| Amusing or concerning? 11:35 - Aug 1 with 20889 views | Myke |
I can't decide if I am amused or concerned by the negative backlash on here to one, ONE (narrow) away defeat - god only knows what Twitter was like!
Amused on one level, because I can remember a time when league tables weren't even compiled until the first three games were completed - now they are 'live' and a team's position literally changes by the minute.
Concerned because there was a similar reaction to McClaren's first three games in charge and the club panicked and brought in old strikers to assuage the fans. That should not happen again. That is NOT our identity anymore. We need to be patient. We may get an odd shallicking until our new defence and system beds in. Very likely (even without any more signings - which is unlikely) Shodipo, Dozzell and Dykes will now be regular starters and possibly Steph also, once everyone is fit. If, as I expect, we bring in a few more players, then you can likely add Kakay (who was actually okay on Sat) to that list. Two players were making their full debuts and another, with no training sessions, got a run out.
I firmly believe this team will get incrementally better as the season progresses. Not chalk and cheese performances like over the pat two seasons, but a gradual, tangible improvement. We may be in an around the relegation spaces for the first few weeks, but nobody ever got relegated in August or even September - and certainly not in JULY!! |  | | |  |
| Amusing or concerning? on 22:46 - Aug 4 with 1727 views | Myke |
| Amusing or concerning? on 20:39 - Aug 4 by Benny_the_Ball |
After reading this I've little doubt now that it's a factor. The quick turnaround together with managerial changes has left little room to digest last season's brutal collapse in form. This season almost feels like an extension of the last and the fanbase is still carrying the emotional baggage. The challenges that we're now facing as a society are only exacerbating this feeling and, at the moment, QPR are providing no release.
As it stands I don't feel overly positive about the team's immediate prospects either but I'm hopeful that, given time, Beale can work his magic and make us competitive again.
I haven't mentioned this previously as I'm usually a private person but I feel compelled to after hearing your story. It's been a wretched 2 years for my family. My business took a battering in the pandemic. At the same time my mother contracted illnesses of the bones, lungs and heart. The NHS wouldn't treat her as they were focusing on covid-19 so I spent the last year as a part-time carer whilst trying to keep the business afloat. I watched her suffer and wither away in front of my very eyes whilst folk banged pots and pans for the very doctors who refused to treat her. My marriage was strained at the seams and I, like you, was irritable with it all.
Mum passed away in the spring. Whilst it's heart-breaking and painful on a personal level, I feel a sense of relief that her suffering is over. She, and I to a lesser degree, have found peace.
Why am I telling you this you may ask? Well, her passing coincided with QPR's collapse in form but, if I'm honest, nothing that was happening on the pitch at the time mattered to me. You see, it really is all relative and there are more important things in life.
The irony is that having come through the personal stuff, I'm not carrying any QPR baggage and I'm ready to view this season on its own merits. I understand that this is more difficult for you than most given that you're so heavily invested but I urge you (and indeed others) to do the same and do whatever it takes to protect your wellbeing. [Post edited 4 Aug 2022 20:45]
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Very sorry for your loss Benny, may your mum rest in peace.
Clive, you need to find a way to protect your mental wellbeing. You need to cut back on the content you provide here. There has been suggestions that you reduce the quantity of your match reports, which is a good idea in theory, but I don't think it is 'in' you to give it less than 100%. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know, without wishing to be any way disrespectful to your work, that there are some articles that I rarely read. The referee preview and the 'History' articles for example. This is just me of course and others may read these avidly. I wonder would it be possible to carry out a survey on the message board and see is there common ground where (the majority) would agree that there is an article or segment that you could leave out, at least until you feel more reinvigorated again .
Look after yourself - we all love the club, but nothing is worth the strain you are currently under. | | | |
| Amusing or concerning? on 23:12 - Aug 4 with 1650 views | DejR_vu |
| Amusing or concerning? on 22:46 - Aug 4 by Myke |
Very sorry for your loss Benny, may your mum rest in peace.
Clive, you need to find a way to protect your mental wellbeing. You need to cut back on the content you provide here. There has been suggestions that you reduce the quantity of your match reports, which is a good idea in theory, but I don't think it is 'in' you to give it less than 100%. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know, without wishing to be any way disrespectful to your work, that there are some articles that I rarely read. The referee preview and the 'History' articles for example. This is just me of course and others may read these avidly. I wonder would it be possible to carry out a survey on the message board and see is there common ground where (the majority) would agree that there is an article or segment that you could leave out, at least until you feel more reinvigorated again .
