Les Ferdinand: QPR haven't produced a player for 16 years... we just give veterans one final payday

Les Ferdinand: QPR haven't produced a player for 16 years... we just give veterans one final payday

• 22:30, 28 March 2015
• By Steve Stammers

The Rangers director of football tells Steve Stammers that the culture at Loftus Road must change for the good of the club

Pete Norton/Getty Images

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Ranger danger: Ferdinand believes things must change at Loftus Road
Les Ferdinand pauses, takes a sip of coffee and then offers the name of the Queens Park Rangers player who has proved to be irreplaceable.
“Richard Langley,” said the man whose task now is to re-shape Rangers back into the kind of club where he made his name – along with the likes of Gerry Francis, Dave Clement, Ian Gillard and the Allen brothers Bradley and Clive.
Richard Langley? “I will tell you why he is important,” said Ferdinand, now the Director of Football Operations at Loftus Road.
“He was the last player to be a first-team regular who came through the youth system at Rangers,” said Ferdinand who himself made his name at QPR after starting his career at non-league Southall and then Hayes.
“The last player – and that was 16 years ago. That cannot be right.”
Christopher Lee

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Work to be done: Ferdinand looks on during a QPR game
Langley, now 35 and last seen playing for Staines Town, will hardly go down in the Hall of Fame at Shepherd’s Bush.
He had a decent enough career at Loftus Road playing 166 games and scoring 21 goals from midfield. He also played 17 times for Jamaica. But to Ferdinand, he is a hugely important figure.
“What Rangers used to be able to offer was a chance to young players – the opportunity to play first-team football much sooner than maybe at the likes of Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea.
“It was a big selling point for the club. But that isn’t the case any more and I want to bring that thinking back into the club.
“This was my first professional club and I played for England when I was here.
“And you look at players like the late Alan McDonald, Andy Impey and Wayne Fereday who came through the youth system. We have to get back to that.”
In more recent years, the club’s philosophy had changed. “It has gone full circle now,” said Ferdinand.
“It is a club that pays loads out in wages.
“QPR was an attraction for players coming to the end of their careers, and they got one more pay day.
“That is not the players’ fault but that was what was allowed to happen.”
Ian Horrocks

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Hands-on: Ferdinand is revelling in his role at Rangers
Ferdinand was originally brought in as Head of Football Operations last October by owner Tony Fernandes – a fan of Ferdinand from the days when ‘Sir Les’ was the star turn at Loftus Road and Fernandes , as a student, lived on the Uxbridge Road.
He wanted to see the man he idolised brought back, and had seen Ferdinand running a hugely successful development squad with Tim Sherwood at Tottenham until last summer.
Ferdinand made it clear that he did not want to usurp the authority of manager Harry Redknapp. “I wasn’t coming in ahead of him, I was coming to work with him.”
But the start of the pair’s working relationship was not the best.
“[Redknapp] came out publicly and said it was a stupid title,” Ferdinand said.
He immediately went to see the manager. “I asked if he had a problem with me and he insisted he didn’t. He just thought it was a stupid title. I said there was no reason to say it was stupid. Thinking back, I think it was him just flexing his muscles. Saying ‘I am in charge’.”
Mark Thomp
Ferdinand’s brief clearly encompasses more than the first team. “I am at the training ground in Harlington every day, I meet with the scouts, I speak with agents and watch DVD clips of players recommended to us.
“And, of course, I attend all our games – home and away.”
There was a recent home game, however, Ferdinand may now wish he had missed.
And there was an incident which belied his laid-back image. He was less than impressed with the performance of referee Craig Pawson in the 2-1 home defeat by Tottenham and let the official know in no uncertain terms what he thought. That has just cost him £12,000 in a fine from the FA.
That defeat added to the problems for a team with a wage bill that Ferdinand described as “astonishing”.
“You know, a few years back I went on an LMA course in Warwick and one of the aspects was finance.
“Wage bills were equated to a club’s league position. It was uncanny how accurate it was – the more they spent, the higher they were in the table. But where QPR are in the league, and what we are paying, are nowhere near each other.”

End of an era: Redknapp bit the bullet earlier this year. “Let’s get it right, the club did not get rid of Harry,” Ferdinand said. “He decided himself that it was time to go.”
That left Rangers with a problem. “The window was shut. No players could come in. Should we go for experience? We had one of the most experienced managers in the league and look at the position we’re in.
“Tim Sherwood – a good friend of mine – was of course discussed but Aston Villa got there first.”
It was decided Chris Ramsey would work with the players.
Ferdinand said: “The feedback the owners got was good so he is in charge until the end of the season.”
But can Rangers survive? “Yes,” said Ferdinand, with no hesitation.
“I was in this same position at the club back in 1991. We looked doomed. Don Howe was the manager and our first choice strikers – Colin Clarke, Roy Wegerle and Mark Falco – were injured.
“Me and Bradley Allen were the strikers and we won 2-1 at Luton.
“That started a run and we stayed up. It gave us belief – and we need that belief among the players here now. We can do it, I am convinced.”

