Party's over for QPR as Ecclestone keeps it tight

Party's over for QPR as Ecclestone keeps it tight
By Glenn Moore, Football Editor
Saturday, 23 July 2011SHARE PRINTEMAILTEXT SIZE NORMALLARGEEXTRA LARGE
GETTY IMAGES
Wayne Routledge (with Championship trophy), Adel Taarabt and Neil Warnock celebrate their title in May

ENLARGE
The Premier League is an unforgiving arena for newly promoted clubs, but with the campaign still three weeks away fans should be able to look forward with optimism as well as trepidation.

That is certainly the mood around Carrow Road and the Liberty Stadium. Norwich City and Swansea City will be among the favourites for relegation, but both have promising managers who are strengthening their teams.

Paul Lambert made Kyle Naughton his seventh summer signing on Thursday with the fee for his season-long loan taking the Norwich manager's spending past £9m. Swansea's Brendan Rodgers is on the brink of capturing Wayne Routledge for £2m, pushing the Welsh club's outlay towards £7m. Both clubs look as if they will be giving it a go, without risking their futures.

Then there's Queen's Park Rangers. The celebratory air that infected Loftus Road in May has dissipated. The Championship winners are owned by some of the richest men in football, but Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal are not just reluctant to spend their billions, they have not even touched the £40m TV boon QPR will bank this season.

Rangers have been linked with everyone from Fabio Cannavaro and Marco Materazzi, to Peter Crouch and, more feasibly, DJ Campbell, but the only players they have signed are Jay Bothroyd, Kieron Dyer, Danny Gabbidon and Danny Webber, all on free transfers. While Bothroyd had several suitors it is hard to imagine too many Premier League clubs were chasing the others. To compound this, Rangers are about to sell Adel Taarabt, the creator and taker of most of their goals last season, to Paris St-Germain.

A third of his £15m fee will go to Tottenham, due to a canny sell-on clause inserted by Spurs chairman Daniel Levy when Taarabt left White Hart Lane. The rest, indicated Warnock this week, will not be re-invested in the team. "I've just got to look for Bosmans and shrewd acquisitions, loan players etc." He added: "We'll be trying to survive on the smallest transfer budget ever."

Most galling of all, for QPR, is that they are being outbid by their fellow promotees. Routledge was on loan to Rangers last season, and Warnock wanted to sign him permanently. Naughton, who was under Warnock at Sheffield United, had been a target for months. As with Watford striker Danny Graham, another Swansea recruit, QPR were not prepared to pay the asking price, not even Naughton's loan fee.

It is not just the approach to recruitment that is prompting fans' ire. QPR have increased season ticket prices by 40 per cent (for four fewer games), but they are yet to release this season's kit, announce a sponsor, or reveal individual match-day prices. None of this dispels the impression that Ecclestone is only interested in making a fat profit on the club he bought four years ago. Though the dominant shareholder, he admits he has little interest in the team. It is Flavio Briatore – who owns no shares but has Ecclestone's ear – who dictates transfer policy. Since Mittal's son-in-law Amit Bhatia resigned as vice-chairman in May the Mittal family have been silent partners.

Many Rangers fans hope they will launch a takeover but Mittal has no intention of meeting Ecclestone's £100m asking price, more than twice what Venky's paid for Blackburn last year. Instead there are reports of Russian interest with speculation centreing on Alexei Mordashov, owner of Severstal, a steel and mining conglomerate. Severstal sponsors several sports teams in Russia and the 45-year-old Mordashov – worth $18bn according to Forbes – has business connections with Mittal and lived in England a decade ago.

Any takeover needs, however, to be swift as the transfer window closes in six weeks and two-thirds of QPR fans, according to a poll on one website, believe the club need at least four to five players to survive. Warnock hailed Rangers' promotion – his seventh in management – as his finest achievement in football. Keeping QPR up would top even that.

