However, the radio still works, and it's clear as a bell - Preview Friday, 6th May 2022 07:12 by Clive Whittingham The deadest of dead rubbers for QPR at Swansea to end a season that promised so much and eventually turned to dust. How did it end up like this? Swansea (16-13-16 WWDDDDL 15th) v QPR (18-9-18 LLDWLL 12th)Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Saturday May 7, 2022 >>> Kick Off 12.30 >>> Weather â Light cloud, dry >>> Liberty Stadium, Swansea, Wales Isnât It Excuse the repetition, but it bears repeating⌠Even six games and three weeks into this monumental collapse Queens Park Rangers could have gone second in the table with a win away at Blackburn on February 26, and another three games and fortnight into it still they did rise back to fourth with a 2-1 win at fellow highflyers Luton Town on March 13. To have gone from the highs of 2021 and the position it worked us into, to taking a scratchy team of waifs and strays down to Swansea for the deadest of dead rubbers on the final day â the warm and familiar embrace of sixteenth still a distinct possibility â has been tough to take. The collective feeling among the support base has long been that that something must, must, âhave gone onâ. Yes, there has been a glut of bad injuries to key players which our thin squad barely had to cope with at all throughout 2021 â and this problem has been particularly acute in goal where Seny Diengâs command of the penalty box and distribution of the ball is absolutely vital to a team that plays like us in possession and defends as we do out of it. When you wonder how QPR have gone from the best team at defending set pieces in the league to the second worst, and then you watch poor young Murphy Mahoney having to wade through the land of the giants in that second half against Sheff Utd last week, you see what a difference Dieng makes. But QPR coped, and went unbeaten, through January without Dieng, and the collapse was two months and ten games old by the time Rob Dickie and Chris Willock picked up their season ending injuries. Still, departing manager Mark Warburton came close to losing his rag in the post Sheff Utd-press conference with a reporter who he didnât feel was focusing enough on what is, now, undoubtedly, a crippling list of absentees for a non-parachute payment club to cope with. Youâve also had the not inconsiderable problem of senior players who starred in last seasonâs uptick failing to perform anywhere near those levels again. But itâs always felt like more than that, particularly in the games home and away against Peterborough and up at Barnsley, and with the season now over and the manager on his way out of the club after three, mostly very good, years in charge that picture is starting to be painted. The scandalous vandalism of valuable local newspapers in this country â from community assets based on their patch to clickbait tripe on unusable websites processed from a centralised hub â is damaging for local justice and politics. Thereâs no dedicated reporter out there keeping a check on, and a flow of information to you about, your local council and what theyâre up to. And theyâre rarely up to anything good. Itâs also dire for fans of clubs like ours, who once had sound, experienced, well-connected local journos like Dave McIntyre, Ben Kosky, Paul Warburton, Sean Gallagher, Yann Tear and others all working the QPR patch at once, and publishing into weekly papers. Trying to get decent, sound, worthwhile, revealing press coverage of a mid-range Championship team is now next to impossible amid the absolute avalanche of âfive things we learned about Jack Grealishâs haircutâ bilge. The Athletic had a unique opportunity to fill this gap, but its Championship coverage currently consists of half a dozen boyhood Forest fans wrapped in a tight circle-jerk around Steve Cooper producing content that would shame the clubâs matchday programme. Their Championship manager of the year debate considered two candidates â Cooper and Wayne Rooney. A February run down of the play-off contenders managed to produce a QPR section that didnât mention Player of the Year Chris Willock once, and spelt Elias Chair with an E. We, along with Bristol City and a couple of other clubs, are singularly fortunate that some of those old school local journos have stuck around in new forms to cover QPR, because thereâs all manner of stuff that goes on behind closed doors everyday, decisions made about the future of our football club by people who will come and go, and weâd hear about none of it without them. Sure enough, you knew it was coming, Dave Mcâs latest excoriating long read on just what exactly has âgone onâ dropped on Monday to open-mouthed response from supporters whoâd dared to believe that, at least relative to what had gone on before, QPR were perhaps getting their act together a bit. If you havenât read it yet go away and do so now, Iâll wait here until you get back. ⌠I often feel like QPR plays rich club-poor club with itself, veering from behaving like an outfit with money, to one without a pot to piss in, sometimes within the same day, statement