For some time now Alejandro Faurlin’s performances on the field have had QPR fans believing he’s just too good to be true. And now, it seems, that’s exactly what he is.
It’s been my default setting for some months now to just laugh at people saying “you must be confident now, surely” and tell them that we will find a way to mess this up – because it’s QPR and it’s what we do.
“Points deduction probably,” I say, half seriously, and they laugh and walk off not believing me but grateful that they don’t work with some arrogant Man Utd supporting toss pot talking about how their team is going to sweep all before them. I imagine them laughing about me in the pub later on with their fellow Norwich/Forest/Leeds supporting mates before starting a conversation about who will finish second behind us.
It’s one of those things that I sort of did believe as I said it, but sort of didn’t. The longer it has one on this season the more apparent it has become that QPR are the best, most consistent side in the division and they are very likely to win it. But there is always that little voice at the back of my mind that tells me QPR were the best team in the country in 1976 and inexplicably blew the title with a late defeat at Norwich – and there have been too many hard luck stories in both the recent history of QPR and my 26 year long life since then to count any chickens before they’re out of the egg and roaming around happily on a corn diet in a grassy field in rural Lincolnshire.
When I become exasperated with people worrying that Burnley might catch us in the table I tell them to relax, because for that to happen they would have to win all 12 of their remaining games and we’d have to lose at least another three – but then it does cross my mind that this would be a very QPR-like turn of events if it did happen.
Anyway it seems, as of 4pm today, that the QPR boardroom has indeed found a way just in the nick of time to (technical term) royally bollocks this right up for us just ten games out from the end of the season.
This afternoon it was announced on the Football Association’s website that QPR are to be charged with an unprecedented seven breaches of its transfer rules and regulations relating to the signing of Alejandro Faurlin from Argentinean club Instituto.
In the first four charges the FA say that QPR signed Faurlin in 2009 with an illegal third party agreement, whereby a business or individual not connected legally with either the player or club pockets money as part of the deal. Third party ownership of players is common in South America, but forbidden here since the Carlos Tevez affair when he came to this country while still under such an agreement and West Ham were ultimately fined £5.5m (plus £30m in compensation to Sheffield United who were relegated instead of West Ham) for paying money to that third party for his services. The third and fourth charges are for failing to notify the FA about that arrangement.
The Football League did not have a rule against third party ownership at the time, and this matter only came to light at the start of this season when it brought one in at which time QPR sought their advice on the Faurlin deal and were immediately referred onto the FA which has forbidden the arrangements since the Tevez affair.
The fifth charge states that QPR used an unauthorised agent in the original transfer of Faurlin in July 2009. Charges six and seven go back to October this season when Faurlin signed a new four year contract at Loftus Road, terminating the third party agreement at the FA’s request in the process. QPR and Gianni Paladini are accused of submitting false documents to the FA on this deal – either by accident through the sort of incompetence that would never have happened had the club not disgracefully dispensed with its former secretary Sheila Marsen, or deliberately in an attempt to cover up the offences committed in the first five charges.
It is a veritable catalogue of horror for QPR supporters who have suffered for so long and finally thought they were about to get a chance for a rare moment of glory this season. Just one of these breaches would bring about the threat of a points deduction – to have seven at once, spread over such a wide range of offences, over such a long period of time, and including two offences committed after the FA had become aware of the problem and given QPR a chance to rectify it paints a grim picture. This would be terrifying, but the points deduction and sizeable fine now seems so inevitable I’ve gone beyond the terror and settled into a depressed acceptance of our fate.
QPR, for what it’s worth, say they will contest the charges and deny “deliberately” doing anything wrong.
The Faurlin transfer has smelt a little like Grimsby docks since the moment it was concluded. He was, you will recall, announced initially as a record signing by QPR in a deal worth £3.5m – despite being a total unknown and signing from the Argentinean Second Division. At the time, summer 2009, QPR had just completed a disastrous season whereby they had worked through Iain Dowie, Paulo Sousa and two different spells with Gareth Ainsworth in charge. The goodwill for Flavio Briatore had evaporated, season ticket sales were plummeting, and in their quest for a new manager the club had scraped the bottom of the barrel so hard they’d actually broken through to the concrete floor beneath and found former Ipswich failure Jim Magillton.