Look after yourself - we all love the club, but nothing is worth the strain you are currently under. |
I’m assuming he can track traffic to see what’s been read.
I’d agree, match reports alone are way better than any other sites. Everything else is a bonus. | |
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| Amusing or concerning? on 23:45 - Aug 4 with 1617 views | monners1969 |
| Amusing or concerning? on 17:14 - Aug 4 by Northernr |
This is definitely a factor I think.
I'll be honest, I'm pissd off with it all. I predicted we'd lose 1-0 last week and I was right, I'm predicting we get done 2-0 this week and I hope I'm wrong but I just don't see it with this team atm.
I let myself get hopeful for the first time in years last season, right through to February it looked like I was right, and if they'd just missed out on the last day or something I'm sure I would have been gutted but proud of the effort. Instead they fell off a cliff, and it turns out everybody was falling out, egos at play, not as well run as we thought we were. My day job wanted me in LA for all of May, interviewing US network executives, and I turned it down the week after Reading at home because OBVIOUSLY the least that would happen is we'd be in the play-offs, and one of my colleagues who's a Leeds fan ended up stuck in LA when they were in the play-offs which wasn't going to happen to me. So I sat here through May while my company was larging it up over there, watching fcking Nottingham Forest.
QPR takes a lot out of me anyway because of this site. It's basically now a second full time job, and I can't do without the income it generates. There's no escape. If we lose 1-0 at Barnsley I can't just escape, do something else, ignore it. I have to crop pictures, and write about the bloody thing. I have to travel to games, even when I don't want to, to cover them. It's really turned my hobby, the thing I love the most, into a chore at times. It sucks up hours and hours of my time. I was so done with it, and QPR, at the end of last season. I was tired and fed up and absolutely gutted the way it went.
We've then had no kind of summer break at all, we're starting way too early because of a poxy corrupt, bent World Cup. It's more expensive than ever at a time when money is squeezed everywhere else in my household budget. The trains are extortionate, and total fcking sht. Getting to Blackburn and back last week was an absolute ars, Sunderland is already shaping up the same, and the whole fcking league is based up there this season so it's just looking like one long clusterfck of unreliable, expensive, strike-riddled railway journeys to watch a team that's not going to be good enough to get results.
I just can't muster any enthusiasm for it at all. Everything, everything, is annoying me about the experience. The twts on Twitter harassing the club to spend money they can't on players that wouldn't come anyway. Standing at the back at Blackburn last week, under a plastic roof three foot above my head, sweating my bollox off, and loads of people just unilaterally decide the smoking ban no longer applies, so we get to breathe a cloud of that for 90 mins to put the tin hat on a sht day. The fact the club, once again, can't get really fcking simple things right, like this rail seating fiasco. This Danny McNamara thing.
Literally everything QPR say and do atm is pissing me off. Even Chloe Kelly, which is a great story, is tinged with this annoyance that they bombed the women's team off into the community trust side of the business a while back because they didn't want to pay for it. Fine, business decision, but you can't then give it the PR biggun all week on the back of an ex player doing something great.
Sigh. I can just feel myself being irritable with it all. Irritable, irrational, unreasonable, harsh. The way last season ended, and getting about 20 minutes off over the summer, has not been a good combination for me. And I suspect from reading around on here and elsewhere online that a few are feeling variations of the same. |
This is probably the most worrying thing I’ve read in years - I’m “lucky” I get to see the rrrs between 6-10 times a season as have coaching duties most Saturdays so my pain is mild - I get a lot of my rrrs coverage from here so hearing you drained by what went on last year is worrying especially the enthusiasm you sweated out soon before - my gut feel is that this team can do some great things this year but we are a Shaun Derry away from a top 6 challenge (I actually wonder if the right call was keep Dom and shed stef) but what do I know - anyway here’s to a totally unexpected win vs boro and keeping beale for 3 seasons - because if he keeps his job that long we will be in a good place |  | | |
| Amusing or concerning? on 23:45 - Aug 4 with 1614 views | Benny_the_Ball |
| Amusing or concerning? on 17:25 - Aug 3 by kensalriser |
No.
Yes.
No.
Let's not forget we got promoted through financial doping. We can't do that now, so the only route left is the smart, hard way.
