Do QPR Actually Have A Plan? Posted on Aug 23, 2012 in Features, Main Features, QPR | 0 comments Michael Dawson is the latest Hughes target. by Jack Howes Queens Park Rangers, this summer and especially during the last fortnight or so have been going a little bit crazy. Like my six year old self who would get too excited trying to recreate the previous weekâs episode of Gladiators, they have seemingly gone off the rails a bit. They currently have a first team squad of 33 players, have signed 26 players (including those signed on loan) since they got promoted at the end of the 2010/11 season, are being linked with increasingly high calibre, albeit old players and are bringing about an increasing sense of incredulity from fans of other clubs. On and off the pitch, do QPR really have a long-term plan here aside from throwing money will nilly at whatever player briefly takes Mark Hughesâ fancy? On the pitch, you can just about see what Hughes is trying to create. At Blackburn, he moulded a âphysicalâ (i.e they committed lots of fouls and had Paul Dickov, Lucas Neill and W**kershireâs very own Robbie Savage in their squad) side that despite having Savage in midfield was able to pass the ball solidly. The likes of Tugay, Craig Bellamy, Brad Friedel in goal and a young David Bentley added class to an otherwise workmanlike side. At Man City, Fulham and now at QPR he has followed a similar blueprint. At City he bought Nigel De Jong, Joleon Lescott, Gareth Barry, Bellamy, Emmanuel Adebayor, all strong players who made City a tough side that could play a bit. At Fulham he left before he could do much with the squad, but at QPR heâs signed the likes of Samba Diakite, Bobby Zamora, Park Ji-Sung, even Ryan Nelsen. Physical strength, aggressive tackling, solidity in possession and the obligatory pathetic refusal to shake the opposing managerâs hand after a match are hallmarks of a Hughes side. On paper, QPR look decent. Cisse and Zamora offer pace and strength up front, Hoilett and Taarabt have pace and trickery, Diakite, Park and even Shaun Derry are solid defensive midfielders while Onuoha, Bosingwa and Fabio are decent enough in defence. But against Swansea they were awful, wide open to the counter attack and appalling defensively. Swansea scored five and could have scored more. It was an embarrassing display. Itâs no good having talent and strength in your side if you have no idea of tactics or how to defend. Hughes has tended to be at his best signing players when he has little money to spend. At Blackburn he was superb in the transfer market. The likes of Ryan Nelsen, Christopher Samba, Morten Gamst Pedersen, Bentley and others were signed for next to nothing. At Man City when he literally had more money than he knew what to do with, spending £30m on Robinho and £17m on Jo was bad. The signings of Wayne Bridge, Roque Santa Cruz and even Adebayor were so bad City are still paying clubs to take those players away. At QPR though, the transfer policy appears to be in utter chaos. They have a first team squad thatâs far too big and a bunch of players on high wages who are no nearer the first team than Gail Platt is from winning the Miss World sash. There appears to be little planning or long-term thinking, and instead far too much panic, short-termism and metaphorical burning of bank notes. An example of this is how in the summer they signed Rob Green on a free transfer for £50k a week. Greenâs a decent keeper but prone to errors. On his debut against Swansea on Saturday, he duly made an error for the first Swansea goal. There wasnât a lot though he could have done against the four other Swansea goals that flew past him as ugly red shirt after ugly red shirt descended on the QPR goal, meeting pathetic resistance from the QPR defence and midfield. Now after one game, the Super Hoops look set to sign Inter Milan keeper Julio Cesar. Cesar may have won the Champions League two years ago but heâs 33, been himself prone to errors recently and wonât be signing for the side that finished 17th in the Premier League unless heâs being paid a fair old amount. Rob Green after one bad game is set to be