This season thoughts on yesterdays result 15:31 - Mar 23 with 2172 views | Bigears | Yesterday performance was the exact same type of performance we have averaged out all season, and the reason why we struggle to beat top teams. The start of season when we had the good run, we played possession football, pass the ball around from side to side, the midfield often dominating but lacking any urgency or threat, and without Ravel this would have been at best a draw as we had no other idea how to move the ball forward. I thought Bond summed up our performance of lack luster urgency, when he said he was upset with Green for not keeping the ball n extra time and settling for the draw, instead he chose to kick it. Other managers in our position don’t, they try and take all three points and put forwards on. This tactic is the reason why we lose so many, playing safe, keeping the ball means we don’t finish teams off, and recently we paid the price as our luck as run out, instead of teams missing there chances, there getting the rub of the green and scoring. It’s also is the reason why we can’t beat better teams, because they have the skill and know how, how to unlock our team, and they stick to their game plan even if they go one down. Yes I am happy with the win, in fact I am happy with how the seasons gone as I predicted we would finish 10 to 12 after last season’s shambolic mess, so this is not a moan, just an observation and opinion. Would I sack Redknapp, if we don’t go up — no, as they only way we are ever going to get a decent team, that show consistency, flair and passion s build, from the bottom up, and changing managers is not the answer. Because if it was, Flavio tango man would have won the premier league . Onwards and upwards, here to the play off (hopeful we wont muck it up), but the sad thing is, I cant stand the prem, its corporate football, with corporate fickle fans, as the prices go through the roof, and people just buy season tickets to sell for a profit. Last year even old fans were selling there for big games because of the profit they could make. | | | | |
This season thoughts on yesterdays result on 20:06 - Mar 23 with 2041 views | newgolddream | Good post | | | |
This season thoughts on yesterdays result on 22:04 - Mar 23 with 1979 views | DylanP | "…. the reason why we lose so many" We have played 37 won 19 and only lost 9 games all season. That is twice as many wins as losses. That isn't terrible overall. | |
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This season thoughts on yesterdays result on 04:39 - Mar 24 with 1875 views | qprmick |
This season thoughts on yesterdays result on 22:04 - Mar 23 by DylanP | "…. the reason why we lose so many" We have played 37 won 19 and only lost 9 games all season. That is twice as many wins as losses. That isn't terrible overall. |
.....and how many have we lost or won since, Austin got injured? [Post edited 24 Mar 2014 4:39]
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This season thoughts on yesterdays result on 18:12 - Mar 24 with 1752 views | Bigears |
This season thoughts on yesterdays result on 22:04 - Mar 23 by DylanP | "…. the reason why we lose so many" We have played 37 won 19 and only lost 9 games all season. That is twice as many wins as losses. That isn't terrible overall. |
Not saying its terrible as mentioned i think we are having a good season, better than anticipated, but if we had been more assertive, played the ball quicker and gone for the throat i feel IMO that we would have won more that we drew and not lost as many by the odd goal. We would have either 1) scored more than 1 goal and killed the game off 2) the goal conceded would have meant we would have got a draw and not a lost. Hopefully with Ravel and Charlie playing together will see this, as Ravel who works his socks for the team only knows one way and thats attack :) at pace, always looking for the quick attack. | | | |
This season thoughts on yesterdays result on 11:37 - Mar 25 with 1667 views | Ingham | Interesting post. The Premiership waves big money at Clubs, but the system of three up three down does exactly what it was intended to do, prevent Clubs stabilising into the boredom of a relative handful of solid teams using the resources they already have to make the game monotonous. The absence of promotion and relegation at the top and the monotony of the same handful of Clubs occupying the top four positions for 25 years, give or take the odd slight shift in emphasis, merely underscores the difficulties a deceptively small Club like QPR has in even understanding what the problems are. We went up three years ago. Since then, 6 Clubs who were inferior to us then emulated what we did, with two and maybe more of them are looking much stronger than QPR at the moment. It is very difficult to consistently sign players who are significantly better than our rivals when we don't even know who our rivals will be from one season to the next. The idea that parachute payments would freeze promotion and relegation into a mini-league has proved unsound. Clubs which come down frequently struggle, if they don't carry on descending through the leagues. And Clubs like ours show them how. If you aren't any good, spend more. So the efforts of relatively talented coaches and managers to build long term - which is what so many people would like to see - are thwarted from the start by the contradiction that the more useless a Club is, the more readily it resorts to bridging the talent gap by borrowing. Keeping Redknapp might be a good idea. But it is reasonable to suppose that the Board, as of now, haven't the slightest notion whether they will or not. At many Clubs, the dilemma is resolved by waiting to see whether promotion is achieved. Superficially - and as far as solving the short-term problem goes - this seems to make sense. But essentially, it is absurd. If the ball hits the post and goes in in the final game of the season, and we go up, the manager is deemed to be good enough to manage in the Premiership. But if it hits the post and comes out, he'll be sacked because he isn't good enough to