This may seem like a stupid question but as I am only 18 I obviously was not around for the 70's/80's and most of the 90's. How come tottenham, chelsea, arsenal even west ham are 'bigger' than us? what happened in the 60's or whatever that stopped QPR from being a 'bigger' club? just general support? were about 128 years old... older than chelscum but..... anyone?
WE ARE A BIG CLUB!! Really it's down to location,where we are you have Chelsea,Fulham,Brentford and ourselves all in a relatively small space.Added to this the fact that for years we were playing in the 3rd division South and then in the 2nd tier of the league proper as it became,you can understand why our fan base was never massive.Arsenal and Spurs are North London and have always been trophy winning clubs,hence if your from that area your going to support one or the other.As for the scum their support wained dramatically from the mid 70s up until the Abramovich era,when winning trophies enticed the plastics out of the woodwork.The longer we stay in the Premiership and improve as a team,you will see our fan base grow again whether it be old supporters coming back or new ones choosing us over lesser teams!
I really do think it is the fact there is 4 football league clubs in such a small area. Your fanbase will always be split. Also unfortunately success brings fans in, we have never really won that much and have spent more years out of the top flight than in it. If you look at say west ham , not much competition for their fanbase , they cover all of essex and east london with just southend and Leyton orient picking up the odd fan here and there.
This. Most large towns don't have a league team. Our single London borough has three Premier League teams. There are estimated to be 66 towns with populations above 100,000 in the UK, 61 of them would be home to teams that could play in the FA league system (the others are 4 scottish, plus Belfast). Most of these don't boast a Premier league side - many can't even muster a league team. Allow for relative success over the past ten years or so, and there's your answer.
Our ground holds under 20,000...thats why we are not a big club. New stadium, stay in the Prem league, the stadium will fill and we will be a big club!
What certainly didn't help was Wilkins pissing away the money from Ferdinand and causing us to be relegated just before the money in football got particularly crazy.
Took the words right out of my mouth. Build the facilities and they will come. Cardiff have done it and they're not even Premier League. Watford makes a very astute point too. We went down at the worst possible time just when the big bucks were starting to roll in.
Bit confused on this one. The London stuff I get, but elsewhere? I would guess Coventry, Leicester, Forest, Derby and a few others would have bigger catchments than us, but I still feel we are a bigger club than many - how do we rate v Stoke, Wigan.....
Not sure I want to be a so called big club. It will happen of course, I just hope we don't lose the soul of our club in the process.
It goes back to when football started booming after the war, 2nd not gulf, when there was a division 2 south and north. When they decided to merge the two leagues we either too low down or lost out on a lottery, I can't remember the details, but we were put in to division 3. I believe fulham and Chelsea both went in to division 2 and gathered larger fan bases at a crucial time. This was part of the story, another is that we've never tried to capitalise when we have had any success. I love loftus road to death, but if at any time during our successes in the 70's, 80's and 90's, when we were always packed out and we had moved then to a bigger ground, then we would be a bigger club today. I think this is something TF and AB both realise and will fix that soon enough.
We have to be careful what we wish for. For me, viewing is better in a smaller ground. In the Chelsea game, I could see the expressions on the Chelsea players as if I was on the pitch with them. It adds to the human interest. Watching dots on a green postage stamp (I'm thinking of St Marys, after Southampton moved from the Dell) is a bit soul less. Sure, we have to move from LR. But the type of ground will be crucial to my enjoyment of matches.
May be because you don't log out - I don't on the app, but do when using family PC....don't really want the wife commenting on how she can't believe grown men spend their time like this...
All things have a journey ... I only know that without winning much QPR have forged a good place generally in English Football and we are currently being looked at a club that still has a soul ... I have mentioned before i think that we are seen by a lot of my mates in both the UK and France as an attractive underdog a team that plays good football. A big club or a big brand all remains to be seen. Swords tread carefully with SB73 I sense he is a cross between Hunter S. Thompson / Hannibal Lecter and Patrick Moore ... his physic evaluations on this board must not be under estimated.
