Clive has a lengthy interview with QPR's Director of Football Les Ferdinand about the current situation at the club.
Les Ferdinand
Thursday, 9th Feb 2023 09:04 by Clive Whittingham
With QPR once more on a long losing run, tanking from top of the league in October to fourteenth in February, LFW met with the club’s director of football Les Ferdinand to put the criticisms of his performance to him directly.
LFW has been conducting written interviews with figures from QPR’s past and present for 20 years and publishing them free-to-view. To support both this site and the iconic AKUTR’s Podcast we have also recently been making the audio available to all three tiers of subscriber on our Patreon account. However, in this instance, given the significance and importance of the interview we have decided to make it available free-to-listen to all QPR supporters – it didn’t feel right paywalling this interview while the club is on fire. I hope our very loyal subscribers understand on this occasion. Everybody can therefore listen to the full interview for free via our Patreon by clicking here or read below…
Off the rails again
The team was top in October, we’ve now had one win in 15, we’re not scoring, we’re down to fourteenth in the table – from your point of view why has the season taken the turn that it has?
It’s obviously very disappointing. As you said, in October we were top of the table, but then we lost the manager. A lot of the players had bought into Mick, he’d had a pre-season with them, he was developing the squad the way he wanted to. Unfortunately none of us envisaged that Mick would be gone after five months, but he has done. That has derailed the players a little bit. To be fair we had started to lose a few games under Mick before he left and I think there was a sense of ‘something is going on with Mick’ and it has derailed us. I think everybody in the Championship at one time or another has a bit of a blip, we were hoping the blip wouldn’t go on for as long as it has done. The new manager has come in, he’s trying to put across his ideas and I wouldn’t say they’re too far away from where Mick is but unfortunately when you’ve lost confidence, which we certainly have and it shows in the way we’re playing at the moment, it’s very difficult to get back on the winning track. That’s what we’re trying to do, I know it’s not great to watch at the moment but we’re working hard to get back to where we need to be.
That’s what I thought you would say, the obvious answer is ‘the manager walked out’, so let’s explore how we appointed that manager in the first place. It felt like an in depth process, we knew Mark was going from the end of April, Mick didn’t arrive until June, can you take us inside that process and how we decided to appoint him in the first place?
We were very clear when we appointed him that we looked at data; we put the same sort of algorithms we use for players as well and we did that for managers, things like our style of play… It threw up a load of names, some like Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola we couldn’t get, but the rest we looked at in depth and did interviews. In terms of where we want to go as a club, Mick was top of the tree.
Read ( or listen ) to the rest here ...
Les Ferdinand – Patreon - Queens Park Rangers News | Loft For Words (fansnetwork.co.uk)
Les Ferdinand
Thursday, 9th Feb 2023 09:04 by Clive Whittingham
With QPR once more on a long losing run, tanking from top of the league in October to fourteenth in February, LFW met with the club’s director of football Les Ferdinand to put the criticisms of his performance to him directly.
LFW has been conducting written interviews with figures from QPR’s past and present for 20 years and publishing them free-to-view. To support both this site and the iconic AKUTR’s Podcast we have also recently been making the audio available to all three tiers of subscriber on our Patreon account. However, in this instance, given the significance and importance of the interview we have decided to make it available free-to-listen to all QPR supporters – it didn’t feel right paywalling this interview while the club is on fire. I hope our very loyal subscribers understand on this occasion. Everybody can therefore listen to the full interview for free via our Patreon by clicking here or read below…
Off the rails again
The team was top in October, we’ve now had one win in 15, we’re not scoring, we’re down to fourteenth in the table – from your point of view why has the season taken the turn that it has?
It’s obviously very disappointing. As you said, in October we were top of the table, but then we lost the manager. A lot of the players had bought into Mick, he’d had a pre-season with them, he was developing the squad the way he wanted to. Unfortunately none of us envisaged that Mick would be gone after five months, but he has done. That has derailed the players a little bit. To be fair we had started to lose a few games under Mick before he left and I think there was a sense of ‘something is going on with Mick’ and it has derailed us. I think everybody in the Championship at one time or another has a bit of a blip, we were hoping the blip wouldn’t go on for as long as it has done. The new manager has come in, he’s trying to put across his ideas and I wouldn’t say they’re too far away from where Mick is but unfortunately when you’ve lost confidence, which we certainly have and it shows in the way we’re playing at the moment, it’s very difficult to get back on the winning track. That’s what we’re trying to do, I know it’s not great to watch at the moment but we’re working hard to get back to where we need to be.
That’s what I thought you would say, the obvious answer is ‘the manager walked out’, so let’s explore how we appointed that manager in the first place. It felt like an in depth process, we knew Mark was going from the end of April, Mick didn’t arrive until June, can you take us inside that process and how we decided to appoint him in the first place?
We were very clear when we appointed him that we looked at data; we put the same sort of algorithms we use for players as well and we did that for managers, things like our style of play… It threw up a load of names, some like Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola we couldn’t get, but the rest we looked at in depth and did interviews. In terms of where we want to go as a club, Mick was top of the tree.
Read ( or listen ) to the rest here ...
Les Ferdinand – Patreon - Queens Park Rangers News | Loft For Words (fansnetwork.co.uk)
