SLF Interview

[QPR999]

I don't get it? We have an academy, but the stars of that academy can get pinched for peanuts! What's the point? Who are the 13 players? Josh Bowler for one? What's the point in having an academy? Do the parents of these academy prospects have the opportunity to tell these clubs to **** off?
Football is weighted against the smaller clubs.

 

[QPR999]

I couldn't agree more with you about the good work in the community, but it so resembles what's happened with Rashford. All the good work in the community being done whilst simultaneously everything on the pitch falling apart. Eye taken off the ball, and other priorities leading to inability to carry out your day job. We've seen with Rashid what has happened this season, now he's fully focused on his football. A revelation, any chance we as a club can follow suit ?

Huh? Who's Rashid?

 

[kiwiqpr]

Maybe a 50,% sell on fee should be added to the ammount premiership teams have to agree to pay for stealing lower league teams players

 

[Stroller]

Leave it out Beth ffs, Brentford have been lights years ahead of us in their entire workings. They didn't go up in the play offs to begin with bit cane back stronger. Every time they sold a player they invested the profit into buying someone better ! When we sold Eze , who did we buy who was better than him ? Oh yeah that's right, we spanked most of it on total turds, not 1 singular player but a host of complete numbnuts. The Brentford owner is an astute football man, Fernandes was and still is a playboy who found a new toy, and got over excited and thought bringing in a couple of big name managers and giving them a blank chequebook would automatically bring success. Everything about the tenure since he took over is the polar opposite to since the Brentford man took over. So we are left hoping that 4 or 5 young kids come through our academy all at once ala Utd 92, or we are up **** creek. Jeez we can't even get 1 out of the youth side who's up to scratch. Things are beyond bleak if this is what the head Herbert's are pinning all their hopes on !

East tiger.

Perhaps you should think about joining the Bob/Col consortium and putting your own money in.

 

[Hammersmith bookie]

Huh? Who's Rashid?

Rashford lol. ****ing phone. Rashid is a cricketer pal

 

[Hammersmith bookie]

I don't get it? We have an academy, but the stars of that academy can get pinched for peanuts! What's the point? Who are the 13 players? Josh Bowler for one? What's the point in having an academy? Do the parents of these academy prospects have the opportunity to tell these clubs to **** off?
Football is weighted against the smaller clubs.

Forest bought Bowler from Blackpool then immediately sent him on loan to Panathanaikos, Forest's owners other club. After concerns were made to Forest regarding the legality of what had occurred, they recalled Bowler and immediately sent him out on loan back to Blackpool lol ! He came on as a sub in their midweek game and promptly scored the 2nd equaliser in a 2-2 draw. You couldn't make it up ffs

 

[bobmid]

Years ago, I scouted for Man City (just as they were becoming big). I had to give it up due to a conflict of interests coaching for Leeds. At the same time I also scouted for Bradford City. I used to trail the local parks every Sunday morning looking for so many different types of players to represent a different standard of football. During the Jack Walker (Blackburn) era of winning the league, Blackburn scouts were bloody everywhere. Inviting just about everyone to attend their academy.
At most clubs, for kids, a six week block of coaching was the norm, to make a decision as to whether to progress them into the youth team. If undecided, you just kept offering a further 6 weeks and so on and so on. I thought I had found a really special player at 7 years old, playing 2 years above his age group. Took him to Bradford but made the mistake of mentioning him to an colleague at City. They basically pinched him by offering informal money to his parents. Travel expenses, accomodation, kit wear, tickets, hospitality etc. He obviously went and at 21 was playing non league football.
They brought a rule in that you could only invite players within a certain radius of miles from your club, to try even the playing field so to speak. Middlesbrough swamped the scouting system, they had loads every Saturday and Sunday, it all became about money. Mason Greenwood a prime example, I worked with him at Leeds but he and his family got offered so much to go to Manchester. The rules changed regarding scouting continually and it soon became apparant that all the lower league clubs networks were just doing the donkey work for the bigger clubs. Everyone looking for who would be the next Rooney. Look at all the best young talent to ever come through a lower league clubs system, now the rules enable teams to pick them off before they actually reach market value. It's wrong, corrupt and harmful. The gap continues to grow from the youngest of ages now

 

[bobmid]

East tiger.

Perhaps you should think about joining the Bob/Col consortium and putting your own money in.

I generally put my money in every other week mate. Would you agree that we are worse off now than when the current owners took over?

 

[kiwiqpr]

I must watch the four year scam sometime
Scammed tony big time

 

[bobmid]

The whole system is geared up for the big clubs. It always was but the lower league teams used to have that chance of turning a profit on the work they had put in to a player.now they can just get pinched early doors. I have so many stories and examples of this happening and it's actually beginning to water down the standard of lower league players coming through.
One of my biggest gripes about English football and kids coaching is the seasonal play. I would go to games and watch kids try play football in a big or on a frozen pitch, pissing it down, 3 touches to get the ball under control by which time someone has tackled you. The introduction of 4g pitches is trying to eliminate weather conditions but again, that comes down to money. We may produce more talent or a better standard if our grass roots football was played during the spring and summer, where kids can actually enjoy it more, play on fewer touches in a more positive environment.

 

[bobmid]

I must watch the four year scam sometime
Scammed tony big time

Briatore did exactly what he said he was going to do. He knew what he wanted and he achieved it. Tony didn't and doesn't have a clue

 

[rangercol]

East tiger.

