Flavio’s return threatens Rangers’ new-found stability by Sean Bell

After the dramatic events which unfolded on the morning of Queens Park Rangers’ last match of the season when the club’s promotion to the Premier League was finally confirmed after the FA imposed a £875,000 fine rather than a heavy points deduction, Rangers’ fans could be forgiven for looking forward to a summer filled with hope and expectation about their first season back in the top flight since 1995-96. Yet with all the inevitability of an early F.A. Cup exit, the perma-tanned and expensively attired figure of Flavio Briatore lurched back into centre stage trailing the twin demons of chaos and misrule in his flamboyant wake.



Briatore had taken a back seat during last season’s Championship-winning season as Rangers vice-chairman Amit Bhatia, the son-in-law of Britain’s richest man and club co-owner Lakshmi Mittal, oversaw a period of relative stability at the club. The appointment of Neil Warnock as manager towards the latter part of the previous season has been attributed to Bhatia, and it was undoubtedly Warnock’s proven ability to mould a promotion-winning side that was responsible for Rangers’ success. The myth that because Rangers have extremely rich owners that they have bought their way out of the division is certainly fallacious; this was a typical Warnock side, only really embellished by the talents of Adel Taarabt who was a relatively cheap signing from Tottenham anyway.



So the news that Briatore is back at the helm, managing the day-to-day running of the club has been greeted by most supporters with disdain. It was the Italian who was responsible for the managerial merry-go-round at Loftus Road which preceded Warnock’s appointment, a period which saw the likes of Paulo Sousa, Jim Magilton, and Paul Hart attempt to manage both the side and Briatore’s ego. Whilst Briatore and co-owner Bernie Ecclestone’s acquisition of the club in August 2007 has to be seen as a boon considering Rangers’ parlous financial situation at the time and their return to the top flight, Briatore has frequently antagonized supporters by making no secret of his desire to glamorize (some would say tart up) the club.



The announcement of huge ticket price rises for next season means that many supporters will be priced out of the club’s return to the Premier League but Briatore is aware that the combination of the club’s limited ground capacity and London catchment area means that he should have no trouble attracting well-heeled casual supporters eager for any glimpse they can get of Premier League football. The suspicion is that Briatore is more concerned with these Premier League tourists than die-hard Rangers’ supporters.



Warnock’s future remains a subject of speculation too. Rangers are consistently linked with glamorous Italian names and one expects that if Sophia Loren became available, Warnock would be ousted in favour of the septuagenarian sex goddess. For Rangers’ fans the summer promises to be one of hoping against the expectation of Flavio’s reconstituted anarchy.
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He never really went away, but tell me he's not involved day-to-day again? That would be bad

 

Is there any way to contact the FA and ask them to run a 'Fit and Proper persons' test here? I would have thought that if both Flav and Bernie were to fail (I think Flav would fail, not so sure about the poison dwarf) then surely they would be forced to sell. At the very least it might get Flavio's sticky fingers out of running our clubs day-to-day activities....?

 

Bernie has 62%, Mittal has 33%. Flav's hardly got a controlling interest?

Can we move on to a real story!

 

Bernie & Flav are one and the same when it comes to QPR I'm afraid.

Surely not even Flav can ignore the lesson that was learnt over the last 15 months. Appoint a good manager, support him, stand back, don't meddle & let him at it.

 

Have you not the heard the Warnock interview on talksport this morning, where he says Flavio is running things?

 

If Flav is running things then he's buying back the shares he sold Bernie last year.

 

The Goons are an item. Ecclestone's 'official club statement' referred to it as a Trust.

This article simply reitterates the 'boutique' club vision that we've been discussing all week: a vision so at odds with that of the Mittal's plan for club, that Amit Bhatia almost openly stated caused him to resign. He just couldn't work with it. Fact is, love the club as we do, neither will many of us for reasons of cost.

So, yes, our worst nightmare continues, the looney's running the assylum again and, as they've made clear, they don't want '£20' fans at Rangers anymore. Whilst there's little we humble folk can do about it (and green and white scarves and Indian flags are hardly radical), the ostrich position's no option at all: head in the sand approach guarantees a sore end game at best.