Spending to survive

 

Another article stating the bleedin' obvious, you have to ask why Bernie can't see what everyone else can?

 

Theres no one as blind as those who will not see...

 

Spending to survive
How promoted clubs have fared:

2010-11

Blackpool (spent £2.5m, relegated)

Newcastle United (£3m, survived)

West Bromwich (£5.3m, survived)

2009-10

Wolves (spent £16.5m, survived)

Birmingham City (£17.6m, survived)

Burnley (£6.6m, relegated)

Comings and goings at the Premier League newcomers

QPR

In: Jay Bothroyd (Cardiff, free), Kieron Dyer (West Ham, free), Danny Gabbidon (West Ham, free), Danny Webber (Portsmouth, free).

Out: Mikele Leigertwood (Reading, free), Pascal Chimbonda (released)

Norwich City

In: James Vaughan (Everton, £2m), Steve Morison (Millwall, £2.5m), Elliot Bennett (Brighton, £1.5m), Anthony Pilkington (Huddersfield, £2m), Bradley Johnson (Leeds, free), Richie de Laet (Manchester United, season loan), Kyle Naughton (Tottenham, season loan)

Out: Matt Gill (Bristol Rovers, free)

Swansea City

In: Danny Graham (Watford, £3.5m), Jose Moreira (Benfica, £750,000), Steven Caulker (Tottenham, season loan), Wayne Routledge (Newcastle, £2m, tbc)

Out: Darren Pratley (Bolton, free), Dorus de Vries (Wolves, free)

 

The title is factually incorrect, as the party never started!

Sooperhoop, it's not that Bernie can't see it, it's just that he doesn't care!

 

Or he knows that he will be selling the club. Whatever you think about him, he is not a fool. He will know that the club's value is probably at its peak right now. He will know that we need some serious investment to compete and to maintain the value of his shares. Agreed that he doesn't care about the long term future of our club, but he does care about his money; he wouldn't have got to where he is without that. He is a hard nosed businessman and he will be seeing a bigger picture than you or I.

 

That's what we have been thinking all summer Roller - he simply must want to sell while there is value in the asset or invest more to retain that value. But as time passes you can't help thinking he is happy just to take the PL payments, the coming season's ticket revenue and the Taarabt transfer fee which will return his investment thus far and give him a small profit. He can then simply get rid of what remains of the club and leave us to it. I think he now understands that there is no real money to be made in football and is doing what is necessary to get his money back. Gawd help us if this is the case.

 

I much prefer my scenario to yours. The end game of your is presumably bankruptcy. I believe that there are sort of controls in place at the F.A. to prevent this? If you remember, the Football League and the F.A. were supposedly going to investigate us just after Paladini forced Bill Power out with regard to our finances.

I’m pinning my hopes on this being a game of brinkmanship, and Ecclestone is not going to blink first. He and Briatore didn’t take over until September 1st 2007, I can easily envisage a similar occurrence. It will undoubtedly mean that we are completely screwed this season, but will have a chance to bounce back next.

 

Rollercoaster

Of course you are absolutely right. My one liner didn't actually make my point. There is no doubt that Bernie cares very much about his investment, and that is the key word. All the club ever was to him was a business transaction, yet another means of making a profit.

My "doesn't care" referred to that fact that the club, it's tradition, supporters, & future, mean nothing to him.

 

Agree with you, Roller. Ecclestone's present game plan is to find an overpaying buyer asap and spend as little as possible in the meantime. Mittal is sitting back and watching, in the hope that if the team is pinned to the bottom of the Prem by Xmas, there are no other prospective buyers and fans are burning effigies of the Goons all down South Africa Road, Ecclestone may revise his expectations.

But there is also the nuclear prospect - the QPAAAAAGH possibility, hopefully unlikely - that Ecclestone decides at the end of the season to asset strip and leave a shell...but even then, the Mittals would still hopefully be shareholders and while outvoted, might take on the club as a shell...