or fans forum. If you want to put a sign up on the front of Ellerslie Road to honour Stan Bowles you have to raise the ÂŁ6,000 yourself, because weâre trying to be sustainable. Weâre happy for 3,000 angry Millwall/Middlesbrough/Sheff Utd fans to take over one end of the stadium, and dominate the atmosphere, because we desperately need that 3,000xÂŁ35. We canât paint, tidy, clean, maintain Loftus Road because we have to carve out a tiny bit of budget each summer to do capital works on one little bit at a time. All fine and frugal. But we can, for instance, book the whole team into a hotel for a midweek match at Millwall - 11 miles away. We can move a precious, rare Saturday 15.00 with Peterborough to a Sunday lunchtime, torching the attendance and atmosphere as we go, to give the poor loves an extra day to recover from a midweek away trip (lost both games as it turns out, very QPR indeed). We can sign and continue to renew the contract of Dillon Barnes, a 26-year-old goalkeeper so woefully shy of Championship standard we didnât even include him in our 25-man-squad this season and so required not one but two 37-year-olds to effectively come out of retirement and fill in for Dieng and Archer when they got injured. Are we skint or not? Sometimes itâs difficult to tell. On that theme, there are a lot of cooks around the broth pot at Loftus Road. Iâve been saying this since the garish green training kits highlighted the enormous amount of staff Steve McClaren was carting around with him. Itâs not a lot for, say, Tottenham Hotspur, but again for a club of our size and supposed financial constraint, and even allowing for centralised academy funding, does it not feel a bit much to have an U23 manager (Paul Furlong) and a B Team manager (Paul Hall)? An academy manager (Alex Carroll) and a whatever Chris Ramseyâs title is these days (Chris Ramsey)? A manager, a director of football, a CEO, a head of recruitment⌠Even with them all, the goalkeeper signings are largely handled by the goalkeeper coach, who has the considerable Seny Dieng success on his CV, but some other really ropey ones besides. These multiple inputs shine through as you run your finger down the squad list. You can see the Warburton signings â Lee Wallace, Moses Odubajo, Dom Ball, Andre Gray. You can see the Gavin Ward signings, obviously. You can see the Les Ferdinand/Chris Ramsey/Paul Hall projects â Osman Kakay, Nico Hamailainen. You can see those that have come from the data and recruitment model led by Andy Belk â Chris Willock, Sam Field, Jimmy Dunne, Andre Dozzell. Itâs clear from Dave Mcâs piece, and other things that have been told to LFW either first hand or through sources we trust, that these relationships have been creaking rather in year three of Warbsâ tenure. Paul Hall and Chris Ramsey need to be graduating players from the academy to the first team to justify their positions, the work theyâre doing and the system as a whole. Les Ferdinand and Lee Hoos need the club to be developing its own players to sell otherwise the financial sums donât add up, so need both academy players and signings from Belk's team to be playing. Mark Warburton needs to win first team matches otherwise, as weâve now seen, he gets the sack. This can put them at cross purposes â the manager is always going to want a player that gets him results now, whereas the others may want to see a worse player given pitch time to eventually develop into a better one. Thereâs lots of people taking sides at the moment - pro-Warbs, pro-Les â but itâs not cut and dried, thereâs fault and merit on all sides. And, as ever, it all comes back to the accounts. These cross-purposes were causing tension even before expectations were ratcheted up this season. Chris Ramsey aggressively pushed the merits of Osman Kakay for a long time, but Warburton wasnât having him. When Warbs eventually relented, partly out of desperation and a shortage of players, and Kakay came in and initially played well that was a bit of an âI told you soâ moment. A bit like when Harry Redknapp slung Tom Hitchcock on against Ipswich to prove how vital it was he be allowed to sign another striker and the little shit scored a last minute winner. You could argue that Kakay has since proven Warburtonâs point. Likewise, Conor Masterson, another the club had/have big hopes for but Warburton wasnât keen on at all. He came in initially for a cup game and then kept his place due to injuries and did really quite well, which supported the Ramsey/Hall side of the argument, but since hasnât impressed at Cambridge and Gillingham which Warburton would point to. I sit and watch the U23s and doubt whether any of them are good enough, but it has been shown with Ryan Manning and others that some kids will step up and do well if only given a chance. Note how hard Paul Hall pushed back on the idea that the gap between our U23s and the Championship is too big when we interviewed him recently. Stephen Duke-McKenna had surely shown enough in pre-season and the early cup games to suggest he was worth a place on a bench that at times this season didnât even contain a full seven