Queens Park Rangers owner Tony Fernandes ponders Mark Hughesâ fate following Southampton defeat QPR owner Tony Fernandes has declared he has done all he could to âgive supportâ to the clubâs management and players amid angry calls from fans for Mark Hughes to be sacked. Frustrated: Mark Hughes, the Queens Park Rangers manager, saw his side lose at home in their 'six-pointer' with Southampton Photo: GETTY IMAGES By Jason Burt 11:00PM GMT 17 Nov 2012 14 Comments With QPR four points adrift at the bottom of the table, discussions will take place this week as to whether Hughes should remain in charge after overseeing a 12th consecutive Premier League match without a win. Representatives of Harry Redknapp and Rafael BenÃtez have already indicated to QPR that they would be interested in taking over should Hughes be sacked. But until on Saturday night Fernandes has been unswerving in his conviction that he has no intention of replacing Hughes, insisting he was the best man for the job, and it would still take a significant change of heart for the Malaysian entrepreneur to act now. Fernandes, who was not at Loftus Road on Saturday, took to Twitter following the 3-1 home defeat to Southampton, which Hughes said was the clubâs worst performance since he was hired in January, to admit: âI feel gutted. I have put my heart and soul into this with my other shareholders. And done all we can to give support to players and all management. I can only apologise to the QPR fans. We keep fighting.â That will be interpreted as ominous for Hughes, but despite his disappointment with the manager and players Fernandes is agonising over whether or not to make a change and genuinely wants to keep the manager in place. However, he will talk to the other shareholders â including co-owner Amit Bhatia and Fernandesâ fellow Malaysian backers Ruben Gnanalingam and Din Kamarudin. Hughes last night rejected the calls for him to step down, arguing that the club needed âstabilityâ â a word often used by Fernandes. Acknowledging the fansâ anger â some brandished a banner aimed at Redknapp which read 'Harry Come and Save Usâ â Hughes said: âThe fans are well within their rights to criticise me. I can understand the reaction, it was exactly my reaction to that performance. I donât run away from situations or challenges. I came into this with my eyes wide open and itâs my intention to see it through. âIt was a huge challenge in January when I took it. There werenât too many people queuing up when I decided it was the right role for me. âThe team totally underperformed and they have held their hands up and accepted that. Maybe itâs a watershed moment because we canât get any lower.â Supporters also loudly accused the players of being âonly here for the moneyâ. Hughes signed seven of the starting team but did not hold back in his criticism. âWe were lacking all the fundamental things that build a performance,â he said.
he aint gonna walk if he would miss out on a 10 million pay day!...would you??. I really hope its not Benitez as he lost his marbles at Liverpool,too much of a tactition,too studious and not the right man for a relegation scrap!. Harry short term and we can look at Benitez if and when we stay up...
Benitez wouldn't be any use with this lot, we need a motivator and they don't come better than Harry. Some wheeler-dealing in the loan market plus one or two decent signings could transform things. It'll still be long odds to stay up but we need to have a Plan B for next season if we go down and Harry would be the man for that eventuality...
Not necessarily, MH got a £1 million bonus for keeping us up but we weren't in the drop-zone when he took over, Harry would probably demand double that seeing as the big-money PL contract starts next season, but I'd guess he'd have a similar bonus written in for bringing us back first-time as we're in far deeper sh*t than last season...
Go for Benitez if we can but at the moment arry on shorter term contract (up to 18 months) would be ok.
Queuing up? Unbelievable. We didn't need him to queue up either! We were doing far better with NW in the first place! Hopefully, somebody tells TF that, if he saw another club in our exact position, say, his beloved West Ham, after a year's change of manager and pretty much all of the squad - wouldn't he think that it would be insane for that team's owners to not make a change? Wouldn't TF think that enough is enough and that YES, it is not working and that the manager has to go for the sake of the club? We have to now face a tough schedule again through the New Year. And, we have not even beaten the teams in the bottom half as he thought we would, including the teams right above us in the relegation zone! Somebody please point this out and whisper in his ear.
'Arry followed by Rafa is what the headlines are saying. The murmurs are whispering something else: proper, if unfashionable football words like Sean Derry, Clint Hill, Gallen x 2 and/or Bircham. All unproven maybe but it's not as though the big money headlines represent any guarantees either. Think we've all had more than enough of these mercenary types. Time for the 'real' Rs to be considered imo - starting with Mackie goal hunting up front. Our (rightly) much criticised idol Taarabt showed that. Stepped up to the pail big time yesterday and showed us all the difference in so many ways. Gimme thicker hoops and real Rangers any day! URssss!!!
If Harry kept us up, a £1 million bonus would be money very well spent indeed. The difference in money available for being in the EPL versus the NPC makes £1 million look like a drop in the ocean. Plus Tony's long-term business plan would be in danger of being derailed if we went down. I've supported TF's quest for stability but if he does make a change, does anyone on here think Rafa really motivates a team, could he gee them up?
sparkey has got qpr done up like a kipper, He is going nowhere unless the owners sack him and its looking like they cant afford to sack him and spend millions on a new manager, so it looks like stalemate and sparkey will just have to get on with it and hope for the best.....
Wise words Brix but TBH I can't see the type of players we have in the squad responding to this type of manager. Benitez would be best to take the current squad forward IMO. However, if TF accepts that the odds are we will be relegated (as he should) than he might just have the sense to install such a manager to start building for the future.
Is Redknapp the right man? Based on these two pieces, no. Tellingly, here's an excerpt from the second article: " I would suggest Redknapp has taken Tottenham as far as he can, and that they need a manager of the tactical astuteness of someone like Rafa Benitez to take them forward and compete with the best teams in England and Europe." http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/sp...ry_Redknapp_is_not_the_right_man_for_England/ http://footballspeak.com/post/2012/04/26/welcome-approach-for-Harry.aspx
I think qpr need to think good and hard about who should replace sparkey when he eventually leaves because sometimes its best to ignore these high profile managers like harry and benitez and go for a young hungry not well known manager like we did in appointing one of our ex players wanting to break into management in Martinez....after him we gave Brendan Rodgers a job after his disastrous time at reading, look at him now at liverpool starting to build a good footballing side there......well known is not always best and don't forget they were sacked by bigger clubs than you or us....just a thought..There are some young hungry ex players out there itching for a chance of management and they would come pretty cheap and you will be pleasantly surprised just how good they are at understanding what its like playing football in the modern game....
