise of the crowd as it goes in is quite different from a British football crowd celebrating, it sounds more Spanish as everybody present started with a load "wow” or "Oh my God” rather than a cheer or scream. Bradley Orr can be seen in the celebration huddle asking Shaun Derry if he’d ever seen anything like that before. Neil Warnock put his hands on his hand and stood open mouthed on the touchline.
A sticky patch of two draws and two defeats followed, including the FA Cup game at Blackburn where Jamie Mackie broke his leg. When a stubborn, obstinate, ugly, talentless Coventry side started making life difficult in mid-January, and took the lead through sex offender Marlon King, it seemed like that run would stretch to a concerning five matches. Taarabt stepped up again, first breaking the monotony with a curling finish not dissimilar to his Cardiff goal in first half stoppage time, then playing Wayne Routledge in for a debut goal four minutes from time with a forty yard clipped pass from tight to the touchline with the outside of his right foot — every bit as ludicrously brilliant as it sounds.
The heroics at Cardiff were still to come, but a first minute goal at Barnsley on a Tuesday night that would ultimately win the game 1-0 three days after a fluke 4-1 loss at Scunthorpe - on an evening when the referee seemed to be doing everything in his power to allow Barnsley to either win, or permanently maim Taarabt, or both — was almost as vital.
He scored again at Watford in the penultimate match to spark a 2-0 win that sealed the title, and became the first QPR captain to lift the Football League’s famous championship trophy a week later. The rest of the division voted him the league’s Player of the Year in a landslide.
Taarabt was trouble. Even in the promotion season there was the unique episode at Hull where he went on strike in the middle of a game and demanded to be substituted, the Bristol City Sky episode and countless flounces besides. Warnock managed to keep his senior players onside with the indulgence, and just about nursed his man and his idea through to the end of a wonderful campaign.
To say he subsequently failed for QPR in the Premier League isn’t altogether true. Two goals and four assists from 25 starts in the first season may not seem like a good return, but this was in a team that finished fourth bottom of the league and the goals and fine performances, when they came, at the end of the year, were crucial — winning strikes against Arsenal and Spurs. Five goals and five assists the year after, when Rangers finished dead last and won only five times all season, was very decent indeed. In a game at Chelsea he gave a performance in a so-called ‘false nine’ position that was good as any you’ll see in the top division in this country, culminating in an assist for the winning goal. He was in and out of the team, he was publicly berated by Joey Barton and others, he ended up with the manager who’d sold him at Spurs and patently had little time for him and so on…
But given how good he’d been before, it was a disappointment not to see him go on and fulfil his potential at the highest level at QPR. A loan spell at Fulham, albeit once more in a struggling team, did little for him and although he scored four goals in a dozen appearances for AC Milan and was well liked by manager Clarence Seedorf, the Dutchman was sacked before a permanent deal could be done. Like so many at QPR in recent times, the ridiculous contract he was given at Loftus Road meant nobody could even afford to take a punt on him.
He was poorly behaved, often over weight, rarely training properly, frequently pulling up with one spurious injury or another the day before a long northern away game, constantly talking about a desire to fulfil some imminent move to Real Madrid or Barcelona he’d been convinced was his entitlement and more besides. He was a twat. He surrounded himself with appalling advisors, and wideboy hangers on none of whom will give a fiddler’s fart about him when he’s 45, properly fat, and sitting down somewhere to quietly reflect that he wasted a talent that could have taken him to the very, very, very top and spent the best years of his career playing no football at all. He was regularly pictured out and about, bloated and unshaven, choking down shisha with Marouane Chamakh and other aforementioned wastes of flesh and breath. Benfica could be a good move — a big team in a slow-paced, uncompetitive, league - but it’s surely his last chance on the big stage.
You can talk about Redknapp not liking him, and basically throwing a club asset under the bus by publicly slagging him off for his behaviour and weight, but only Neil Warnock, through total and utter indulgence, ever got anything out of Taarabt consistently and over six years at Loftus Road six other permanent managers had tried and failed. You can’t keep blaming the manager.
We cannot talk about standards of behaviour, culture and ethos being required at QPR and then also say that Adel Taarabt, and the way he has behaved, should be tolerated on the side because he’s a bit of a sort. Sooner or later he had to grow up — Warnock’s plan was never going to be a permanent solution, particularly as the better Taarabt got the more arrogant he became and the higher QPR went the more equally egotistical dickheads they accumulated.
But then can we really talk about QPR being a club of mavericks and cast aside Adel Taarabt? We laugh and dine out on the stories of Stan Bowles in the bookies at ten to three on a Saturday, or Rodney Marsh and the boys drinking and playing cards until 4am the night before the League Cup final, or Alan McDonald dipping out of the half time team talks to spark up in the bogs — perhaps one day we’ll talk about Adel demanding to be substituted in the first half of a 0-0 draw at Hull in the same way. After all, if you were that good, wouldn’t you also get a little tired of being belted up in the air by a troglodyte like Ian Ashbee?
In the end, it was the list of personality disorders, delusions and inability to behave that brought Adel Taarabt to QPR in the first place. Players of such supreme natural ability aren’t to be found queueing up down the Uxbridge Road — if he had the attitude and temperament of Hogan Ephraim or Jamie Mackie he’d have been playing for one of the ten best clubs in Europe, not messing about with the likes of us.
It was his failings that brought him here and kept him here, and because of them we’ll always have those goals, those tricks, those breathtaking moments, the promotion and the beautiful, crestfallen, exasperated look on Joe Allen’s face.
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