warm bodies. As the top six became the be-all-and-end-all this season, those chances have dried up entirely. The young player of the year vote was a farce â Norwich loanee Sam McCallum basically won it by default which is not a good look at all for what is supposed to be a development club. When challenged, Warburton would simply repeat âwith respect, theyâve got to be better thanâŚâ and reel off a list of first team names. Only Murphy Mahoney has âgraduatedâ this year, and that for three games at the end of a busted season and only after, like I say, two other keepers were dragged out of retirement to play first. Dave Mc points to the Stoke home game where only six subs were named, but there was also Bristol City away in December where Rangers went with just five on the bench rather than take a couple of kids with them, even just for the experience of a first team away game. At times this has been put down to separate Covid bubbles between first team and academy, but now it seems thereâs far more to it than that. LFW has heard there was tension over the youth teams not using the same back three system as the firsts. Paul Hall told us he often didnât have the players to play a back three. As a result players, Joe Gubbins for instance, the academy staff wanted involved were deemed unsuitable for Harlington and kept at Heston because Warbs felt they âdidnât know how to play the systemâ. Communication between Warburton, Ramsey and Hall, has been, by Dave Mcâs account and several others, limited to put it mildly. Thereâs confusion on one side over what exactly Ramseyâs role is, and resentment over the salary he pulls for it, again at a club that pleads poverty to its fans. On the other, a feeling that Warburton and his coaches are operating over, above and completely separate from an otherwise integrated system. Even within the tight first team squad the model of developing players to sell for sustainability and squad building purposes has at times given way to the old QPR trick of piling in a load of populist big names people have heard of to push for a promotion immediately. There are few more egregious examples of this than the nonsense signing of Jeff Hendrick at the end of January. QPR had spent their budget for the season, almost entirely, last summer. The additions of Charlie Austin, and Stefan Johansen on a three-year deal, were popular at the time â we were all delighted letâs be honest â but they were particularly expensive and along with the other business done it left almost zero wiggle room in January. There was some debate about whether it was a striker or a number ten that was required â fans have since seized on Les Ferdinandâs seemingly barbed February comments that âMark didnât want a strikerâ and used it to beat the manager because the three senior forwards have since been largely terrible, but the Chris Willock injury does add weight to the managerâs cause. Mostly, though, that row is beside the point â there wasnât budget space for either. Rangers thought they might be able to take advantage of a financial collapse at Derby and get Tom Lawrence on the cheap, or a contract situation brewing with Jamie Paterson at Swansea, but as fees for both crept up towards the ÂŁ1m mark that was the end of that. Supporters, as supporters are wont to do, particularly the transfer obsessed Twitterati, blamed this on the owners being tight, the club lacking ambition, and the usual haranguing to âsign a fucking strikerâ began. The simple fact was, and is, the space wasnât there to do it, and demanding QPR go out and add more on top of more on top of more in a world where theyâd already pushed the boat out in the summer and one Daryl Dike costs ÂŁ8m (look how well that went for West Brom) was wilful ignorance of the clubâs financial situation and the rules of the league they play in. The feeling from the decision makers at the club late deadline day afternoon was the 4-0 win against Reading really couldnât have been better timed to calm everybody down a bit, and no further business would be done. Then, later that night, completely out of the blue and for no good reason at all â Jeff Hendrick. Neither a striker nor a ten. Now, as I keep saying, the team only needed to fuck up marginally less than it did. Add back in wins against Barnsley, Peterborough and Cardiff and weâd make the top six and be seen to have had a successful season. Had that happened, had Jeff Hendrick come in and played even moderately ok, I doubt this would have become such an issue for people. The fact he, and we, have been complete crap from the moment he walked through the door exacerbates the situation. But even if we had made the six, even if he did play well, this is not what weâre supposed to be doing. Players we own, players weâve bought, players weâre hoping to develop, being sidelined in favour of a big name, 30+, Premier League loan player we could never hope to afford, and would get zero sell-on value from if we did. Warburton absolutely loved Hendrick to the point of being in love with him, eulogising over the Premier League quality of his touch, positioning, passing, awareness. To