QPR co-chairman Tony Fernandes talks to LFW about his ongoing social media activity, financial fair play, season tickets and a new training ground.
You spent time on social media at the weekend defending your record, something you feel compelled to do quite often. Looking back fairly at your record here, what would you say are your main successes and failures?
TF: I wouldn’t say I was defending my position, because there’s not a lot to defend truth be told - numbers are numbers, positions are positions. I was trying to say that it’s not as bad as it’s made out to be. If you’re a QPR fan sometimes it feels like apocalypse has arrived, and I was saying it’s not the end of the world. We’re committed and we have a good team in place — though there’s no guarantee that will fix everything. That’s what I was trying to say, rather than defend my record, which cannot be defended.
Achievements? There are a lot of things that you won’t see at the moment that have been achieved. The training ground is well on its way. We’d like to give a definitive date soon but there have been a lot of objections from local residents, and Lee Hoos tells me there is one more coming to do with a public footpath.
I think we’ve made tremendous progress on the new stadium. Again, you won’t see that at the moment but let’s look at Spurs who started making plans to redevelop their stadium in 2000. It’s now 2016, there’s still no firm date on when the new White Hart Lane will open. Building a stadium in London is really, really difficult. Building a training ground has taken a long time. Some people don’t seem to understand that. We’ve invested close to £9m-£10m already in terms of design, infrastructure. A lot has been done.
A lot of QPR’s problems stem from owners having to pump money in constantly, because we can’t generate enough money from Loftus Road.
We’ve struggled to get the right people in. There are no guarantees that in two years’ time we won’t be saying we had the wrong people in again, but you learn a lot from experience, you learn a lot from mistakes. Nobody we hired was interested in the academy. Ruben, myself, the other shareholders, we're all about developing youth. It’s our culture and background at Air Asia — developing staff. We couldn’t go from two planes to 200 without developing a lot of staff. But the positions we were in made it impractical.
We were newly promoted at first under Neil Warnock and the previous owners hadn’t bought a lot of players that summer so we had to buy. We then had a new manager with a very good record at other clubs who made recommendations for players and we supported him in that. Today, we still have players from that regime who don’t play. If we take Samba Diakite, for example, he played extremely well in his first season against good teams, scored against Arsenal. If we hadn’t signed him at the end of that season, people would have said we were mad. Who would have thought he’d have the problems he’s had? We backed the manager, there wasn’t a single player we told him to buy. I argued with him about Jose Bosingwa many, many times. But who was I to question an experienced manager? Put yourself in my position, saying to an experienced manager "can we use youth players?” They say ‘Who? Where? We’ve just stayed up, we need experienced players to consolidate, then we can build.’
Mark didn’t work out, Harry comes in and it’s similar. You’ll say "well you picked your managers” but we needed a manager who could stop us from going down and Harry had that track record. After going down, he brought in players he knew, we went back up by the skin of our teeth. At each of these points we’re saying ‘can we play younger players, can we scout in lower divisions’… Ruben, who is a statistics man, wanted to push for us to sign Charlie Austin who wasn’t Harry’s first choice. We were keen on Danny Ings too. There are many, many players we pushed and ended up, invariably, backing the manager. There was an argument about Rio Ferdinand. It’s easy to criticise.
We went with Chris Ramsey, we wanted to stop the pursuit of big names. But Chris inherited a situation, he couldn’t properly plan because he couldn’t be sure who was going out or coming in. Chris had in his contract, if it didn’t work out, he’d go back to where he was originally meant to be, where I think he will be excellent.
Now we have Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, we’re signing players like El Khayati, Conor Washington… We would like to have done that from the beginning. The deck of cards we were dealt meant we couldn’t. We didn’t buy properly, but we backed our managers. Hindsight is wonderful, when we signed a lot of those players people were enthusiastic. We didn’t get criticised at the time.
What we have now is a manager who understands about developing young players, who has come from the lower leagues. We have a good team at the academy, Perry Suckling and Chris Ramsey, cleaning out and putting a team in place. We have the dome at Cranford, which nobody talks about. We have better facilities at Concord, better sports medicine and so on.