It’s fair to say the mood wasn’t good, and when the mood wasn’t good in 2006 the club had gone out and taken a bit of a punt on an unproven midfielder from foreign shores and built him up to be the next big super star. On that occasion it was Nick Ward, who rather than being given time to settle was put at the heart of a very poor Championship side and treated like a man capable of carrying the team single handedly.
Faurlin fitted the bill in a similar way. The £3.5m price tag on his head cut down any criticism that the QPR board lacked ambition and wasn’t backing its manager. If it was true, QPR were lashing out £1m more than they’d ever done before on a player. And for good measure the usual stories about him being snatched from the clutches of Inter Milan, choosing Loftus Road in a quest for first team football, were circulated through the usual unofficial channels and onto the message boards. The claim that £500,000 of the money was actually paid to Inter Milan to buy out their first option on the player remains on the player’s Wikipedia profile to this day.
Magilton was a less than popular choice as manager at QPR initially, and the Faurlin signing fitted well on that front as well. When it turned out that the mullet haired midfielder could actually play, the credit for the signing was heaped onto Magilton and his assistant John Gorman. Once again the highly professional method of leaking stories to supporters happy to act as puppets for members of the board swung into action and soon the whole story of how Gorman and Ipswich Town scout Simon Hunt had spotted Faurlin playing in Argentina emerged/was concocted. How could you criticise Magilton when he brought us Faurlin?
Faurlin, it turns out, is fantastic. In a notorious dog of a league, thousands of miles from home, with a limited grasp of the language, and with the build and look of a boy you’re more likely to find cutting hair in Toni and Guy than playing football in the Championship he has excelled. More than excelled in fact, last season he was a clear winner as the supporters’ and players’ Player of the Year.
But there remained questions about the deal that had been done to bring him here. Post Christmas with Jim Magilton gone and Gianni Paladini once again coming under fire from supporters as the team fell apart the story about Magilton, Gorman and Hunt masterminding the Faurlin deal after scouting him themselves changed altogether. Suddenly, according to supporters known to be friendly with Paladini, it turned out that it was the Italian chairman of QPR who had done it all. In fact it was Paladini who had spotted the player himself - smoothing things over with Inter and flying out to Argentina to get the deal done. Possibly wearing a cape with a giant ‘S’ on it – who can tell?
In an ill-advised, highly unprofessional and at times cringeworthy interview on JNet radio’s Monday night QPR programme last season Gianni Paladini was picked up on the Faurlin deal by a caller - amidst various schmoozing from the other studio guests on the evening about what an incredible signing he was. Paladini couldn’t exactly say how much we had paid for the player. He admitted that it wouldn’t be £3.5m, unless Faurlin were to play for Argentina in a World Cup final among other outlandish clauses, and at one stage seemed to suggest that he had actually cost us nothing at all before back tracking on that slightly. The outcome was he either didn’t know, or didn’t want to say, and on a night when tough questions were glossed over in favour of the resumption of the four way circle jerk in the studio that was that.
Gianni Paladini has always been a man faced with tough questions since the day he arrived at QPR. Having initially invested £600,000, which the former football agent said was a mortgage against his own house, he brought in further investment from contacts Antonio Caliendo (another former agent) and Brazilian World Cup winning captain Dunga – then used their votes to remove popular chairman Bill Power from the board and take control himself.
Power was a long term QPR fan, with many friends at the club, and his ousting further soured Paladini’s image among a section of the support already pre-disposed not to like him after his attempts to replace Ian Holloway with Ramon Diaz just months after Olly had secured a precious promotion from the Second Division for Rangers. Under Paladini’s guidance QPR maintained their Championship status and stayed out of administration, for which the Italian will always deserve credit because the club was haemorrhaging money throughout his time in sole charge. The club began to make signings that could, at best, be described as odd – Marc Nygaard, Mauro Milanese and Ian Evatt could probably be excused as reasonable buys for a club of our level, but it needed two agents to be paid fees to tie up the deal for Evatt from League One outfit Chesterfield and there was always a heavy cloak of suspicion around the deals done. Every now and again an Ugo Ukah would turn up – a player so bad you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d never played the game before – and get a three year contract.