a lot of fans he was a useful scapegoat â the grief he copped from a couple near us at Luton was fierce. But whether you rate Jeff Hendrick or not, or you rate Andre Dozzell or not, is not the point â one should not be playing in front of the other in this system. It can perhaps be tolerated as a means to a promotion end, but if you tank and finish sixteenth anyway, itâs disastrous to the model thatâs meant to be getting us out of the shit. Dion Sanderson is slightly different because given his age, the way heâd played for Birmingham, and the decreasing chance of him making it at Wolves, I suspect they might be eyeing that one up as a Jimmy Dunne-style potential pick up on a permanent. Despite his horrible time here so far Iâd still be tempted by that if itâs ever a goer. But, still, it is a matter of fact that both Hendrick and Sanderson were repeatedly picked and put back in the team despite bad performances and personal errors when others were not â Sanderson being allowed to waltz straight back into the defence at the expense of Yoann Barbet away to Nottingham Forest after the Blackpool headbutt incident, and then losing Ryan Yates for the crucial goal eight minutes from time, particularly lousy. Other players we did own - Dom Ball, George Thomas, Dozzell â were punished far more harshly for their own mistakes or misfires and disappeared from the team. Dozzell, contrary to Sanderson, didnât get a league start again until March 16 after getting stupidly sent off against Bournemouth on Boxing Day. I repeat, whatever you think of these players and their merits and abilities, this is not what weâre supposed to be doing. If all your goalkeepers do somehow get injured, youâre meant to pick Murphy Mahoney, not bring in David Marshall, and certainly not Keiren Westwood who arrived when we were obviously dead in the water and, with six defeats from seven, could have hardly have done any worse than the kids. Tensions, again, over another of the senior loan players. There was disquiet, to put it mildly, above Warburton about the performances and, shall we say, availability of Andre Gray late in December when he didnât travel to Bristol City on a night when QPR only named five subs. Obviously a Warbs man after their time together at Brentford, this always did look a highly dubious signing from the off and even the spectacular goal of the season at Derby couldnât mask a poor return for the money of four goals in the first half of the season. The club were minded to send him back in January. Bristol City, as theyâve been trying to do almost from the moment they stole him from us on a ridiculous contract, were willing to do a much cheaper loan deal with us for Nahki Wells, but Warburton wasnât keen. He wanted to stick with Gray and initially, after a personal rocket from Les, Gray bucked his ideas up in away wins at Birmingham and Coventry before drifting back into the 12-touch monstrosity of a performance at Barnsley. Conflict and tension between execs, managers and coaches supposedly working for a common cause. The answer to so many questions and problems at QPR lie in the accounts. When I say âthis is not what weâre meant to be doingâ itâs not because I want to sit at Loftus Road on a Saturday afternoon with a warm glow inside that our whole first team is made up of kids off the White City Estate while losing 2-0 to Hull. Itâs not because I think Dozzell is particularly good, or that Mahoney is ready for Championship football, or that weâve got a whole load of U23s beating the door down (we ainât). And itâs not because I enjoy seeing our best players walk out and join other clubs. Itâs because QPR, in this stadium, and this parachute payment-dominated league, with these FFP rules, cannot afford to do anything other than frequently sell players for money. We donât have a choice. We donât have a choice. We, rightly, harangued Steve McClaren for loaning in a âteam of menâ and flogging them to death, while prospects like Ryan Manning and Bright Osayi-Samuel went totally unused and under-developed, resulting in them both leaving for a pittance which, again, was disastrous to the model. Had promotion been achieved all bets are off, but if youâre tanking to sixteenth again anyway, whatâs the difference in Warbs picking Hendrick over Dozzell? Gray over Kelman or Armstrong? Odubajo over Kakay? Again, try not to focus on Warbsâ âwith respect, theyâve got to be better thanâŚâ thing, because Iâm coming to that⌠this isnât the model, because it cannot be the model. We cannot do it within the boundaries of the leagueâs P&S rules. The last set of accounts showed a ÂŁ4m loss, which is brilliant relative to what went before, and in the Covid year as well, but without the Ebere Eze sale itâs nearer to ÂŁ24m. With no meaningful sales, and some big contracts added, even with the gate receipts coming back, the next set of accounts covering the season weâve just had will surely show a loss at least that big. Lose the same again this season coming and youâre really knocking on the door of the ÂŁ39m rolling three-year limit at which point its transfer embargoes, points