Perhaps you should think about joining the Bob/Col consortium and putting your own money in.

Getting personal, just because someone disagrees with you as usual.
I think the club is in a mess.
I also think, as I stated previously, that everything is weighted against us and those like us.
I think our owners, DOF and coach appear to be lacking in ability, ambition and foresight.
You obviously disagree.
Fair enough.

 

[bobmid]

Getting personal, just because someone disagrees with you as usual.
I think the club is in a mess.
I also think, as I stated previously, that everything is weighted against us and those like us.
I think our owners, DOF and coach appear to be lacking in ability, ambition and foresight.
You obviously disagree.
Fair enough.

Everything is stacked against the smaller clubs mate, some clubs changed their model to combat the ever increasing changes within the rules. We are, for some bizarre reason, hoping to bring through a youth player, before he gets snapped up, to make a profit on him. This is our plan, or to buy cheap and sell on for profit. Very rarely, in a team under performing does a single player stand out to attract attention. Take Willock as an example. Whilst the team is doing well, he's playing well, or it could be argued vice versa. When the team is playing ****, he's nowhere to be seen. Apart from some absolute fluke, this is probably as far as we can go as a club which is rather depressing.

 

[QPR Oslo]

I assume so, it’s income. But I don’t really understand the FFP rules, something about losing less than £35m a rolling 3 year basis?

This is a subject for our old mate Roller. I’ve asked him……

…..and as if by magic he’s responded - yep, the parachute payments do count as income for Championship FFP calculations. Roller also points out that the parachute payments saved us from multiple FFP fines…..doesn’t make it right in my opinion.

The fix really is in. Corrupt to the core.

£38 M.

 

[QPR Oslo]

Do you really think the owners want/long/crave/desire to sell our best players? It's just a financial necessity in our current circumstances.

I really don't know enough about how EPPP works, but, based on what Raving said in an earlier post, we have a Category 2 academy and as such are prey to clubs with Category 1 academies. If there is no ambition to become Category 1 (****s knows what's required to achieve that) then we really might as well shut it down. It would be a great shame though, because there's little better than seeing youth players break into the first team.

Would take a lot of funding to get Cat 1, including housing for the players, and the famous Cat 1 Clubs mostly in the PL will still attract/poach any of our youngsters they want. As is now anyway.

 

[Sutfol]

So after reading most comments it is what it is, we have to accept things will continue to get worse until we’re relegated. League One is where we should be for a club of our size and if we do get anyone decent they’ll be taken for pittance. Great!

 

[Stroller]

Getting personal, just because someone disagrees with you as usual.
I think the club is in a mess.
I also think, as I stated previously, that everything is weighted against us and those like us.
I think our owners, DOF and coach appear to be lacking in ability, ambition and foresight.
You obviously disagree.
Fair enough.

I share everyone's frustration, particularly with how the system is stacked against smaller clubs (and QPR in particular with our current sanctions), but I just get pissed off with all the bleating about 'lack of ambition'. The owners have spunked, and continue to spunk, hundreds of millions on the club. They could have walked away and left the club for dead, but they didn't. Yes, the club seems to be poorly run, but what right do we have to tell these people they're not wasting enough of their money on us?

Put your own money in and we can all slag you off for spending it badly.

 

[rangercol]

So after reading most comments it is what it is, we have to accept things will continue to get worse until we’re relegated. League One is where we should be for a club of our size and if we do get anyone decent they’ll be taken for pittance. Great!

This is exactly what some people genuinely seem to think though.
Let's just not bother trying to get as high as we can or win something and just settle for **** all.

No thanks.

 

[SW Ranger]

Even as a Category 2 academy we are no great shakes, according to unofficial rankings based on

“The rankings are the only publicly-available resource of their kind and rank Academies from Categories One to Three based on the number of England-qualified graduates who made at least one league appearance in the Premier League, Football League or National League in the 2021/22 season.”

We come in 60th. ****ing 60th. Out of 80. This is based on players making league appearances for any club, but who have attended your academy at some stage. We produce just about **** all. There are plenty of Cat 3 clubs doing better than us, and only Peterborough as a lower ranked Cat 2 club.

https://trainingground.guru/article...ductivity-rankings-chelsea-top-for-first-time

But that also supports Strolls theory of Cat1 Academies - almost all the Cat1’s are at the top. Including Reading and West Brom.
If we are going to build a state if the art training ground, we may as well be Cat1.

We may/do need to review our coaching, recruitment and scouting teams though to match our facilities and our aims while the buildings are completing. It seems the new youth facilities are the walls, but our staff need to be the foundations and the roof to have any success (or we could just leave it to luck, but in my experience you make your own luck). Over to the DoF and the Manager (who has a wealth of youth experience to input).

 

[rangercol]

I share everyone's frustration, particularly with how the system is stacked against smaller clubs (and QPR in particular with our current sanctions), but I just get pissed off with all the bleating about 'lack of ambition'. The owners have spunked, and continue to spunk, hundreds of millions on the club. They could have walked away and left the club for dead, but they didn't. Yes, the club seems to be poorly run, but what right do we have to tell these people they're not wasting enough of their money on us?

Put your own money in and we can all slag you off for spending it badly.

We have every ****ing right to criticise when they seem so inept.
Why are they bothering to put millions in every month, with no clear ambition to improve things and with so much stacked against us?