In 2006, with Gary Waddock in charge, the deals became more bizarre still with Nick Ward leading an unlikely cast that included Egutu Oliseh, Adam Czerkas, Damion Stewart and Armel Tchakounte. The latter, Tchakounte, had not even been good enough to make the first team at Carshalton the year before and counted the Hong Kong Rangers among his list of former clubs. Like Ukah before him, and Alessandro Pellicori after him, it wasn’t more than a few minutes into their first appearance (for Tchakounte that only ever came in the reserves) before supporters realised there was something wholly wrong and the player should never have been considered for a club at our level in a million years. These players, and Pellicori is in the midst of this process now, would then disappear for long periods of time. Paladini, and his supporters on message boards, would publicly state that they had been sold and, in the case of Pellicori, sold for a small profit at that. Weeks later they’d turn up back at QPR, playing in a reserve game, and the suggestion that they’d ever been sold would be denied.
The ousting of Power was triggered (excuse the pun) when Paladini accused another board member and ally of Power’s David Morris of forcing him to resign from the club at gun point having taken a gang of heavies to a home match with Sheffield United. The gang stood trial at Blackfriars Crown Court where Paladini’s contradictions in evidence were ripped apart by one of the defence barristers Jim Sturman who accused him of repeatedly lying under oath. All seven men were found not guilty.
And QPR had also been forced to pay compensation in the region of £150,000 to former player Gino Padula after he took action against the club. The player claimed he had been offered a contract by Paladini only to then be released on a free transfer by manager Ian Holloway. Paladini said he was providing the player with an outline of what a contract offer might look like where he to get one so he could apply for a mortgage, but it has since been alleged that Paladini wanted Padula to be a key go between with the players and Ramon Diaz and had offered him a deal behind Ian Holloway’s back. Paladini vowed to pay the money himself, but it came from the club’s account in the end.
And speaking of the club’s account, there has been growing disquiet since the 2007 takeover by Flavio Briatore at a series of loans paid to Mr Paladini in an interest free arrangement with no repayment date or security. The latest set of accounts, released in February state: “During the year the company paid amounts totalling £40,000 (2000 £40,000) to Moorbound Limited, a company in which O Pladini, the wife of G Paladini, is the only shareholder, in relation to G Paladini's role as a director. Included in other debtors is an interest free loan of £215,000 (2009 £140,000) to G. Paladini. A loan of £50,000 was made to G Paladini in May 2010 and £25,000 of payments were made on behalf of G Paladini during the year."
What these loans are for, why they are given, and whether QPR will ever get them back has never been answered. Again, a caller to the JNet radio show asked Paladini about this money and was shouted down and told by Paladini that if he could prove he had ever taken any money from the club he would give it to the supporter himself. When the caller then raised what the club’s accounts said the issue was glossed over and the conversation moved on. The payments made to Olga, Paladini’s wife, also remain a mystery with her work at Loftus Road presumably limited.
Paladini is an engaging man to talk to. Somebody I’ve often said I would like to invite to a dinner party, but wouldn’t want in charge of my corner shop. But for QPR since he has arrived he’s been like living with an unexploded World War Two weapon in the loft. We can hide it away up there, where we can’t hear the ticking, but you never know when it’s going to explode and bring the next crisis into your life.
Most of these incidents he’s been involved in occurred at times when the club was knocking on death’s door anyway. This latest news comes at a time when QPR are only ten games away from winning promotion back to the Premiership for the first time in 15 years. They scream ‘points deduction’ if proved. He would never be able to set foot in Loftus Road again if that were to happen.