We’re talking about three or four of those young players having potential, and that’s never happened in my time. We have a system where people like Darnell Furlong, Cole Kpekawa, Michael Doughty are out getting game time with the idea that they can be in the squad next year. When they’re not out on loan, they’re here and Chris is working with them intensely.
We have a competent CEO now who is making a big difference. Lee Hoos is experienced and originally we brought him in just to run the club but he’s getting more and more involved in everything. Les Ferdinand is honest, hard working, he knows players and he’s passionate. We’ve got a good crux of a team, marketing and communications we’re very good. That doesn’t win football matches though.
You say this season is how you always wanted to do it, and it’s how a lot of us wanted to see things done, but how does that tally with the Instagram post where you said "promotion means everything to me”?
TF: Well, it does. Does it not mean everything to you?
No.
TF: Well, it did to me then. I felt we kept a lot of our better players, and would keep them through January. That was an expensive decision to make. The aim was to keep Charlie Austin until the end of the season. I felt, at the training ground that day, we had a chance and we did have a chance. It’s still not over yet, five wins on the trot changes everything, but it doesn’t look likely.
Is that not repeating the same mistake as before — thinking that we’ve got the individuals, we’re spending money, we should get promoted? We buy players, we think we’re spending a lot of money on players, that means we should be doing well?
TF: I felt we had a good chance. I wanted to get the guys to believe that was the aim. If you go in there and say ‘sorry guys, we’re going for a midtable finish’ it breeds mediocrity. I’ve got to pump them up, say we’re going for it. We were trying to extend Charlie Austin’s contract, part of it is showing to the players we have the ambition and want to go up. If I say to Charlie and these guys, ‘sorry lads we’re only going for midtable’ maybe we’ll be ready again in three years’ time, what is their reaction going to be? I spoke to them, and said let’s go for it.
Do you see the problems a Tweet or message like that can cause, for the manager, for the players…? Having spent all summer being told it was a season of consolidation, for the fans to then hear we’re going for promotion do you see that it confuses expectations?
TF: Look at the response, everybody wants to go up. Everybody feels QPR should be challenging. If this was a consolidation year we’re doing alright — we’re thirteenth with 41 points. But we don’t win at Bolton away, I get hammered, everybody is depressed — expectations for QPR are high, rightly or wrongly. We sat down with all the players earlier this season, we were four points off the play-off places, we thought it was possible. I don’t think it caused the manager any problems saying ‘I’d love to go up’. I still say to Jimmy now: 'you never know'. In the same way I told Ruben and Phil Beard at Wembley after Gary O’Neil was sent off I still think we’re going to win. I don’t think it gave the manager at the time a problem.
The consolidation element has been clear this season with the buying strategy. We haven’t got a flashy manager, we’re buying more carefully.
There was a period of time after that message though where people we had bought as part of that strategy — Massimo Luongo for instance — were taken out of the team and people like Leroy Fer and Sandro were selected instead…
TF: If players aren’t playing, they’re difficult to sell or move on. If they’re playing it shows they’re fit and able to play. I asked the same question about Luongo — he’s the future. But it is more difficult to move players on if they’re not playing at all. To Jimmy’s credit, we moved a lot of players on in January.
The underlying point I’m hitting at is whether you still believe it is a good idea for you to be communicating about the club in this way. Some of the responses you receive, "I wish you’d disappear like one of your planes”, are sick and you may look at that and take it as representative of the QPR supporters as a whole…
TF: I still think it is a good idea. I still walk around at matches, say hello to people. You get a sense of whether you’re liked or not liked. I’m mature enough to know that some people can be sick. I still believe it’s best to be transparent, as I’m doing today with you — it’s a lot easier just to not see anybody.
Would it be better to be transparent by appearing regularly at a fans forum, for instance?
TF: A fans forum would never reach thousands of people. There are 40 or 50 people at the forums. On social media you learn what to say, when to say it. It’s more in moderation than it was, I check with Ian and the press team sometimes… more than sometimes. I used to never check before.
Let’s talk about the debt write off. What’s the catch?