If you view treading water as a failure, what's the remedy? Sack the manager again? Sack the DOF and the CEO? And then what? |
Strictly speaking the Warnock promotion was done the smart way. It was naïve decisions by the new owners in the PL that created a £70m wage bill which ultimately led to FFP sanctions. But I take the point, promotion, if it is to be achieved, has to be done the smart way (a la 2010-11 as opposed to 2013-14). However 2010-11 demonstrates that with the right people in charge and shrewd signings, it is possible. Difficult, granted, but not impossible. [Post edited 4 Aug 2022 23:47]
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| Amusing or concerning? on 00:10 - Aug 5 with 1572 views | kensalriser |
| Amusing or concerning? on 23:45 - Aug 4 by Benny_the_Ball |
Strictly speaking the Warnock promotion was done the smart way. It was naïve decisions by the new owners in the PL that created a £70m wage bill which ultimately led to FFP sanctions. But I take the point, promotion, if it is to be achieved, has to be done the smart way (a la 2010-11 as opposed to 2013-14). However 2010-11 demonstrates that with the right people in charge and shrewd signings, it is possible. Difficult, granted, but not impossible. [Post edited 4 Aug 2022 23:47]
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Not convinced on the Warnock promotion, Benny. It was nowhere near what followed, granted, but our budget that season was huge, probably at or near the top of the division.
Sorry for your loss, by the way. Supporting your folks in their later years can really put you through the wringer. I remember one incident where my mum's bank refused an online payment for her carer's wages and when I called them (I had power of attorney already set up) they refused to accept who I was and told me I had to go into the bank with ID to make the payment. I completely lost my shit, which I'm not proud of, but afterwards I realised it was the intense emotional stress I'd been under with the whole situation. |  |
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| Amusing or concerning? on 00:35 - Aug 5 with 1534 views | PunteR |
Sorry for your loss Benny. I hope things pick up for you soon.
Clive , you sound like you need to take a break for a while mate. QPR aren't going anywhere. Literally. They will still be 16th when you come back.
If the site is becoming a burden and you're not enjoying it then that's the time to stop. |  |
| Occasional providers of half decent House music. |
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| Amusing or concerning? on 04:36 - Aug 5 with 1436 views | nix |
| Amusing or concerning? on 22:46 - Aug 4 by Myke |
Very sorry for your loss Benny, may your mum rest in peace.
Clive, you need to find a way to protect your mental wellbeing. You need to cut back on the content you provide here. There has been suggestions that you reduce the quantity of your match reports, which is a good idea in theory, but I don't think it is 'in' you to give it less than 100%. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know, without wishing to be any way disrespectful to your work, that there are some articles that I rarely read. The referee preview and the 'History' articles for example. This is just me of course and others may read these avidly. I wonder would it be possible to carry out a survey on the message board and see is there common ground where (the majority) would agree that there is an article or segment that you could leave out, at least until you feel more reinvigorated again .
Look after yourself - we all love the club, but nothing is worth the strain you are currently under. |
Sorry for what you've been going through Benny. It's tough to go through that as well as business troubles with the backdrop of the pandemic which was tough enough to deal with anyway. I hope work has improved for you. I know it's nothing like the pain of losing your mum but it is very stressful, especially when combined with marital strain.
Clive I really hope the Patreon isn't causing you more stress than it's worth in terms of feeling you need to up the content. It's fine if the odd match is covered by some of your mates. Maybe Dave Thomas could do a joint LFW/Kick up the Rs match report for some of the far-flung games ooop North that cost an arm and a leg. And as Myke says, cut and pastes or missing out altogether some of the ref reports or history of fixtures would be fine if you've got a lot on or frankly can't be arsed.
The amount I pay for the Patreon is the same as a few cups of Costa Coffee and it's much bette value. It's not worth flogging yourself to death and screwing with your mental health to cram it with content.
I think we're all hurting a bit from last season. I'm not feeling my happy clappy self with quite a lot going on in my life as well. So we all have to cut ourselves a bit of slack. Maybe try not to expect too much from this season. Support each other a bit. And hope that we get some of those moments of bliss that make it all a bit worthwhile. The annual tonking at Blackburn away was probably not the best way to start the season as it was as inevitable as it was painful. I'm sure we'll have some better times over the next few months. A few goals going in, however freakish, and the world will be a bit shiny again. |  | | |
| Amusing or concerning? on 05:02 - Aug 5 with 1424 views | EmpireStateRanger |
Sorry for your hard times, Benny. May your mother Rest In Peace.