deductions, business plans, and another God-knows-how-long cleaning house. This will now dictate who the next manager is. Its why Sean Dyche, Daniel Farke and the like are a pipe dream. The first thing they want to know is what sort of package can be put together for them and their staff, and the second is the budget to put a team together â both will be tight as a mouseâs ear here next season. There's long been an admiration, I believe led by Les, of Gary Rowett and we have tried to get him here several times before. We wanted him from Birmingham when Chris Ramsey was sacked, but he wouldnât leave while they were sixth in the table so we went for Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbaink, whoâd been trading off much of Rowettâs hard work at Burton, and no sooner had we done that than Birmingham had a brain explosion and sacked Rowett to get Gianfranco Zola in. His availability never quite coincides with our desperation, and a tentative enquiry last month about getting him here from Millwall was once again a complete non-starter. Newportâs James Rowberry, whoâd fit right in here having just crashed out of the League Two promotion picture with one win and five defeats from seven games, has surfaced as a potential and itâs in that particular corner of Lidl that weâll be shopping. Karl Robinson at Oxford, Liam Manning at MK Dons and Darren Moore at Sheff Wed were the three names doing the rounds last week, but all three come with compensation payments which would be âproblematicâ. When even League One managerial compensation is âproblematicâ then problems is certainly what youâve got. Moore, whose style of play we so like that we kept loaning him our goalkeepers when he was at Doncaster, is in a strained relationship with the Sheff Wed board so that might become a firmer possibility if they donât succeed in this weekâs play-offs. The job is not a particularly attractive one. Iâve seen it suggested that the mere presence of a director of football makes it even less so, but most clubs operate with this system in some form now and our owners have shown comprehensively in the past that you need that middle man who knows the sport better than they do otherwise youâll inevitably get another Hughes/Redknapp situation where âwhat manager wants manager getsâ quickly turns into a fucking barn on fire. It doesnât have to be this director of football, thatâs increasingly up for debate as a live issue now weâve seemingly gone along with what the manager wanted and worked ourselves into a state again regardless, but a director of football there really has to be in my opinion. The bigger problem for prospective candidates is, once again, in the accounts. They show clearly that another big sale (at least one more) is going to be required in the short to medium term â so immediately youâre losing your best player(s). The mid-range market for ÂŁ2m-ÂŁ5m Championship signings, where I suspect most of our assets currently fall, has collapsed post-Covid making it doubly difficult â Bristol City have been burned this way, relying on sales to balance the books for several years but now with only players of a Championship standard to sell and nursing some silly contracts handed out trying to get promoted. The Charlie Austin contract clause is an absolute touch, he announced he would be leaving last night and having scored prolifically in a promoted QPR team and then returned to play a huge role in us avoiding relegation last year he can now shake hands and walk away with legacy firmly intact â which I donât think it would have been if heâd tried to carry on through next season. Kudos to whoever negotiated that and amongst this clusterfuck it is reassuring to see that we are still operating more shrewdly than we did before in some respects. But youâve still got wage and budget tied up in Stef Johansen and others. The new man has also got a remit to push U23s into the first team who, as Warbs believed, may well not be good enough â both U23s and U18s prop up their leagues, which for all the âitâs not about results itâs about individuals at youth levelâ chat doesnât bode well at all. Whereas Seny Dieng, Joe Lumley, Ilias Chair, Ebere Eze, Darnell Furlong and others all got good Football League loans under their belt, weâre now back to loaning our supposedly brightest youngsters into non-league, fans desperately clinging to Sinclair Armstrong goals scored against Maidenhead. The few, like Faysal Bettache and Charlie Kelman, who have got into League One or Two have not done well at all. We don't have a choice, like I say, but it's a big worry. And youâve got a support base expecting to âgo againâ for another tilt at a promotion push which went from âit would be niceâ to âtop six or bustâ over the course of the last 12 months. As Marc Bircham said on a recent podcast, at this stage youâre either a development club or a club going for promotion, and itâs difficult to be both. So far in 2022 weâve been neither. With season tickets still not released for next season amidst much faffing about over the safe standing, messaging from the top about what to expect next