from the irish examiner How to undermine and relegate your own club Monday, February 04, 2013 By Ian MacIntosh And so it comes to this; QPR chairman Tony Fernandes sits at the poker table in his underpants, carefully placing the keys to his house on the summit of a large pile of chips. At the door, a well-dressed man who appears to be made entirely of muscle and knuckles licks his lips expectantly. The definition of insanity, as Albert Einstein once said, is spending approximately 175% of your turnover on wages for monosyllabic young men to fritter away on sports cars and tattoos. Seriously, look it up. It can be foolish to be judgmental in football, so these next words have been chosen carefully. Almost everything that Fernandes has done since buying QPR has been wrong. Itâs as if heâs working his way, page by page, through a playbook entitled, How to Undermine and Relegate Your Own Football Club. He was wrong to sack Neil Warnock in January, 2012. âColinâ is not a well-loved man, but he was the only man to make sense of the madness that preceded Fernandesâ arrival. When Ian Holloway left the club in 2006 he was replaced by⦠deep breath⦠Gary Waddock, John Gregory, Mick Harford, Luigi di Canio, Iain Dowie, Gareth Ainsworth, Paulo Sousa, Ainsworth again, Jim Magilton, Steve Gallen and Mark Bircham, Paul Hart and, finally, Harford again. Not one of them managed the club for more than 50 games and, if youâre wondering why caretaker managers have been included in the list, itâs because sometimes they lasted longer than so-called âpermanentâ managers. Warnock walked into that chaos and became its master, rising above the lunacy of the former owner Flavio Briatore to quickly build a promotion-winning side. Working under the uncertainty of the Fernandes takeover, he could only add to his squad right at the end of August, thus he was denied the time his new players needed to settle and adjust. QPR were 17th when he was sacked in January 2012. Despite Mark Hughesâ hasty recruitment of Djibril Cisse, Bobby Zamora, Samba Diakite and Nedum Onuoha, thatâs exactly where they finished as well. But it was last summer when things really got out of hand. Signing Brazilian goalkeeper Julio Cesar was a real coup. Signing him just weeks after landing Rob Green was just really odd. There are top half Championship sides who arenât spending as much on their entire squad as QPR are spending on goalkeepers. In came Jose Bosingwa, who quickly demonstrated how much he cared for the cause by hugging Chelseaâs John Terry when the rest of the squad had been debating whether or not a perfunctory handshake would be a betrayal of their team-mate. Stephane Mbia was so well prepared for his new posting that he thought he was joining Rangers in Glasgow. Ji-Sung Park was described by Fernandes as a signing that would, âwake a few people up,â and he was right. Many of us woke up and said, âTheyâre paying him how much? But heâs quite obviously past his peak!â In the weeks leading up to the sacking of Hughes, predictable stories began to leak out of Loftus Road. The dressing room was divided, said reports. Some players were refusing to eat with the other players, claimed others. Cliques had developed and the core of the Warnock squad was disgusted with the new signings and their lack of application. What then is the solution? To spend even more on even more players. And down go those house keys. The most terrifying aspect of QPRâs spending is that very few of the players have clauses in their contracts to reduce their wages in the increasingly likely event of relegation. There can be no firesale of âstarsâ as no-one could afford them. If QPR sink into the Championship, theyâll be committed to four more years of frothy-mouthed Champions League level spending. Weâve seen this before. We saw at Leeds and we saw it at Portsmouth. Foolish owners dropping their keys on the table and praying that their luck turns. This isnât how football should work. This isnât how fans should be treated. For their sake only, you hope this last gamble pays out. But to even reach 38 points, QPR will need seven wins from 13 games. So far, they have won just two in 25. It does not bode well.
Probably pretty accurate though Fernandes insists everything is fine. I suppose until the inevitable happens we have to trust him
People can put whatever spin they like on our club and it's owners................. at the end of the day, it means squat. Keep in mind that some of those persons are doing so purely because it is their job to write an article in such a manner, to create interest, so they get paid and put food on the table. Nothing more, nothing less. You can write a story about any matter in life, speculate here and there, stick a knife in and finish it off with a twist. Don't believe me .............Just look above.
