Yep, I get all of that. I think that the reason I am more concerned about what level we play at than some, is that I've nearly always gone to the football to watch the football. It's rarely been a social thing for me. I've met people at half time who were do pissed they didn't know what the score was!! Now, I realise I'm in the minority, but we're all different. My brother was the same. We lived in Wembley and he had a season ticket and went to his seat and back home alone. He then introduced me to Loftus Road and I was hooked. When we were last in the Premier League, I had season tickets along with my two lads and although we lost an awful lot of games, we were able to watch some of the best players in the world up close at Loftus Road. We enjoyed watching them, but obviously hated losing most of the time. So for me, the quality of football and level of football is probably more important than for someone who meets up with mates, has a few pints and goes to the game. That's not a criticism, each to their own. My other concern is that we may not recover from falling into League One and may even fall further, due to the financial restrictions now hampering clubs like ours. I'd still go to games if I could, but probably fewer. At the moment, life is in the way anyway, do I'd struggle to go if we were top!!
I get that, too. Would likewise struggle to go even if we were top of the PL. I obviously enjoy it more when the football is good, but it's probably more for me about being with my Dad and my brothers, and being part of a big partisan tribe. Agree there is a real risk we don't come back from L1. So much will depend on the owners sitting down and thinking about what they really want.
I'll never understand people that tell me rugby is so great because you can sit with fans from the opposite team. Nonsense. I want to spend 90 minutes in the stands hating the other tribe, shouting at the ref and being surrounded by my own. If you can sit next to your opponents during the game you don't care enough (coming from Mr Apathy!). Mixing nicely with the opponents' fans can happen in the pub after the game.
A couple of months ago on a post match thread I posted that you could get 40/1 for us to be relegated. I didn’t get a single like Of course I don’t want us to go down but I actually think this bunch deserve to. I really feel for those fantastic die hards we have trudging along to away games and being rewarded with seemingly minimal effort from this underperforming group of overpaid egoists.
Rather ironically, our best chance of survival is the reliance on other clubs being deducted points due to financial irregularities.
I'm only on social media for business purposes, so I had a flick through the QPR Facebook page and it seems that there are a fair few fans questioning our hoof ball tactics under Ainsworth. He could well go down as our worst manager in history. I don't blame him and feel quite sorry for him, it's just another example of how Les and the owners are ruining this club. If we don't go down this season then we will next time around. The whole structure needs to change from top to bottom. Just look at the decline both on and off the field since Fernandes and his crew took over. I hear the cries of ' they put a million plus each month to keep us afloat'. Why do they do that? Because they put us in this ****ing position with their ridiculous business strategy. They have been the worst thing to happen to this club. The future is very bleak, the club is unsellable, the players worth **** all, the manager tactically inept, the DOF a clueless **** and the owners are all to blame!
**** me, reading this thread makes me glad I was elsewhere yesterday (even though that was ****, too). What a cheery bunch.
I don't see relegation as pessimistically as you do. A lot of teams have plummeted through the League before bouncing back over a number of years and eventually found a level they can compete at. If we're looking for villains and scapegoats it is the folly of the owners and the two celebrity managers and, to an extent, us. We enjoyed the feeling of being wealthy and the idea of playing sexy football. Yet being the 7th biggest spenders in the world when we had a ground capacity fit for a third tier side was always a recipe for financial disaster. Those owners are still with us and it is inevitable therefore that we are going to remain in the sights of the FFP regulators. There is little realistic option but to accept that reality and cut our cloth accordingly. As far as I am concerned though we need to up our game at scouting and development. Ramsay was supposed to be the bees knees but he's been doing that for the best part of 8 years now and I am struggling to see who has developed from the youth team to be a Prem player with one notable exception who did not even come through our youth set up. If we are looking at a clear out, I agree that Ferdinand has had his time. He is too rigid in his core principles (but has, to date, not been held to account) when we judge his performance based on those principles. And takes too short-term a view. But let's actually address scouting and youth team development properly this time instead of just changing the name above the manager's door.
This has to be the biggest concern. We are not a big club and those other smaller clubs that have briefly tasted the Premier League have often fallen never to recover. Look at Bradford stuck in League Two with average gates similar to us, Portsmouth, Sheff Wed, Ipswich, Derby, Charlton and Barnsley all struggling for years to get a glimpse of the big time with much bigger gates. Clubs outside London don't have our overheads so we're in danger of becoming a Leyton Orient type club in the lower divisions thanks to the financial straight jacket we're in. Brighton & Brentford have shown the way, we're a million miles away now...
I'm on a train back from Essex and it's full of West Ham fans on their way to the game. Can't help feeling resentful at how they were gifted their fantastic ground.
I think we must surely be one of the most unsustainable clubs in the country. We are located in possibly one of the most expensive parts of London with a stadium that houses insufficient capacity to render the business remotely viable without the club being in the premiership. Beyond being a billionaire’s folly, there seems to me no reason why any savvy businessman would see us as a worthwhile investment. With FFP destroying our ability to improve, I think relegation, if followed by the owners selling, really could see the ultimate demise of the club.
None of our owners will want their names in the history books as someone who oversaw the demise of a club in existence since 1882. I hope!
At least it was Ollies team. Not made up of loans and those who only want to play for Beale, the Snake!!
I’m starting to hope we’re sold to new owners and the current lot (including Teflon Les) can all do one. I’ve noticed that when our ‘QPR legend’ Sir Les gets introduced as a pundit they only mention Spurs and Newcastle. Our owners are so gullible they can all f*ck off.
I think they are more concerned with the financial aspect than the marginal adverse publicity. Fernandes oversaw the demise of Caterham F1 albeit a relatively fledgling business.
