Chelsea not spending like crazy, have you seen how much they've spent this summer? More than our whole squad, not bad for a team not spending much.
Swords as you say things maybe clearer as time goes on. I'd love to see QPR over achieve but in reality what can we achieve without putting the future of the club in jeopardy. As for TF, here is a man who makes the right noises but ultimately this is not a popularity contest with fans TF is competing in. This is a football business where the demands for sucess on the pitch have to be balanced with prudent financial management off of it and potentially keeping the fans on side. At the moment TF promises to be all things to all people. My feeling is that this is not possible to deliver and one of those 3 parts of the jigsaw will need to be sacrificed in the long run to keep the club on track.
All clubs were small at one point. Man U before the 50s, Liverpool before the 60s. The most recent example would be Bblackburn - spent big (for the time) got a new stadium and have kept it ticking over since. They have a smaller catchment area (admittedly we've got lots of competition in ours but also lots of potential). I really can't stress enough the significance of the off-field activities but 50,000 people at a friendly is a feat that very few clubs could manage. We have a new training ground on the way and are making strides towards academy status. We even have training kit sponsors. This is all progress and growth in the last 12 months. No Blackburn, Portsmouth or Leeds factored all these things in because they gambled on winning on the pitch - a very immediate objective. Our gamble is substantially smaller with a longer vision and a brand that backs it (ie a balance with the off-field promotion). The new stadium is crucial and filling it will depend on the profile raising activities and continued revenue generation from untapped sources. As long as Tony delivers that then we'll be set up for a generation. What the two bit journo above fails to realise is that we're not trying to buy success, we're trying to buy exposure with the goal of providing revenue to cement future success at a self sufficient level.
I think the point that Thom is missing is that we have the backing of the richest man in Britain, three times the wealth of Abramovich. TF may be the charismatic leader but there is little doubt that the club is being bankrolled by others and Mittal would seem the obvious candidiate. Portsmouth were owned by a series of mysterious far eastern businessmen who were not all they seemed. Leeds, if you ever read detail of the regime that brought them down, were run like one of those cashpoints that suddenly starts giving money away. We are a club that has finished in the top two in the top division and are perhaps punching above our weight compared to our gates but the potential is massive especially in terms of location. The spending at present is to take us to the next level, established Premier League team, that will be the platform to aim for the top six...
Sorry mate this is wrong. TF is not a Risdale or one of the many Portsmouth owners. If you narrowly look at this from a QPR perspective and forget about the other brands and geographical interests of TF and the Mittals you will scare yourself ****less. If you forget about Phil Beard you will think we are version N of an old, useless British football dream, you will panic. Above all, if you believe bloggers and every 'construction journalist' with no information, insight or understanding, your fingernails will disappear. Don't worry about the 'target' or 'destination' - these will change as the journey takes us in new and unexpected directions, opening up new opportunities.... and risks. I will go on repeating this - I believe this is a NEW business model that the journos really can't get their limited heads around. It will be a 100% adrenalin approach to the business. QPR will NEVER be out of the news, this is part of the plan. We will be increasingly hated by fans of other clubs. Many of our own supporters will, ultimately, be very uncomfortable with the approach and the results. But I don't have any special insight or inside information, just going from experience and observation. I could be wrong.
As much as I know this is what to expect as we accelerate down the road ... It still makes the average fan enraged ... It's time to get on board and simply reply to all the future jealousy and hatred that will come towards us and reply .. So ****ing what we are here right here right now And if it's called dreams then it's much much better than real life then point them to the idiots that live in this real world ... Is anyone happy in the real world ? Take away your dreams then go and support Barnet
If you look at what happened to Leeds and Portsmouth (and others) you begin to see why it failed for them. There was no plan in place to support the spending. No global marketing, no new ground which woud be a venue rather than just a football stadium and therefore help pay for itself, etc, etc. All those things are controllable. What is NOT controllable (to the same extent) is what happens on the pitch. Blackburn did it well ... until the club was sold to the Venkeys who thought/think that because they are successful in business they can run a football club. They cocked up, big time. Fernandes is successful at business, but the difference is that he seems willing to understand his own limitations and will try to employ the best out there to cover every aspect of the business. Time will tell whether he succeeds or fails, but you can bet that he will have learned a lot from the failures of those others and will not be blindly copying their business plan.
The new stadium has to come Our wage bill be totally inline The new rules aren't in effect Have a look to see how many football companies move their assets via offshore facilities ... It's not rocket science ... Our current owners know how the world really works most on here are coming to this from the blind angle ... You need to take the emotion out of football and look at it with a cut throat business head TF is the only the face. Why do people play with they have all the money they need? Look around this region mix it with the best business top dog minds and you will be getting close. I am pretty certain the board knows the spend for the Jan Window . Next years team and what the new stadium will look like . Some of the players will also know this ... It's a tight core now and fans will just need to wait Our fan base will treble in the next 5 years . The thing that makes me laugh is that only a few can see forward a few hours and are sweating over a new potential signing you need to be looking in years rather than hours Do you honestly think growing a business reacts every two minutes to changes in a marketplace. The iPhone I am on now ... The next versions are built already and stocks built up ready for product launch The IPhone 6 will be in test production stage and the iPhone 9 in development QPR is a football entertainment company. MH may struggle he may not... Everyone's performance is monitored. They are building a new club from the ground up that used to be QPR and there is nothing you or I can do ... Told you all last year ... Life is short Live the dream and stop worrying about **** that hasn't happened Deal with change it's easy if you have a open mind
Even if you ignore my optimistic post above and assume the worst, the outlook is still decent. If TF and the Mittal's left now, our ground is the same, our aging players are on short term contracts and our younger ones are on on long term ones (protecting our assets). We are assured that the club's debts were cleared when the owners arrived and we'd have parachute payments to cover a few years of overblown wages (that is still going isn't it). That's assuming two significant businessmen (plus backers) admit to failure which the successful ones are not wont to do. You can choose to look over your shoulder and sport a furrowed brow whilst the rest of us look forward with a sense of giddiness but smiles on our faces. I know which way I'd prefer to look.....
I think the journo has some sort of problem with the club But then again You could say QPR fans have different factions. Some want change and will accept it and others don't want change. I have spoken to some fans who never want to leave LR? They don't care about a new ground or whatever division we are in. We simple must change to survive or end up playing in the Championship/League One. Other clubs have change and gone from nothing to major clubs. Look at ManCity and Chelsea, okay that was due to a lot of money but i remember beating both those clubs on a regular basis. On a small level look at Blackburn/Fulham/Reading all nothing clubs that have either spent/built/bought to achieve better positions. Look how the used to get gates of between 3-6K. So saying we can't grow in London is utter rubbish. I trust our board and they are winners all of them, whenever things change you will always get sceptics who compare with other things that went wrong rather than be positive. Sorry but for me the Journo just needs some space to fill.
With success comes growth, add to that the new PL deal which starts in 2014 which is far more lucrative than the current one and the 'gamble' of paying out for established players to see us through is not as potty as it may seem...
Either that or he's taken up squatters rights and has locked himself in the players lounge (he'll be out once the cheese vol au vants run out).
This all seems like an election campaign for a prosperous new tomorrow. Can we get some rubber chickens in here...? [Many superbly stated posts TBF]