season and the direction of travel is going to be tricky, and a tough sell. Lee Hoos confirmed in a consultation meeting on rail seating last night that season ticket prices will be going up amidst spiralling inflation. The W12 branch of Pitchfork Warehouse is doing brisk business. Youâre also not inheriting a happy camp. Twice in recent weeks â Ilias Chair at Sheff Utd, Jimmy Dunne at Stoke â players have left the field at the end of games in actual tears, not something I can really recall seeing before. Along with the Hendrick signing, and Charlie Austin sulking in the Ellerslie Road stand post substitution against Rotherham, another warning sign that all was not quite right in the world for me was Les Ferdinandâs assertion at Decemberâs fans forum that no contracts would be negotiated until the summer. In the case of Yoann Barbet in particular, this seems so dumb to me. All this talk about tight budgets and you have a 28-year-old left-sided centre back there, capable of playing 97 consecutive games, going on a free transfer. If we were picking him up for nothing from Coventry now youâd all be delighted, and youâd be right. This idea that âhe wants to go back to Franceâ is something somebody said on Twitter and became true. He was once again telling supporters at the kit sponsor event on Monday that heâs keen to stay. His wifeâs Instagram, usually a happy mix of grifting robot hoovers and their adorable son doing forward rolls, is now used to put out messages in French for people to stop asking for information about Yoannâs contract - because he doesnât have any â in a tone that implies eye-roll and eyebrow raise. Dave Mc says Les and co donât rate Barbet nearly as much as Warburton does. If they think they can get better, at that age, on a free transfer, on our budget, I canât wait to meet the new guy. That they deemed Nico Hamailainen worthy of a four-year deal, but apparently Barbet doesnât get one at all, will come back to absolutely wreck them with the supporters if next season doesnât go well. As Iâve said, this risks turning very toxic, very quickly. That the out of contract players hadnât even had a conversation with the club prior to this week is a poor way to treat staff in 2022. Albert Adomah told fans on Monday he had âno idea what was going onâ. Dave Mc says one of them has got most of his furniture in storage, awaiting a conversation. Those conversations started this week, with some players finding out via Zoom meetings if they were getting an offer or not. This is abysmal. Of all the bits of Moneyball we could be taking, the âhow to cut a playerâ scenes are not the one. Fair enough for a while we didnât know what division we would be in, but weâve known for some time now, and even so itâs not beyond the wit of man to say âif we go up this will happen, if we stay down itâs thisâ. Treat people like adults. You could argue that if they knew there was no deal upon promotion, or theyâre being released regardless, or if somebody gets a deal and somebody else doesnât, then their effort and output might decline or rifts might occur. To this I point at our results and say: keeping them in the dark hasnât exactly worked wonders has it? This shabby treatment of players coming to the end of deals has been a theme of this regime â Nedum Onuoha and Ale Faurlin both told LFW's Patreon they were furious with how their departures were handled as well. For me, you treat people as you wish to be treated yourself. There was a good deal of sniping from the club about the way Ryan Manning and Bright Osayi-Samuel conducted themselves at the end of their deals and we now cannot say a single thing about any player behaving that way towards us again. Players already here â Rob Dickie, Chris Willock â will have seen and heard how their teammates have been treated and formed their own opinions. Other players potentially moving here the same. Usual disclaimer of I know nothing about football but⌠it looks fucking shit to me, and I suspect to them as well. And so there it is. A season and team that promised so much, a club getting its act together finally, hope building among the support base⌠now, once more, a bin, on wheels, on fire, on an ever-steepening hill. Never change Rangers. Links >>> Nice when it works â Interview >>> Robbie James â History >>> Martin in charge â Referee >>> Sheffield/Preston/Huddersfield - Awaydays >>> Official Website >>> Planet Swans â Blog and Forum >>> Swansea Independent - Forum >>> Wales Online â Local Paper >>> The Jack Army â Forum >>> SOS - Fanzine The last preview of the season is usually a mixture of our choice for Player of the Season (Chris Willock) and Goal of the Season (Andre Gray at Derby, though the technique of Willockâs in the same game ran it close) and thank yous. The people that drag me through this each year know who they are, and what I think of them, and Iâve droned on enough already. What the regular readers (hello to both) perhaps donât is that without them (you), and specifically the ones who subscribe to the Patreon, is LFW would have ceased publication at the start of the pandemic. As a single income