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Comment | Drift at your peril - Preview
at 18:37:08
I have to take issue with Clive's comment: "As he who shall not be named said in the summer, it’s about timing one of your eight game streaks for the end of March."
No, it isn't! Points count equally whenever they are earned during the season.
It's much more exciting if a team saves their best run for the run-in. And it buys the manager time with an impatient fan base if he can get them to suspend judgement until the latter stages of the season.
But a team doesn't need to time the points it wins; it just needs to win them. |
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Comment | So, this is goodbye — Preview
at 16:54:44
Clive asks what has happened to cause the drop-off in form during 2022. One could also ask the opposite question: why was Calendar Year 2021 so brilliant when everything before and since has been pretty awful?
If there is something going on behind the scenes, is it a negative factor that emerged at the start of this year or was it a positive factor that came in Jan 2021 and left 12 months later?
I have no answers ... only those two questions. |
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Comment | Premier League referee for Forest trip - Referee
at 16:27:06
Curses! I logged in so that I could post a wicked leg-pull over the glorious triple-blunder in the opening paragraph ... but the page refreshed and the paragraph has been completely re-written. Perhaps Jesse Marsch (or his coach driver) beat me to it. |
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Comment | Bright, Free and Eze - Column
at 14:14:39
It makes a really nice line, but I think you're mistaken in suggesting that converting debt into equity "is exactly what [QPR] did to spark the [FFP] action in the first place".
QPR were in FFP trouble, because they spent more than they earned in income. Converting some of the debt into equity was an attempt to hide the loss by, in effect, saying: “the club didn’t lose this money; the investors didâ€.
As a result of the EFL including a further debt conversion as part of the punishment, the investors are being required to take a further hit. Money that they could have removed from the club, because they were owed it, is no longer owed and now can’t be removed until QPR is (sufficiently) back in profit.
It’s actually quite logical. Complicated – convoluted, even – but it is logical.
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Comment | Coming home to roost — Column
at 09:04:07
This article demonstrates two flaws in FFP. But the intention behind the scheme is clear and it is right. The intention is to stop teams using the owner's wealth to give them an unfair advatage on the pitch.
The first flaw is the lack of co-operation between the EFL and the Premier League. Clubs who get promoted to the Premier League should not only have the fine enforced, but should also have it increased to a level which means that the sanction still hurts.
The second flaw is that the scheme didn't start sooner than it did. Clubs like Chelsea were able to take advantage of the owner's wealth when that was allowed. Time will (eventually) resolve that flaw. Giving our own club a free pass is not the answer.
There may be other flaws. Hoarding youth players so that others can't have them should be looked into. An adjustment should be included where there are high-wage contracts from Premier League days.
But let's not throw out the FFP baby with the bathwater of design-glitches. Let's not pretend that the whole of QPR's overspend was outside the club's control. FFP needs time. It needs improvement. It needs to work if football is to survive as a competition that takes on the pitch not at the bank. |
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Comment | Has Holloway just had his Newcastle moment? Preview
at 13:00:19
@oldmisery You raise an interesting point. In 1975/76 (which I believe you are referring to), we lost only seven league matches. Three of them were in weeks when we played a cup game; and two were at Christmas/Easter when two games were played within three/two days. If squad rotation had turned just one of those defeats into a victory (or two of them into a draw), we would have been champions. |
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Comment | Has Holloway just had his Newcastle moment? Preview
at 09:01:48
There are good reasons why a fan might be disappointed at the absence of a cup run. But to argue that today's game (or any other league game) isn't important is not one of them.
At the end of the season, when the league table identifies who's up, who's down and who's staying put, every point won counts equally and every point not won is equally damaging.
So, unless Clive is confident that QPR are going to be comfortably mid-table or proudly promoted with room to spare, every point counts, from the first day of the season to the last. And, if there is a tolerable chance that Cardiff might be a rival at the same end of the table as the Rs, every point denied to Cardiff has the potential to benefit QPR as well.
Of course there will, as Clive says, be plenty of other games, after today, for QPR to win more points (and for Cardiff to be denied them). But we saw what happened last season when the team got itself into an apparently safe place in the table, with games to spare, only to drop like a stone over the ensuing weeks and end up a hair's breadth from disaster.
Today's game matters. <i>Every</i> league game matters, until enough points have been won for winning more of them not to matter any more. |
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Comment | Warnock and 'Tarbs', the love affair begins — History
at 13:20:30
@isawqpratwcity From one person who saw QPR at White City (at least I think I did) to another, may I say that I think you are being a tad harsh on Clive W. His opening two paras on the Preston match included:
"... abysmal defeat. Four games into the Championship season, and we’re still no close[r] to knowing whether QPR’s class of 2016/17 are actually any good. Sadly the performances are heading in the wrong direction."
I'm willing to accept those words as reporting an "indicator" that things might not turn out well. Clive didn't say the match was guaranteed nailed-on proof of an impending fail - a single match never is - just an indicator. |
| | simoncarne
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