My son went to Southampton with his mate this season and said it was empty and the worse atmosphere he’s ever witnessed. An overall awful experience.
Cifuentes isn’t even on the odds list for Southampton. Why would an ambitious club want him? Serious question. Win % with us of 33%, considerably lower than he did in the demanding Scandinavian leagues.
I'm OK with the Marti party staying at Loftus Road. He dug deep to get us out of last place, to where we sit now ( approx: mid table ). He's working with no names, no budget and little hope.............. pretty dam good effort getting the best out of them at different times. If were not spending the coin, we can't expect too much. Luckily, Marti has done a great job with what we have. The party stays here.
Good debate between Finney, Clive and a couple of others on this subject and the apparent breakdown of the relationship between Marti and Nourry in this weeks Open All Rs podcast...worth a listen to if you've got some time https://open.spotify.com/episode/1HfE1bNlXWfpvuRulUPL3V?si=aElP7y1LTxWjJFOH8ahdzA Clive is of the opinion that this isn't just a clickbait story, and there's something in it - whether Marti is trying to lay down a marker, put feelers out to other clubs or trying to push for more say in recruitment next season they're not sure. Will be interesting to see what the crowd reactions will be tomorrow - pretty sure Stroller won't be singing Martis name though
The Swedish top division is about as bad as in Scotland, A few (as opposed to two) with loads of money, while the rest wouldn't survive in league two. When MC was at Hammarby he was managing one of the few, Ps. If QPR played Norrköping ten times, I would be surprised if QPR didn't win nine of them.
Next week across the country the Owners & Manager of each club will sit down, review the season and discuss the future. The owners will say they want more wins, the Manager will say they need more money. This is part of that dance. Some walk out of the meeting happy, others with a P45. I have no idea how our meeting will turn out, I presume the club are happy enough, they've not broke the bank and stayed in the league, that appears to be their current ambition. What Cif wants and what his ambition is I have no idea. If he realistically thought he'd be given billions to spend he must be mad. If he thought he'd come to us, improve his stock and find a (slightly) bigger club, now may be the time to start looking.
I’m trying to work out whether that says anything good about Cifuentes…… Anyway, different country, but I’m hoping Bodo/Glimt have fun with Spurs whenever it is.
He did a good job at Hammarby. They have a tradition of only playing attacking, entertaining football. When they won the league for the first and only time in 2012 (?) they sacked the manager because of the negative football a couple of weeks afterwards(!) Otherwise, I don't even know who Boda, Clint or Spurs are! Is it something to do with the Eurovision song contest?
Genuine question, what was Cifs style at Hammerby? I would have a lot more time for Cif if our tactics were not to permanantly play it back to the keeper before thinking of playing forward.
He played it as the club and fans wanted it. Winning 4-3 is fantastic: winning 1-0 is not good enough. I only watched them against Norrköping, but generally they tried to score whatever the scoreline. "Back to the keeper" was not in the game-plan.
Thanks, I was expecting a more attacking GiGi De Canio style football. I can't help but think that our backward play is coming from the Management team. As for goal kicks, how did footballers start playing a backward pass from a bloody goal kick, your literally 6 yards from your goal line!
As Clive pointed out in his Swansea report, our dire season of injuries has hampered the teams ability to pick the same starting eleven week in, week out so there's no continuity.... "And yet, again, so much mitigation you have to wonder and ask exactly what else the Spaniard could do? How much of this can really be laid at his door? What hand, exactly, do you want him to play with these cards? He can’t pull a competent centre forward out of his arse. It took until November for the manager to be able to name an unchanged team – perhaps no surprise that then resulted in the breakthrough win at Cardiff. He’s only been able to do it twice since - Watford H and Luton H in January, and then last week’s games against Bristol City and Preston. Again, no surprise those both also resulted in victories." I agree, the back passing is mind-numbing but do we really have the players for forward passing, progressive football - I don't think so. There's no pace in the team, bar Smyth, and he's not the answer to our problems. There's going to be a big turnaround of players in the close season - I'd rather Marti was there to oversee this but fear that Nourry will be busy with his analytics tools and get a load of 'top ten in their countries' unknowns without a cohesive plan of how they'll play together. We should have been relegated last season, and we dragged ourselves over the line, and for long strrtches of this season we've been the worst team in the keague, decinated by injuries overseen by some faceless mong sunning it up in Dubai and phoning it in. Some interesting stats were discussed in the.podcast I listened to - in his other "job" with the Mets (?) their top three scorers have missed well over 100 games between them through injury in the last two seasons...co-incidence? If Marti walks, good luck to him. But I fear for whoever comes in to replace him at the start of next season if he doesn't hit the ground running straight away....do you think he'd have the crowd singing his name after 16 games without a win like the crowd did for Marti v Stoke? No chance, they'll be baying for blood and the directors box will be the target of a lot of that abusr. It's going to be another typical QPR season - strap yourselves in for the W12 rollercoaster
As always with QPR there are so many issues behind the scenes its hard to attribute blame to any single person and I appreciste Cif rarely has a full squad. Personally I'm still ambivilant about him. He's kept us up but with some awful football that had we seen under Ainsworth would have resulted in boo's within minutes. Becareful what we wish for, all I wish for is to look forward to watching us.
From that it seems that nothing could possibly be Cifuentes’ fault. He didn’t choose the players, he didn’t design the medical set up, he had lots of injured players. And of course no other managers in this or other leagues had to deal with anything like this. Probably ever. No wonder his name gets sung at every game, it’s a real achievement delivering what he has in these utterly unique circumstances.
Maybe they sing his name because after the dross managers we've had to put up with over the years, he seems like a good guy? You guys should know more than me, you go to the games most weeks, I just watch them on dodgy streams
Honestly, I find it a bit bewildering now. Last season I got it, but now I think people just think it’s a neat song and sing it at random intervals because he seems like a pleasant bloke. There is a bizarre detachment between what they think of him and what they see on the pitch, like there is no relationship, let alone a causal one, between the two. Mystifying.