household with a London mortgage I was already combining my day job with a small income from LFWâs advertising, and freelance work at the Telegraph and elsewhere to make those ends meet â 14-16 hour working days are the norm, not an exception. With the pandemic went the advertising revenue, and the freelance work, leaving me in a bleak situation. The time spent doing LFW could not be justified, it would have to be used earning money somewhere else â even if that meant a bike and a Deliveroo backpack at 37. The idea to launch a Patreon, to include the audio we were already accumulating from our text interviews and hopefully some more bonus content besides, was cooked up over a summer barbecue. Wise Andy Hillman said it would work, I said it wouldnât. The obvious thing to do would be to put all of this â the previews, the match reports, the interviews â behind a pay wall and ask anybody who wants to read it to pay. I was never comfortable doing that, particularly when thereâs an article like the one above to publish, or an interview with a key club figure â you shouldnât have to pay to find out whatâs going on at QPR, I shouldnât be profiting off that. But without it I worried there wouldnât be enough content behind the pay wall to justify the subscriptions. The response was better than I ever hoped for, lifted a huge weight off my shoulders, and has kept the site running to this point. It will continue to do so as long as you guys want it and are able to support it. Itâs an absolute chore sometimes, turning my hobby into another day at work, and there are points over the winter when we play three times a week when I just get sick and tired of the bloody thing. Iâve poured my heart and soul into it this year like never before because if you guys are paying I feel like I owe you that much. The cost of doing the job â going to the games, the food and drink, the trains, the travel â is going up, but then so are all of your bills too. I know subscriptions to stuff like this is the first thing you put a line through when tightening a household budget, because weâre doing that at LFW Towers too. But if you are able to continue, or start, paying into our Patreon, even at the ÂŁ2.50 a month tier level, you have no idea what an enormous difference it makes and how grateful I am to you. The interviews on there already are well worth a listen, and we'll keep adding as many as we can as often as time allows while effectively holding down two full time jobs. Thankyou for any and all support received so far, enjoy all of your summers, and see you in July. Itâs the hope that kills. Below the foldTeam News: Well, weâre not going to be seeing any of the injured players we know about â Seny Dieng, David Marshall, Rob Dickie, Chris Willock, Moses Odubajo. Iâd be massively surprised if we saw (m)any of the out of contract players, because why would they risk Mosesâ fate befalling them and denying them a chance of a deal somewhere else next season â so thatâs Lee Wallace, Charlie Austin, Yoann Barbet, Albert Adomah, Keiren Westwood, Dom Ball. Likewise the loans, for similar reasons, bar perhaps Sam McCallum, purely because thereâs nobody else â so Andre Gray, Jeff Hendrick, Dion Sanderson. And if Iâm right, then who the hell does that really leave us with? Iâm looking forward to seeing what Jude the Cat is like in midfield. He wouldnât because, you know, respect and all that, but how tempting for Mark Warburton to pick a team of kids, take a heavy defeat, and just drop the mic on the way out? Elsewhere: Very strange goings on at Bournemouth in the week where the runaway Forest train weâve heard so much about got into half time in the promotion-deciding game in hand at 0-0 and I settled back on my sofa awaiting a second off onslaught and the Cherries to go through their full repertoire of tactics for keeping the ball out of play and then⌠Forest barely got out of their own half. A surprisingly limp display that ensured Bournemouth went up automatically and they must now compete in the play-offs where, on that evidence, there must be that niggling doubt that yet another City Ground choke is just around the corner, flag parade or no flag parade. It also leaves nothing at all riding on their final day trip to Hull. Precious little riding on anything really. Technically four clubs fight over the final two play-off spots and thatâs it. Sheffield Red Stripe are basically there on 72 points with a +14 goal difference as they prepare to welcome champions Tarquin and Rupert to Bramall Lane. Lutown are in possession of the final spot on 72 points, but their goal difference took an absolute rinsing as Fulham scored seven for the third time this season on Bank Holiday Monday and now stands at just +7 ahead of a visit from Reading. Middlesbrough are two points further back, and +12, with a trip to Preston Knob End beckoning. Then come outsiders Millwall on 69 points and +9 heading down to take advantage of any potential Bournemouth hangover. So⌠Sheff Utd and Luton are both in with a win. If Sheff Utd draw they can be usurped if both Luton and Boro win. If Sheff Utd lose they can be