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As Marti is/was a key part of the recruitment team that brought him here, hopefully he will have given himself food for thought as to who is likely to fit this league and who won't. In these cases, there's probably a bit of managerial ego involved in not being seen to give up on a player entirely, though that does seem to have happened, and it's a big waste of money, given hthe double whammy of his reported fee and (?4 year) contract. I've said consistently, for me he's a manger who's still very much on a learning curve with us.
Saito is oneplayer who he's helped to improve considerably, however, so he/they clearly get it right too, and the same is true of Smyth. (Jury is still out for me with Varane and Celar, while Frey blows hot and cold.) Recruitment has been a mixed bag, overall, but hopefully Marti is a fast learner.
Clutching at straws, I think, to pull the positives from a crap result, performance and game at Portsmouth. I expect Marti to become a good manager, but for me he's still got a lot to learn in the Champ, and his team (our team) continues to lack resilience, balls, and creativity at times, even though there's been stuff to applaud with the revival the last couple of months. He tells us they knew what to expect down there, but completely played into the oppo's hands, but he unfortunately don't explain why this was.
I think we'll probably finish with a few more points than last season, but, after his/our truly terrible start, not that many.
I remember crying when we lost the League Cup semi v Aston Villa in 1976/77. My mum let me stay up and watch the highlights on the b/w portable telly in her room, and I just bawled. She had limited sympathy, since I was 19. (Not really - I was 9.)
I'm pretty sure my friend Justin and I were weeping when he rolled down the terrace into my arms in the FA Cup Final in '82 after Fenwick's equaliser.
I also cried with relief when we won at Hillsboro to ascend to the mighty heights of the Champ.
It's crazy, ain't it? How does football do this to us?
I think what Marti's doing there is giving an opinion about having players at the club in the last year of their contracts, but that's all it is, as this isn't something he gets to decide, and in fact he says in the next breath that Nourry and the club need to be consulted about anything on the personnel side. However, he also maeks the point he's very happy to be working with Paal, so that's clearly significant.
I find this thread hilarious. We're just not very good away from home, as we're proving again and again, and people want to fixate on the (admittedly unfathomable) colour of our shirts. Talk about an exercise in collective denial!
And another poster who plays the man not the ball, and prefers to castigate and caricature the writer rather than deal with the content he's raising. I'm not 'proclaiming' anything, about my intellect or anything else, just demonstrating my passion for all things QPR, so the issue must be with your inferiority complex and resentment. If you don't want to engage positively, don't say anything!
Just for the record, I'm not judging Varane for his performance today. I haven't been convinced by him from the start - he plays too deep, can't pass (incisively), dawdles on the ball, and gets caught in/turns over possession too often. Playing him and Field together is too much.
I'm certainly no Paal hater, and I appreciate it's not his first language, but honestly - he doesn't seem the brightest tool in the box, does he? His interview's only 3 minutes long, but I didn't even make it to the end. Come on, Ken, throw us a bone, man! I'm not asking for Brian Glanville levels of sporting analysis, but is 'taking it game by game' really the best you can do? Today was one game, and your team mates didn't show up, so that cliche isn't even very relevant, is it, if you think about it?
This tendency of our players, and sometimes our manager, seeming to have no idea about why we perform so badly when we do worries me. Wouldn't you think, for your own professional self-respect if nothing else, you'd try to think of something to say before going in front of a camera? It was the same with Field after Swansea, if memory serves. Absolutely shocking first half in particular, but, again, he didn't have a clue as to why.
I must be missing something! These are professionally coached players. Is it they just don't think about their team and what they're doing, or they don't really care?
As MC pointed out in his pre-match interview, we won 56 points last season. This season, with 12 games to play, we have 44pts, so we need four wins and a draw from 12 games to pip that total by a single point. You'd think we'd achieve that, but I don't necessarily feel we'll get a lot more. Gut says we'll probably finish with about 64 pts at best and finish somewhere around where we are now, so marginal improvement in terms of results.
Unless the squad is significantly upgraded next season, I foresee further mediocrity next year.
Players don't automatically leave because they're out of contract. Isn't that equally obvious? It's entirely possible, and indeed probable, that at least one or two will be offered (and will accept) new terms.
It wouldn't surprise me either - people can say what they like, but, for me, two or three games this season (cf. Leicester and Swansea), including this one, have smelt as fishy as the the 2003 Playoff Final, the 1986 Milk Cup Final and the 1982 FA Cup Final Replay. The team could well be under instruction from the owners to stay in the division but not to have a tilt at the playoffs. We had a fantastic opportunity to continue to do the latter today, buoyed by another rousing away support, and didn't turn up. It's inexcusable!
'Nullified' is an interesting way off putting it. They 'nullified' poor Koki by taking him out with an elbow, splattering his face in blood, and the piece of sh*t who did it should have seen a card the colour of Saito's wounds rather than that of his native ethnicity but saw neither. Cook should have been in the ref's ear from the start, as should our bench. It was gutless, inept, and we deserved exactly what we got.