This article published in the Mail on Sunday will ring true to most QPR fans. Hoddle's no idiot and he's had a chance to see objectively how "behind the scenes" at TF's QPR is working. The simplicity of the reporting structure at Southampton, for example, must be the kind of model we should be following, rather than TF stuffing our management structure with well-known footballing names and big egos who will all be falling out with each other: "Glenn Hoddle is critical of the lack of clarity behind the scenes at QPR having worked there last season under Harry Redknapp before the manager parted company with the club and it went down. Having sacked two more managers since, the club are drifting and might be heading further down the Football League as they search for their next boss following the latest departure of Chris Ramsey. Hoddle believes that the club’s back room structure is in urgent need of a complete over haul so all the departments support the manager rather than confuse him. Neil Warnock has been installed to steady the ship. Writing in his Mail on Sunday column, former Chelsea and Spurs boss Hoddle says: “QPR are a club I feel affectionate towards having worked there as a first-team coach under Harry Redknapp for several months last season. “I wasn’t privy to the inner workings at Loftus Road but it always felt to me there should have been greater clarity within the club over who does what. “Nothing that has happened since including the appointment of Les Ferdinand as director of football, arrival of Neil Warnock as first-team advisor and the dismissal of Chris Ramsey as manager a few months after he was given a three-year contract suggests to me things are any clearer at the moment. “Individually, there are a lot of good people at QPR including owner Tony Fernandes and all the people I’ve mentioned but that’s not good if they aren’t working as a unit and the job lines are blurred. “Whoever is the first-team manager has to know who he should report to if he is interested in signing a player. From what I saw there, you were never quite sure what the jobs were of the people around the club, where each person’s responsibility started and ended. “It is not surprising in those circumstances that things can become muddled and that can affect results on the pitch. “When I was manager at Southampton, I spoke to the chairman Rupert Lowe every day, he’d give me an update on where the club was on different things, I’d give him an overview of what we were doing in the first-team. It was organised. “Although Harry was much more involved than I was with dealing with different departments, I felt people didn’t know their job specifications. “Following relegation from the Premier League last season, you feel they need a revamp from top to bottom. There are parts of the jigsaw missing which goes beyond the first-team manager’s office.”
I see our youth sides took a hiding over the week-end 8-1 and 10-0. Worryingly it's becoming a habit.
I have been keeping an eye on their results since TF wanted to build the club from the youth up and noticed some real hidings! Doesn't look that promising for the future atm
The results are dreadful, but we only need one or two to be good enough to graduate to the first team before we sell them for £80m each. That is the business model, isn't it?
We shouldn't hammer the youth side too much lads. I'm sure they're doing their best and there are almost certainly one or two very good players amongst them.
If ever there was a reason to have one figure head than this is it. You have one bloke in charge and everything is channelled through him. No director of football no people bought in to assist the coach, and no chairman tweeting and undermining him ... One man one job and the buck stops with him. If he has back-room staff then that's what they do. They stay in the background.
Depends on the quality of the person in charge. DoF or manager/CEO model works fine with the right people, governance, expectations and shared vision. Our problem is the wrong people, lack of governance, unclear expectations and no shared vision.
To be fair to the club this was attempted this season when Les and Chris delivered a new blueprint for the future. A mission statement if you like. But due to the impatience of us the fans and the interference of bi-polar Tony Fernandes it never stood a chance, it didn't even got out of the starting blocks. http://www.not606.com/threads/fan-sites-meeting-with-les-and-chris.304932/
I wouldn't blame the fans entirely - they could see the managerial job was beyond Ramsey's pay grade, however good the mission sounded. Once the right talent is in, and if you decide on layered management, everyone needs to know their responsilities and the extent of their authority. If each position thinks he's reporting directly to the chairman, it's chaos (and the more so when the chairman is overseas)
I'm not sure how much credibility this article has . He says he had no dealings with the inner workings of the club then writes as if he did.
To be honest in an organisation as small as QPR (less than 200 people?) you shouldn't need layers, the 'vision' can be word of mouth because the boss should know everyone's first name and make time to talk to them. Perhaps this is the problem, they are trying to run a small firm like a multinational.
I've worked in organisations where I had no dealings with the inner workings...but knew, indeed everyone knew, that something was wrong and why. For a start, I reckon Hoddle had Harry crying on his shoulder most days about reporting chains, interference from others etc Hoddle can't come out and say that in a newspaper, but he and Harry were clearly working hand in glove. If Harry had a gripe, Hoddle would hear about it imo