manage us for another season in the Championship. And we know this is more or less exactly what happens. Before he has done anything, everyone believes in the manager (and the chairman). Once we've seen what he can do, with very, very few exceptions, everyone has doubts. In 2 years, or even much less, it's good riddance. Not because we're top. Not because we're brilliant. Not because we're winning all the time. That is unlikely to bring about very much dissatisfaction at all. But because we've never come to terms with what goes on in football all the time, even for the top Clubs. They lose. It doesn't work. Thinking long term probably won't make any difference as long as we can't accept that that may mean losing and losing and losing. My impression is that long-term planning is undertaken solely on the basis that there must be more or less instantaneous improvement, followed by more of the same. And even if there is a purple patch, as soon as we hit even mediocrity, let alone a long, losing run, the sheer lack of depth, understanding, know-how, preparation and willingness to learn - which means recognising how little we know, and that means recognising how difficult it is to even understand what we have to do. And this is doubly difficult at a Club where the actual, real, well-known limitations of the Club are never the starting point of the learning process. At QPR, we don't begin the long process of making the Club rich and successful. The fact that it isn't is deemed to make any kind of realism unacceptable. Instead, we BEHAVE as if we already ARE rich and successful, spending money the Club hasn't got, pushing up the price of even the most mediocre performers, and announcing, long before we have any idea of how to do it, a stadium more than three times the size of the Club's historic average attendances. How is anyone to keep their feet on the ground when the owners have the Club living at the Ritz without any idea how the Club could even begin to earn the money to do so? Even the logic that rejects the idea of building carefully is flawed. As the losses climb, we are told that the sums the Club is losing simply don't matter. Bigger losses won't reduce its punching power, buying power, its ability to compete. But if it is suggested that we start small, because we are small, and that is the starting place, we are told that this is impossible. The losses are so vast that the Club must hurl itself into the Premiership, must get its hands on more and more money, whether it has the talent to earn it or not, otherwise it won't be viable. Because of the colossal size of the losses. We've been following this empty thinking for two decades now, and it hasn't even begun to work. The Club received £40 million a year in the Premiership, but nonetheless contrived to double the total debt for the third year running. In one single season, three times in a row, the 'investors' have lost more money than the Club lost in the 20-odd years before, increasing from £33 million to £54 million to £89 million to £177 million. To achieve a side that can barely be sure it will finish in the second tier play-offs, let alone make a mark in the top flight. The secret of success lies in learning from our failures, not perpetuating them. But 'investors' make a lot of money out of our losses, so maybe we shouldn't be too optimistic about the sort of steady, careful, knowledgeable, capable Club development that many imagine. And there are so many Clubs like ours out there, 30, 40, 50 maybe. Too small to spend much time in the top 10 of the top flight. And far too many to crowd the narrow doorway of promotion and relegation. The winners are always different. There is something that Ferguson did, and maybe Mourinho does, that is different to all the others who are so like them, and so nearly match them, but never quite. Identify what THAT is - even in small club terms - and we may be onto something. It would be a challenge. Much more realistic, I expect, than whatever Wright/Blackburn/Paladini/Ecclestone/Briatore/Mittal/Bhatia/Fernandes/Beard think they are doing. But would it give them the easy, windfall profits Thompson or Ecclestone got? And would it require far more know-how, expertise, experience and sheer hard work LEARNING the game to even begin to interest them? The fear is always there. If we appoint homely guys, they won't have what it takes. And if we spend big, the money is wasted, because we can't spend big enough to get people who are REALLY good, who really know how to transform a Club from losers to winners. Year in, year out, the Club is outwitted hands down by the players agents and professional advisers, who squeeze more and more out of more and more credulous 'investors' because the 'investors' simply cannot drive a hard bargain, or get a good deal for the Clubs they represent, while the agents regularly get sums vastly in excess of even the most optimistic estimate of what their clients' capabilities are. Sacking all the chairmen might be a start, and appointing the players agents to represent the Clubs. Then the players could go bankrupt bidding against each other to join Clubs which are never going to amount to a fraction of their own PR, and the Clubs could get their finances in order, clear their debts, and start building on the basis of their actual resources and talents. Why they are so useless, and why they so obviously simply don't care, beats me. Except that the chairman make so much money themselves by being so. From their moneylending, stadium development schemes, none of which ever won anyone anything, and share deals. That is where the real problem lies. And the gulf between the soaring players' wages - there is no more success now than there was in the 1950s, but they're all paid as if they're winning trophies all the time - and the utter hopelessness in negotiations of the Club chairman is growing at a frightening rate. Especially at QPR. Great thread, thought provoking posts. Even if watching the team isn't always impressive, talking to one's fellow supporters is. | | | |
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