paid fifty grand a week to fulfil the onerous task of sitting on a substitutes bench once or twice a week whilst doing a couple of hours training every day. Good life if you can get it. Also this week theyâve been linked with Michael Dawson and Ricardo Carvalho. Both are excellent players. But Dawson is injury prone and can struggle against fast, nippy strikers while Carvalho is close to retirement and lost any pace he had a long time ago. And if theyâre so keen to improve their defence, why are they doing it now and not six weeks ago? Also the age of the players theyâre signing is worrying. The likes of Bosingwa, Nelsen, Andy Johnson, Park, Cisse, Zamora, Wright-Phillips, Luke Young and Kieron Dyer are all on the downside of their careers, were at their peak of their careers four or five years ago and have little resale value. Theyâre throwing money around akin to a monkey flinging its own faeces around, especially on wages. How else do you explain Junior Hoilett signing for QPR when Spurs, Liverpool and Champions League qualifiers Borussia Monchengladbach were interested in his services? Signing veteran players on what must be large contracts was understandable last season, with QPR desperate to stay up in the top flight and a new owner keen to show he had what it takes to successfully run a Premier League club. But the scale of the spending this summer on wages is worrying. Itâs not transfer fees that financially take clubs to the cleaners. Itâs wages. What has led Portsmouth to the brink of liquidation wasnât paying Liverpool £12m for Peter Crouch but John Utaka being paid £80,000 a week and Tal Ben Haim getting £36,000 a week. That is what will surely cripple QPR unless they stay in the Premier League and/or continue to have Fernandes and super-duper rich shareholder Amit Bhatia pumping money in. QPR have too many players, a wage bill far too high for a club that has the smallest stadium in the Premier League and barely avoided relegation last season and a chaotic, ad hoc transfer policy. The phrase âlong-termâ appears to be anathema to the people who run the club. The players they have though are talented enough to keep QPR in the Premier League. They have to perform, because otherwise the club, on and off the pitch, will be in big, big trouble.
I do actually wonder if some of these so called 'journalists' are just plain jealous c****. There seems to be this utter fixation an the age of our squad, while mostly ignoring younger talent like Hoilett, Tarbs & Diakite (Oh sorry, this piece of journalistic s*** does mention Hoilett to slag us off for paying big wages to him-damned if you do, damned if you don't). After reading the utter b***** on here (from the press) I now truly believe this is because the big boys , and therefore the 'Man U, Chelscum, Arsenal, Liverpool' press, have really had their noses put out that a club like ours has dared to try and pull itself out of mediocracy and really is trying to compete with there big spending ways. Maybe we are destined to fail or maybe we will reach the dizzy heights of the big boys, only time will tell. But for sure WE will be there come what may. And I'm very proud of that fact.
Who the **** are these guys who write these bull **** articles? We're inundated with this **** at the moment. We've released a dozen players with more set to go so the size of our squad isnt a worry for me. Really had enough of these lazy journo twats.
Don't get wound up by them lads, QPR are the biggest story around and we will be inundated with ill informed rubbish for years to come. Each one generates more hits in cyberspace, raises the profile, makes more people interested in the club, they then read other stuff, perhaps look at clips of Adel on youtube .......it's all good, no matter what the content.
This type of article - and to be fair if they were piled up in order of ascending idiocy this one would be shivering alone at the very top - makes good copy at the moment because of our last result. If we can string a few decent results together these piles of swept together leftovers from last night's curry would be laughable for the right reasons.