Clive - I generally support the suggestion on cutting down on content quantity, though I don’t know how much money you generate from content clicks. I’m very happy to help contribute to you and the site through Patreon and will continue to do so, even if sometimes all you want to write for a match report is “I have nothing to say” following a miserable trip to, say, Sunderland. You make it possible for an American in New York to follow this club, much more so than our club’s mainly-unreliable streaming platforms and own app! And just like our own app, if you just need to stop working all of the sudden for health and longevity, then it’s necessary. That’s what’s most important, and you have a lot of people here who’ll have your back.
I also put a lot of my emotional eggs in the QPR basket last year, and it stung! Within a month I went from running around my parents-in-law Apartment Ike a crazed idiot following Austin’s winner vs. Brom, to watching us choke at Barnsley while bedridden with COVID on my birthday and, for some reason, knowing that the next few months would be painful. Hate when I’m right.And we’ve had no time to digest. It feels like last month that our fans were all thanking Warbs for bringing our Rangers back during the fans forum.
But we go again, even if the 2-0 home defeat us coming! | | | |
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| Amusing or concerning? on 15:01 - Aug 5 with 1270 views | derbyhoop |
| Amusing or concerning? on 17:14 - Aug 4 by Northernr |
This is definitely a factor I think.
I'll be honest, I'm pissd off with it all. I predicted we'd lose 1-0 last week and I was right, I'm predicting we get done 2-0 this week and I hope I'm wrong but I just don't see it with this team atm.
I let myself get hopeful for the first time in years last season, right through to February it looked like I was right, and if they'd just missed out on the last day or something I'm sure I would have been gutted but proud of the effort. Instead they fell off a cliff, and it turns out everybody was falling out, egos at play, not as well run as we thought we were. My day job wanted me in LA for all of May, interviewing US network executives, and I turned it down the week after Reading at home because OBVIOUSLY the least that would happen is we'd be in the play-offs, and one of my colleagues who's a Leeds fan ended up stuck in LA when they were in the play-offs which wasn't going to happen to me. So I sat here through May while my company was larging it up over there, watching fcking Nottingham Forest.
QPR takes a lot out of me anyway because of this site. It's basically now a second full time job, and I can't do without the income it generates. There's no escape. If we lose 1-0 at Barnsley I can't just escape, do something else, ignore it. I have to crop pictures, and write about the bloody thing. I have to travel to games, even when I don't want to, to cover them. It's really turned my hobby, the thing I love the most, into a chore at times. It sucks up hours and hours of my time. I was so done with it, and QPR, at the end of last season. I was tired and fed up and absolutely gutted the way it went.
We've then had no kind of summer break at all, we're starting way too early because of a poxy corrupt, bent World Cup. It's more expensive than ever at a time when money is squeezed everywhere else in my household budget. The trains are extortionate, and total fcking sht. Getting to Blackburn and back last week was an absolute ars, Sunderland is already shaping up the same, and the whole fcking league is based up there this season so it's just looking like one long clusterfck of unreliable, expensive, strike-riddled railway journeys to watch a team that's not going to be good enough to get results.
I just can't muster any enthusiasm for it at all. Everything, everything, is annoying me about the experience. The twts on Twitter harassing the club to spend money they can't on players that wouldn't come anyway. Standing at the back at Blackburn last week, under a plastic roof three foot above my head, sweating my bollox off, and loads of people just unilaterally decide the smoking ban no longer applies, so we get to breathe a cloud of that for 90 mins to put the tin hat on a sht day. The fact the club, once again, can't get really fcking simple things right, like this rail seating fiasco. This Danny McNamara thing.
Literally everything QPR say and do atm is pissing me off. Even Chloe Kelly, which is a great story, is tinged with this annoyance that they bombed the women's team off into the community trust side of the business a while back because they didn't want to pay for it. Fine, business decision, but you can't then give it the PR biggun all week on the back of an ex player doing something great.
Sigh. I can just feel myself being irritable with it all. Irritable, irrational, unreasonable, harsh. The way last season ended, and getting about 20 minutes off over the summer, has not been a good combination for me. And I suspect from reading around on here and elsewhere online that a few are feeling variations of the same. |
Supporting a mid table Championship side always comes with ups and downs.
Top quality journalism is a vital.lifeline for those of us who cannot get to many games.
The poor, expensive rail service in UK must make away games a regular ballache. The unrealistic expectations of, I presume, spotty youths on social media are another frustration. Only so many times you can point out P&S rules when the owners subsidise the club to the tune of 1.5m per month.