usurped if two of Luton, Boro and Millwall win, and in Millwallâs case also overcome a goal difference deficit of five. If Luton draw they drop out if Middlesbrough win. If they lose they drop out if either Middlesbrough or Millwall win. Boro have to win, a draw is no good, and if they do then they go past whichever one, or both, of Luton and Sheff Utd lose. Millwall also have to win, and then hope two of the three teams above them lose. If itâs Sheff Utd, they also have five goals to make up. Clear? Good. Everything else is just to get us out of the house. Birmingham v Blackburn is not only this weekâs exciting fixture between two clubs beginning with B, but also a battle of two outgoing managers â Tony Mowbray already confirmed, Lee Bowyer seemingly shortly to go the same way. The Little Engine That Could, Wayne Rooneyâs Derby County, the bravest damn football club that ever did exist, have Cardiff for their celebration of life. Sporting Huddersfield, already qualified for the play-offs but still attracting zero attention, host Bristol City. Peterboroughâs fairly pathetic attempt at this division ends with a home game against Blackpool, who have showed the promoted teams how itâs done. Stoke v Coventry is a bit meh. West Brom v Barnsley feels like something you should be able to get an ointment for. Referee: In 1986, Steve Martin was in the movie musical film version of the hit Off-Broadway play Little Shop of Horrors (based on a famous B-movie), playing the sadistic dentist, Orin Scrivello. The film was the first of three films teaming Martin with Rick Moranis. In 1987, Martin joined comedian John Candy in the John Hughes movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. More details. FormSwansea: The Swans looked to be putting together an impressive end to their season prior to last weekâs 5-1 shellacking at Nottingham Forest. That ended an unbeaten run of nine matches, which included a 4-0 win at Cardiff to complete a first ever South Wales derby double. The four games immediately prior to the City Ground massacre, however, had all been drawn, including a 3-3 at home to Birmingham and 4-4 at Reading in which the Welsh side had led by three goals on both occasions. Throw in a semi-recent 5-1 home loss to Fulham and Russell Martinâs side are running just shy of conceding two goals a game, with 23 shipped in their last 12 matches. Only six teams have conceded more than their 67 goals this season, and that includes five of the bottom six. Only three teams have drawn more than their 13. They have an unremarkable home record of 9-5-8 â every team from thirteenth upwards, and two of those below them, have won more than nine at home. The outstanding seasons of Alexander Mitrovic and Dominic Solanke have rather overshadowed Joel Piroeâs fantastic first campaign at this level â 20 league goals in a team sitting fifteenth. He has a 32-goal partnership with former Southampton junior Michael Obafemi.
QPR: Urgh, must we? QPR have won three of their last 18 games, have lost seven of the last nine, and nine of the last 13. Theyâve taken one point from their last five away games, and conceded nine times in those. Wins for Stoke, Preston and Blackpool coupled with a defeat here would see Rangers finish sixteenth in the Championship table â for so long our seemingly permanent resting spot in this damned division, one we thought weâd left well behind. Rangers won 1-0 here almost exactly a year ago with a late Lyndon Dykes goal â he hasnât scored in 12 games going back to the Reading win at the end of January. That was QPRâs first win in Swansea since 1981 â nine visits which included five defeats and just two goals scored. They had lost to nil in each of their prior three visits to the Liberty Stadium. Charlie Austinâs goal against Sheff Utd was his 63rd in QPR colours across two spells, 119 starts and 29 sub appearances. The defeat that followed took Rangers to 26 points surrendered from winning positions this season. Yoann Barbet has taken 17 shots at goal from free kicks in his time with the club without scoring. Prediction: Weâre indebted to The Art of Football for once again agreeing to sponsor our Prediction League and provide prizes. You can get involved by lodging your prediction here or sample the merch from our sponsorâs QPR collection here. It looks like a straight fight between Cheesy and SinceApril66 for the title this year, and for the final time we bid welcome and thanks to last seasonâs champion Mick_S⌠âIâve tried to remain optimistic during the downturn; not surprisingly, along with many others, thatâs gone. Swansea are poor, we are too. Last game of the season and I can only hope that the team put the extra application in to see off MW in the way he deserves after his appalling treatment by Rangers. What a fuckinâ mess.â Mickâs Prediction: Swansea 1-1 QPR. Scorer â Mark Warburton LFWâs Prediction: Swansea 3-0 QPR. No scorer. If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk. Pictures â Action Images The Twitter @loftforwords Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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