Some happy precedents to consider if you think, like me, you’re going to have trouble sleeping tonight thinking about all of this. Obviously the most famous example of problems with third party ownership was at West Ham when they signed Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano – they received a hefty £5.5m fine but were not deducted points, although the incident ended up costing them close to £40m because of the out of court settled compensation they paid to Sheffield United who were relegated in their stead. However at that time no specific rules on third party ownership existed, and West Ham were merely charged with failing to supply all relevant documentation and effectively lying about it all. They were also dealt with by an independent Premier League panel which was strongly criticised from many sides, including our current boss Neil Warnock, for not deducting points. Rules against third party ownership do now exist, and the pressure will be on from many quarters for the authorities to show a strong, tough response.
Sorry, I was meant to be trying to calm you down wasn’t I? Ok well in September 2008 Leeds pleaded guilty to using an unlicensed agent in the transfer of Anthony Elding from Stockport and were not deducted points. Earlier that year Bristol City were similarly charged with using an unlicensed agent and paying £30,000 to a third party in the transfer of Enoch Showumni in 2006 – again they escaped without a points deduction.
However QPR face a total of seven charges over Faurlin and the aggravating factors make grim reading.
Firstly there is the initial failure to notify the FA of the existence of a third party agreement in the original Faurlin deal back in 2009 – when the Tevez case and the laws it brought in were in the public eye and the illegality of such arrangements could have been quoted chapter and verse by even casual football observers. Secondly, and more seriously in my eyes, there is the issue of what happened in October this season when, it seems reading the charges, QPR were given the chance to rectify the situation and register Faurlin properly but cocked it up again.
The Club and Club Official Gianni Paladini are also charged in respect of allegedly false information contained in documents submitted to The FA in relation to the same player signing an extension to his playing contract with the Club in October 2010.
If QPR were indeed given such an opportunity to tidy the mess up and only succeeded in digging themselves down further and lying about it then we’re in very big trouble. Likewise if Faurlin was ineligible prior to us sorting out his new deal in October, then Rangers may be liable to be deducted the points for the six games he played before that date. Such a deduction would leave Rangers ninth, seven points outside the play offs. What damage will be done to the squad’s mood and morale simply by the charges becoming public and appearing across today’s national papers remains to be seen and could derail our hopes anyway, whether a team would be able to cope with a huge points deduction after working so hard to get where they are today and still go on to achieve something is highly doubtful. Luckily, eligibility of the player to play doesn’t seem to be an issue in the FA charges.
Rather terrifyingly QPR’s best defence at the moment seems to be “we didn’t know it was illegal” if the official statement put out by the club this evening is anything to go by. It says the club and Mr Paladini are confident there was “no deliberate wrongdoing involved.” An A-Level law student should be able to tell you after their first lesson that ignorance of the law is no defence – if our best hope of escaping from this is pleading that we didn’t know what we were doing was wrong then I’m afraid all we can hope for is damning statements like “a culture of incompetence running throughout the entire club” included in a judgement that will take the form of a very large book travelling through the air at a very great speed in our direction.
This is soul destroying. Even if proved to be completely false, and the club totally absolved of blame, it’s an issue that will now surely hang over us for the rest of this season at least creating a climate of fear and uncertainty that cannot fail to unsettle the players. Suddenly banker wins like this Saturday’s game with Palace at Loftus Road appear as banana skins for a bunch of players that don’t know if they’re going to be promoted, even if they achieve 100 points. And if it is proved how can the FA do anything other than take points from us? When you actually look at what the charges are, the timescale of them, and the amount of offences committed it seems inevitable. Even if the FA wanted to be lenient with us they’re hardly likely to be so having given us a chance to rectify this situation in October only to have us incur another two breaches for the way we went about that tidy up.
Perhaps our only saving grace will be that with this occurring so close to the end of the campaign (the FA like to make a rod for their own backs) any appeals and challenges are likely to drag this into next season by which time QPR could already be a Premiership club - if so expect compensation claims to the tune of the £50m television money they missed out on from our title challengers who will all be sniffing round this like vultures after a pair of matchdays this week that seemed to strike decisive blows in our favour. It renders the Championship promotion race a farce in the meantime – a title chase likely to be settled in a courtroom, as only QPR could muster.
And if we’re relying on the testimony of Gianni Paladini, whether he’s guilty or innocent, then let’s hope he’s improved his technique with difficult questions.