But it's always worth it for the highs. Oldham SF, Zamora, 3-2 @ Boro with 10 men, Derby away 2-2, etc.
We all appreciate your efforts, Clive. Just don't let the bastards grind you down |  |
| "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky |
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| Amusing or concerning? on 20:47 - Aug 5 with 1147 views | Benny_the_Ball |
| Amusing or concerning? on 00:10 - Aug 5 by kensalriser |
Not convinced on the Warnock promotion, Benny. It was nowhere near what followed, granted, but our budget that season was huge, probably at or near the top of the division.
Sorry for your loss, by the way. Supporting your folks in their later years can really put you through the wringer. I remember one incident where my mum's bank refused an online payment for her carer's wages and when I called them (I had power of attorney already set up) they refused to accept who I was and told me I had to go into the bank with ID to make the payment. I completely lost my shit, which I'm not proud of, but afterwards I realised it was the intense emotional stress I'd been under with the whole situation. |
Thanks pal.
I get where you're coming from but it was different levels. The wage bill during the Warnock promotion was circa £28m, whilst under Harry it was £75m. However the former was still high in the sense that it represented 183% of turnover. As one poster alluded to earlier the lack of a decent stadium and the business opportunities it presents is hampering the club. With parachute payments also ending, Hoos has since reduced the wage bill to £14m. Under the circumstances promotion will be difficult to achieve but I agree with Punter that it should still be the aim. If you shoot for the stars you may land on the moon. [Post edited 5 Aug 2022 20:48]
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| Amusing or concerning? on 21:22 - Aug 5 with 1113 views | Wegerles_Stairs |
Brentford managed to go up from League 1, become more competitive every year, build a new stadium, get promoted and consolidate last season.
That shows it's achievable. Mind you, you probably need to be run by people who know what they're doing..... [Post edited 5 Aug 2022 21:24]
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| Amusing or concerning? on 22:40 - Aug 5 with 1073 views | numptydumpty |
Benny.
Wishing you well.
Last 18 months both my parents passed away, started a new business venture myself, new partner of only 3 years now and her cat got run over and another pet got freaked out to death by nearby foxes..
Tbh going to QPR, am season ticket holder, its been incredibly underwhelming ie not great deal of stress.
Life can be cruel and it can be amazing.
Let's hope Rangers give a decent account themselves this season. Am always ridiculously and inappropriately optimistic.
Clive. The stress of two realistically full time careers, guessing it's hard to take the reins of this site and all the reports. Maybe could see if any others that regular away day supporters can write up a decent piece on.occasions so you get a break yourself.
Burnout is a dangerous thing and it's always best to cut yourself some slack where possible.
But if we win the league by twenty clear points, none of us will be burned out. Just ecstatic.
Deluded dreams, this is your year to be reality !!!!
Or maybe not... 🤣 |  |
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| Amusing or concerning? on 08:18 - Aug 6 with 964 views | Northolt_Rs |
| Amusing or concerning? on 21:22 - Aug 5 by Wegerles_Stairs |
Brentford managed to go up from League 1, become more competitive every year, build a new stadium, get promoted and consolidate last season.
That shows it's achievable. Mind you, you probably need to be run by people who know what they're doing..... [Post edited 5 Aug 2022 21:24]
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More to the point it shows we have people who clearly don’t know what they are doing. Club is a shambles. QPR 2 Boro 1 |  |
| Scooters, Tunes, Trainers and QPR. |
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| Amusing or concerning? on 09:17 - Aug 6 with 929 views | PunteR |
| Amusing or concerning? on 21:22 - Aug 5 by Wegerles_Stairs |
Brentford managed to go up from League 1, become more competitive every year, build a new stadium, get promoted and consolidate last season.
That shows it's achievable. Mind you, you probably need to be run by people who know what they're doing..... [Post edited 5 Aug 2022 21:24]
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This exactly. | |
| Occasional providers of half decent House music. |
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| Amusing or concerning? on 09:21 - Aug 6 with 907 views | numptydumpty |
| Amusing or concerning? on 21:22 - Aug 5 by Wegerles_Stairs |
Brentford managed to go up from League 1, become more competitive every year, build a new stadium, get promoted and consolidate last season.
That shows it's achievable. Mind you, you probably need to be run by people who know what they're doing..... [Post edited 5 Aug 2022 21:24]
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And the first part of the plan was having Mark Warburton as manager...
Stage 2 of the 4 year plan commences !!! | |
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