QPR still paying the price for Mark Hughes era as Stoke manager returns to Loftus Roa

Just off to the game and will be booing Hughes if the opportunity presents. Yes TF was naive, yes Beard knows less about football than your average scum supporter, but Hughes was the executor and should have made something of the huge pot of resources he was given and his arrogance while abusing my football club will not be forgotten.

 

Excellent article and analysis Roller. Been thinking about it for some time now. There are three ingredients to the disaster of the Hughes era:

1 A manager who was competent but little more if truth be told. He had a chance at City, was given time and money (certainly by today's cut throat standards) and found wanting after a couple of years. He may complain about it but the facts speak for themselves. They became a EUFA qualification standard side - he did not have the tactics, the brains or the charisma to make that squad of players into champions. The same can be said for Fulham and Blackburn where he inherited sides that were already playing well, made a few tweaks and improved them. However the "unfinished business project" at City and the money that went with it made him think he is better than he actually is. He was over-ambitious.

2. Tony Fernandes and his gang of novices. None of them knew anything about football but they recognised and warnmed to a salesman who spoke of his vision matching their own - they suspended their critical judgment and backed their man when it was clear that he had lost the plot and the dressing room. They were over-ambitious.

3. Us. The fan base was clamouring for success. We wanted to be competing for Champions League before we had even established ourselves. We wanted a passing game not hoof ball. We demanded the right to go and give Chelsea and the other so-called galacticos a bloody nose because millions had been spent on them. We encouraged our Tone to do the same in order to buy our way to the Top Table.

The common link is ambition - a belief that we deserve to be where we were 15-20 years ago and a desire to get there as quickly as possible. We get rid of the people who got us up - a miracle in itself but we did not replace them with the grafters such as Pulis. Oh no. We had to go for the sexy names - men who try to develop an impression that they play organised tactical football based on skill and hard work rather than pure brawn, speed, height and a desire to compete for every ball. Although some on here mourned the passing of Warnock, most if not all saw Hughes as being the man to re-ignite that cultured style of football we once used to play.

He is primarily responsible but we are all to blame to a degree.

 

And five straight away defeats

It wasn't as good as it sounds

 

It kept us up, you can't argue with that! (Sorry, it's Swords, he could argue locked in a room on his own)...