 

I like his optimism about staying up.

 

Everything he says about the need to develop young players and the mistake of signing and overpaying people in their twilight years is correct. His appointment shows that TF finally gets it too. I hope they both get the chance to follow this through.

 

No arguments with this. It does however smack a little of stating the bleeding obvious, lets hope as a club we act on this asap!

 

He's been a disaster so far. Talk is cheap.

 

I don't mind being up front about this ................ I wish l had his enthusiasm.

 

Says something when an ex-player can see the obvious in the way the club has been mis-mannaged with overspending on wages etc.

Wish he'd spent some more time in January talking to agents & we might have actually brought a player or two in to strengthen the squad.

 

Great job responsibilities:
- go to training ground
- meet scouts
- watch DVDs
- go to games
What are his objectives? How is he rewarded? How the **** do we know if he's doing a good job?
Methinks he doth protest too far regarding Redknapp walking, but who cares now?

 

Grim reading since it means it will be a fair old while before we are on track again if that is indeed the plan.

 

I'm sure les played a major part in Redknapp's departure, but it was what most wanted to happen anyway.
I'm not convinced about les yet, but surely he is saying here exactly what we've all been saying all along?

 

I would be interested to learn which clubs in the top flight of English football have been the most successful in bringing their own home grown talent into the first team. But I'm not sure what the right measure for success should be. Maybe a good yardstick might be the number of home grown players that have made at least 30 starts for their club over the last 10 years would be a good start? Of course, a proper definition of 'home grown' is required too.

I don't know whether such statistics are readily available, but intuitively one feels that the clubs topping such a table, certainly in the PL, would include Southampton, Spurs...and probably a surprising number of the sides one would ordinarily suspect of generally buying in their talent.

I welcome Ferdinand's comments about the need to return QPR to being a club that brings young players through, but I'd like him to come out with proper SMART objectives that one could return to and assess in 10 years time. How will this club determine whether his tenure here will be a success? What specific things is he going to do? Will there be greater investment in the youth development side? Are there to be more youth scouts? How will the feeder system from the youth side through to the first team be joined up?

I know we live in the media age, but I'm getting fed up with sound bite after sound bite from people within the club, particularly immediately after the latest huge disappointment. There's always somebody telling us that things have to get better, that so and so is even more determined to put things right, that they owe it to the fans, that they've had a wake up call, that the dressing room is united, blah, blah, blah. I'd prefer it that they shut the **** up now and get on with the job of finishing the season with some fight.

 

The big problem is such a sea-change in philosophy cannot achieve success overnight. The importance of PL status in bringing a new stadium and training facilities to the club cannot be overstated but this team falls far short. I think we face a very long road back and wonder if TF can stick it out.

Let's face it, no sane person would buy the club in it's present state...

 

Not sure about Sir Les yet to be honest but.....and all you that want TF to go.....are you not worried...the new broom will sweep out SirL and all this forward thinking will go out the window AGAIN

We ask for a steady base to build on, and half the people want to brush it aside and get a new man in

Don't get some of you

 

Completely agree.
TF has made a lot of mistakes and does seem to have taken a long time to learn from them. However, he is trying to put into place exactly what everyone on here has been crying out for:
A new and more comfortable stadium.
A decent youth and academy set up.
A young coach.
Basically longevity.

Whether he can achieve these things is questionable, but as Beth says, it makes one wonder just what some of you want.
It can't all happen overnight and it may well take a good few years to be achieved.

 

It's not a case of wanting TF to go, it's how long he'll stick it out. If he's happy to throw untold millions down the drain to eventually get it right fair play to him, but we are in a much worse situation than when he took over, there will come a time when he'll eventually say 'that's it, I've had enough', and, remember, his two 'unknown' backers may cut and run calling in their 'losses' on the balance sheet, if that happens we'll make Portsmouth look like pocket money...

 

With the likelihood of a home grown quota coming in at some point, we could well be stealing a march on many clubs here. think about it. Hopefully we will have a good set of youngsters that will be of a highest standard. So from a playing staff and a selling point of view, our youngsters will be one of our biggest assets.

 

But many on here are saying that they want him to go.

 

Are you surprised? You woman, rest of us men.

 

Get off that high horse the fall will kill you.
He's had the best part of 4 years and what has he presided over and got to show for his and majority shareholder's money?
No closer to ANY new stadium
A place in Championshit at best
A toxic environment of constant bickering, underhandedness, bullshitters that he has positively nurtutured.
We have a squad that costs more than majority of Champions League teams, more suited to League 1.