TF: There is no catch. It goes in as equity. If you guys really hate us one day and we decide to sell, the equity is there. We decided we were committed to the club, a shareholder’s loan is effectively equity anyway so we decided to move it from debt to equity to remove the burden on the club.
You’ll never be able to sell this club for the amount you’ve converted to equity.
TF: No I don’t think so. But we would never have been paid back that debt anyway, so we may as well. Never say never, who would have thought Southampton would grow to the size they have in such a short space of time? It’s a long term project, there will be hairy moments, but in a strange way by being down here, being in midtable, maybe it gives us time to do what we always wanted to do and there’s less pressure. It might take two, three or four seasons but we want to get it right. As a competitive person you always want to go up, but we’re not taking short cuts.
So are we completely debt free now? There was a loan from Barclays…
TF: The loan from Barclays is about £17m and will be paid off during next season.
And that is literally the only debt the club has at this point?
TF: Correct.
What is the status of the ongoing negotiations with the Football League about the breach of the FFP regulations in 2013/14?
TF: It’s ongoing, there has been a non-disclosure agreement signed on both sides while talks are ongoing. That’s all we can say at this time.
Are we compliant with the revised FFP rules for this season?
TF: The rules have changed and we’re very confident — we’ve had to move on one or two for not a lot of money— but we’re confident we will be within FFP now and going forward.
Now, sitting here today, you’re confident that this season we’re compliant with FFP?
TF: Yes and I think we’ll comply with it going forwards. By the way, I’m interested in how one or two other clubs in this division are compliant this season.
Caterham was another cash-hungry sporting business that didn’t achieve the results you wanted it to achieve and eventually became too much of a financial burden. Why should we think that won’t happen here?
TF: When we started with Caterham, Bernie Ecclestone had said it was to be a cost controlled business. We were supposed to run the teams at £40m, of which most of it would be covered through sponsorship. It was never run the way we thought it was going to be run and it got worse and worse and worse.
The same could be said of QPR…
TF: No, football has got better. You have FFP now. I advocated FFP. One club was pushing me hard to reject it. Now F1 is starting to follow football. QPR isn’t a black hole for cash for us any more.
You can see why a supporter of QPR would make the comparison and be concerned?
TF: Yes, but F1 is a hell of a lot more cash hungry than this.
Actually, with Caterham, we’ll still probably get our investment back. There is a fantastic technology company there, with a lot of products to come out based on F1 technology. There was method to the madness there. Part of the plan was to take the F1 technology and we’ve developed airline seats, composites… I still have Caterham the car company which is profitable.
You run a low cost airline, you describe yourself as a ‘low cost guy’. We obviously don’t have many seats in our ground but the season ticket prices are a bone of contention.
TF: I think, firstly, I’ve always been fair to the fans. The first thing we did when we came in here was reduce the prices. There haven’t been complaints about the pricing year to year since I’ve arrived here.
Playing devil’s advocate, if we do stay in this division for a number of years and the parachute payments end we need to get people into the process of paying earlier to finance that summer transfer window. We’re trying to make the club sustainable and self-financing. If we no longer have parachute payments, ticket revenue becomes vitally important to us, we need to get into that mindset. There is a meeting at the club next week between Lee Hoos and the supporters consultation committee which will discuss this year’s policy and we’re looking at ways of easing that burden. We’re not trying to fleece fans.
The 30% increase after March 31 line in the renewal booklet has been a source of anger.
TF: It won’t be 30%. I guarantee that. We haven’t fixed the prices. I hope the fans can say we’ve been fair with them over five years and we will continue to be fair. We have to change the mindset, ticket revenue could become extremely important to us and that money needs to come in earlier.
My whole ethos is to reduce ticket prices. The average price for a ticket at QPR this season is £19 and once you take out VAT and other things we get £14.95 of that. One of the reasons I want to build a bigger stadium is we’d get more from corporate entertainment and we could reduce the price of tickets for supporters. I still think £20 is a lot of money for people to pay to come and watch a football game.