Is he so young he's only just hung up his pugil stick or so old he's harking back to his days in the colluseum? I don't get the relevance. Ignoring the fact that a lot of those were brought in by Warnock (but the focus of this is very much on Hughes) he fails to understand that we're trying to improve quickly and a lot of the players last year were brought in to steady the ship with immediate effect and can now be improved on. Sounds very ruthless and I hate myself for saying it. Also, I thought we had a couple of spots open (ie had 23ish out of the 25 filled). Someone's got their numbers wrong. I think he liked Blackburn (is he a fan) but hates Man City. They are a club that threw money at everything to move to title contenders within 2 years - we're not trying to do that or spending nearly as much as they have. I made the point on another thread that the old players are on short contracts and the young ones on longer one - Man City didn't do that (nor do they care about it either. Fair point but it's now moving onto the knee-jerk response that happened on here. Not great to write us off after one game really. How much money does he think that Hughes has spent? Hang on, you said that we should panic after day one and now we shouldn't? Great ranty metaphor though - keep up the good work. It's all speculation at this stage but the point about Green is valid. About the other two, it's still speculation at this stage and why do you knock them down if you're saying they'll improve our defence? Glad you alluded to the fact that half these players were free. Pity you failed to mention all the players we've got rid of this Summer. Assets are on long contracts, oldies aren't - this is getting bring now. You are right, there are only a few players that the term long term could be applied to. That's not really the point though is it? And NOW you mention the non-football related activities. Well... not really but at least it's acknowledged. I will stop commenting on these articles (no offence Kiwi and keep up the good work - it's better to see a broad array of views than not) rather than getting would up and repeating myself. In fact, I'm boring myself.
Now that is bang on .. . Small point is that TF wants these sort of thing's written as many as possible ... No disrespect to Norwich but compare the two ... Newsflash in Norfolk Cat gets caught up tree in a five hour ordeal. This is wonderland for TF ... Wonderland
This type of article is no surprise from an outsiders perspective following our drubbing by Swansea. The players and management will have to disprove this train of thought in the weeks and months ahead. I hope Hughes knows what he is doing.
Again a great point ABU can anyone imagine what would of happened if we had won 5-0?. The press would of been the same but this time around TF and Man City would be compared ... QPR ahead of Man Utd?. The fall of Chelsea .. QPR the new London force ... It's on a knife edge ... Looking forward to when the tide changes ... when it does then will be carnage on this board towards the other teams and then we will be truly hated by all ... and so the circle will roll.
I don't really care what is written in the press or what other clubs' supporters (and disaffected players) say about us - I just want to see good quality football played by committed players in QPR colours, and at a club that is sustainable financially It is that simple
This subject is becoming one of those 'conventional wisdom' things in which the more people read such tripe, the more it is believed and the more it is repeated. Fact is, Spunky has money at his disposal, realises the squad need strenghtening with PL quality and quite naturally is in pursuit of the best players to fit that budget and his system. End of, really.
I guess so......and the 35 years over which I've been an Rs fan have tended to have a maximum of 2 out of the 3 Still - I live in hope
The Goons took over and said they had a four year plan. Despite doing their best to shoot themselves in the foot at every given opportunity we somehow managed to achieve that goal. Along comes TF and he and the board do a lot of smart things and invest in our club, everyone coming to QPR says they were convinced to join because of the direction we are going in and that they have been impressed by the project currently underway. Other than trying to win games what else is there to do? New training facilities are great, a new stadium (if in the right place) would be lovely. What do all the new signings think this depends on? We have to win and start winning very soon before disillusion sets in as this can affect the desire of the owners to keep spending and the confidence of the players. Don't we have a mission statement? All big companies have some bland sound bite so what is ours?
Maybe we haven't got a plan, but at least we've got a PLANE!! I think MH and TF are just winging it........
Grove. I absolutely agree. Whatever anyone may think of the previous owners they laid down a plan and a goal executed on it, achieved it and moved on. What is the current plan? Sustained premiership football Sustained top half premiership football Regularly european football Regular champions league football. Who knows. As you say without a mission statement there is nothing for a team or an organisation to get behind. Eventually motivation will fall away and the organisation will descend into chaos. I hope I'm wrong but just don't see what's trying to be achieved at the moment.
The club has stuck to its plan and pulled in experience on short term contracts to do a job. Younger talent on longer contracts for continued growth. In the meantime, a huge roll call of playing staff has been released or allowed to move on to pursue their careers. The expansion of the youth, development and scouting network is growing under Mike Rigg now to create an Academy for the future. Oh, hold on. That looks like a cogent business development plan to me. So..... YES is indeed the answer