So, from afar, you would prefer to believe a journalist, a man who makes a living recycling gossip eighth hand, with no stake in the club apart from the 50 quid he'll be paid for this rubbish, than Fernandes, a man who is driving the club forward at his own personal cost? You have clearly read TF's comments in the Telegraph yesterday, so I won"t bother to paste them here. There is not a single original thought or word in this piece of **** article. I despair. With fans like this I would hardly blame TF for walking out and leaving us in the lurch.
no need to shoot the messenger sb there may be nothing new here but I don't see anything from the irish examiner that is a blatent lie either
Comments aimed at Kampala Kiwi, not you. Though, again, if you insist on posting this crap without comment of your own, why shouldn't we assume that you agree with it?
and FROM AFAR the only place I get to read anything QPR related is from internet newspapers or not606 and if I believed everything I read on here we would already be relegated defoe would be looking for another team to play for the Russians would be selling their shares etc
Just stick a couple of words under the article to give your opinion of it. You're a proper, dedicated QPR supporter, not a news cutting service.
Read a few lines what a twat Parasites I would love to see this sort of idiot out of a job Anyone who flowers things up is a ****head I should know I am one Trouble is joe public likes the taste of **** I talked to the photographers on Saturday who are now having to take the best part of 8 gb of images each half ... Just for some prick to spend a hour looking at the best Samba shot He was having to shoot it as a hd movie most of the time Why because he can This journo is clearly the worst sort They have to very creative to a point where like this it's just tripe Even after the very man has made a clear statement they drill down into it like worms. The raw truth is on these forums and trouble is they are recognising it now I have to eat these ****s in my workplace as the trend is at last a bit of transparency without the flowery bullshit .
SB I've got a pcket of Kalms here if you need them mate. Don't shoot the Kiwi just yet! When has it ever been any different being a Rangers fan?
Any particular reason why Fernandes should be trusted? Of course our resident accountant trusts a fellow accountant but apart from that? Are we in any way in a better place today than we were the day Fernandes took charge? New stadium, new training ground, new youth academy, league position and much more? Where are they...? Just another posh public school educated "businessman" born entitled. http://unistar.wordpress.com/tag/tony-fernandes/
Good old fashioned class envy! Love it. And anonymous blog link! You're on fire Imaz, keep it up mate.
not negative SB, just trying to be realistic. Every correspondent, fan, 'expert' and business minded folk are saying one thing and its only really rangers fans saying the opposite out of blind loyalty. Now, this might be a case where we are actually both wrong, because I side with Fernandes in that I cannot believe he and the other boffins at the club will have put us in the position that we are said to be in. Yet at the same time I also feel that everything will not be quite as rosy as he is making out should we plunge into the championship. You have to agree though that it has been a scattergun approach to running a football club since day 1. NOT all at the fault of TF of course, but if we do indeed go down I cannot help but feel we will become a case-study in how not to run a football club.
Nice response Kampala, I got out of bed the wrong side this morning, have calmed down since, apologies. I just thought he made the position pretty clear yesterday - nobody wants to get relegated, but it is sustainable, we have zero external debt, we are building for the long term. The club would be ruined if TF/Mittals want to run away and get their money back, but they already know this is impossible, as the club isn't worth much they either make this work, which will take several years, or accept their losses. He even said that he would step down as chairman if he can"t make it work, but not withdraw his investment. Pretty clear to me, enough to give no credence to the article in the OP, unless you don't believe a single word Tony says. So far he is the biggest loser in all this, he has my sympathy rather than suspicion
Article very selective in arriving at various conclusions. Example. The bit about losing the dressing room should've been applied to Warnock too as the catalyst for bringing in Hughes. Not mentioned.