I personally think a new training ground which the club owns would be a much better legacy of your time here than a new stadium or anything else, but it’s been delayed so much…
TF: The planning issues are one thing, but part of the delay was our own decision. Originally it was going to be all bells and whistles but we decided that wasn’t the best idea for our club. We were going to build a £35m training ground, now we want to build a £16m-17m training ground. We lost a year in changing the plans.
It’s the people who make the difference. We’re hearing now, that after many years, QPR are returning to local schools looking for players. Fulham, Brentford, Chelsea have all been better than us. A Rolls Royce training ground wouldn’t change that. We need the right people scouting these players, training these players, making them better footballers. Without that, who cares?
The training ground is important, firstly bringing everybody together. My vision is everybody will be together in Ealing. But the most important thing is getting the right people in here, which Perry Suckling and Chris Ramsey are trying to do. Particularly on the scouting side, which we’re not finished with yet. We’ve got to get better scouts and guys who watch the right games. Les has been working a hell of a lot on that.
Sometimes painful decisions have been made. I thought Steve Gallen was a fantastic guy, I was thrilled when he moved up to the first team. But that step up came with risks if we didn’t succeed. We can’t create positions for the sake of creating positions. The reality is the academy hasn’t produced much by way of players for QPR, before my time, during my time, etc. It needs a radical shift and change if we’re to aspire to Spurs or Southampton. It will take four or five years for the effects to start being felt.
The training ground is important. I don’t think it needs to be the greatest training ground in the world because it changes people’s perceptions and earnings. We need basic, modern facilities with the best people running it.
Is there a point where it becomes too bogged down in delay and never happens? What’s Plan B?
TF: Plan B is work with Imperial College and develop Harlington. But we’re so far down the road with this one I’m confident we’ll get it.
After five tough years, and the money spent, why carry on?
TF: I still love it. Why are you still writing the way you do about QPR? It gets into your blood for better or worse. I get depressed when we lose now, even though it doesn’t make much difference this season. I’ve had some of the happiest days of my life here. Wembley… If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I’ve had an amazing life and Wembley is one of those things that not many people can experience. Being carried around by Joey Barton, hugging Charlie Austin, seeing 40,000 ecstatic QPR fans. It’s a wonderful feeling, and it doesn’t change. Winning against Ipswich last week was as good as any other victory. The dream lives on that we can make this little club something bigger.
My real dream is to produce players from West London for QPR.
Do you accept that although you’ve always said that, we’re late in starting to do that?
TF: Yes, but you can speak to Harry Redknapp, Neil Warnock, Mark Hughes… they all heard the same thing from me: academy, academy, academy. The academy staff got frustrated because none of them wanted to play any of their players. Chris brought some of the guys in and tried. Jimmy is of that ilk as well. But the academy has to produce for the first team as well. We have a manager who is keen to look that way now. Yes, we’re late, but it’s the deck of cards we were dealt.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We’ve had to manage a lot of people and egos. We may now have been dealt a deck of cards that will allow us to do what you have always wanted us to do. We always wanted to do that as well. But first season, straight after promotion, how do we buy a League One player? You go down, everybody wants to come back straight away, you’ve smelt the Premier League, Harry’s one aim is to go back up — how do you say Harry let’s go buy this League One player and develop him?
But it can be done. Burnley went up, bought very few players, came back down with the money banked, now in a much better position than us.
TF: Absolutely but Burnley were in this division for a long time. A lot of these success stories came up the hard way — Swansea, Southampton, Leicester. They had a few years at it. QPR’s title winning season the year before I got here was built to a large extent around one player. Take that player out, we’re struggling. We now feel like we’re in the position Burnley and Swansea were.
Am I less committed? No. Do I think I should communicate less via Twitter? I really don’t, I know we disagree on that. I’m more moderate with that now. Am I afraid of getting criticism and comments like "why don’t you disappear like your planes?” … I’m past that. If somebody wants to say that, they can say that. Does it hurt? Sometimes. Does it make me more determined? Absolutely. Absolutely.
We’re trying to build something now. There are no guarantees of success but we have a good young manager, good head of academy, super CEO, good marketing head, Ian is doing a great job with the communications team. The backbone is there now. Time will tell.
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images