Rob Dickie: I learn so much every time I watch Van Dijk – that’s the level I want to play at QPR defender Rob Dickie won’t be satisfied until he’s played in the Premier League, but for now he is proud to play for a club that is in touch with its roots, writes Henry Winter Henry Winter, Chief Football Writer Monday October 25 2021, 1.00pm, The Times The EFL Cup resumes this week and Queens Park Rangers break off from the madcap Sky Bet Championship to host Sunderland in the fourth round tomorrow. For individual players and both clubs as collectives, the national focus will be particularly welcome. “It would be really good to get people talking about the club again and get some exposure for the players and the manager,” Mark Warburton’s widely admired centre back, Rob Dickie, says. “It’s an opportunity to get into the quarter-finals. I imagine it’ll have some financial benefit as well.” That matters hugely at a club rebuilding after the disastrous excesses of trying to live the Premier League dream, managing only the 2014-15 season among the elite before collapsing, debts spiralling, back into the Championship. “QPR have always been an ambitious club but unfortunately in recent years because of financial difficulties they have spent a lot of time levelling out their finances,” Dickie says. “Since they came down from the Premier League it’s been a tough spell for the club and the fans. “But I know deep down, speaking to board members, that the owners are ambitious and as soon as they’re financially clear of things they’ll want to be challenging again to go up to the Premier League. That really excites me.” QPR lie seventh in the Championship, a division Dickie understandably calls “crazy” with his side — and six others — on 21 points. He looks at Fulham, chasing an automatic promotion slot, also wanting to join neighbours Chelsea and Brentford. “There’s a buzz around west London,” the 25-year-old says. “It’s a little pocket of the country doing really well on the football front. “It’s my dream to play in the Premier League. If I don’t get the chance to play in the Premier League by the time I retire I won’t be satisfied. I’m ambitious. I study the top players. “If Liverpool are on the telly I’ll always watch Virgil van Dijk. He’s got the whole package as a centre back. I always take something from his game every time he plays, even just his body positioning. It sounds strange but the best time to watch a player is actually when they’re not directly involved with the ball. I look at what they’re organising. Are they scanning? Are they talking? “I’ve studied Vincent Kompany, an amazing defender, and Rio Ferdinand and the way John Terry read the game is something I try to emulate. I like to take bits from the best. For Rúben Dias to come to the Premier League and in his first year dominate how he did was so impressive. He and John Stones built that amazing partnership with so many clean sheets. “I watch all different types of centre backs at the top level and try to emulate them. Centre backs are a lot more involved in games than they used to be because of the way they and goalkeepers start off attacks. I love that.” Dickie is encouraged to step into midfield by Warburton. “He’s been really good for me,” QPR’s No 4 says. “And what I really like about him is in the crazy world of football he’s so level-headed, he doesn’t get too high or too low, he doesn’t get really emotional. He’s just really steady mentally. If you have an overreactive manager it can have a negative effect on you. He just stays calm.” Warburton playing three at the back affords Dickie more licence to attack. He’s scored four goals in 16 games, against Oxford United, Hull City and Leyton Orient and starting on the opening day against Millwall, picking up the ball deep in his own half and gliding past Jed Wallace. “I took my first touch past the attacking midfielder and the space opened up,” he recalls. “As a centre back once you beat the front two then all the opposition players are marking the rest of our players so there’s no one free to come to the ball. I got near enough to goal and I thought, ‘Why not have a shot?’ I know I’ve got a decent enough strike on me. It’s similar with the Oxford goal. I just kept taking the space and no one came out to me so again I thought, why not take the strike?” Dickie’s formative years in Reading’s academy helped. “I started out as a centre midfielder and then played off the striker, but I kept growing and growing and they thought, ‘he might be quite a useful centre back’. But the fact I played centre midfield for so many years brought on my ball-playing skills.” Dickie was regarded so highly as a teenager that he played with Harry Winks for England Under-18 in a win against Germany at Rotherham in 2014. “That was a really proud moment,” Dickie says. “To represent my country meant the world to me. The shirt’s hanging up at home.” Shortly after that game, Reading sent Dickie on loan to Basingstoke Town, then in subsequent seasons to Cheltenham Town and Lincoln City. “The pyramid’s massively important,” Dickie continues. “Going on loan taught me the basics, heading, playing alongside men, seeing what the three points means to them. Win bonuses do a hell of a lot for a player and his family for that week. “In development football, the club would rather you maybe lose 2-0 but put in a really good performance. That’s completely the opposite of what first-team football is all about. There’s a lot at stake. Being around that mentality made me even more hungry to have a decent career.” That thirst for knowledge continued when training under an illustrious Champions League-winning defender back at Reading. “Jaap Stam was an amazing coach,” Dickie says. “He really helped me on positioning and different body shape, for example when one-v-one defending you want to have a certain amount of flex in your knees so you can move and move both ways.” Dickie never got the chance to play for Stam, eventually moving to Oxford and then QPR in 2020, promptly winning Player of the Season and continuing his good form, a tap-in against Hull City and a header against Orient. “We worked on that set-piece the day before,” Dickie reflects. “The day before each game, we spend half an hour on set-pieces on the pitch. We also look at video footage. We look at set-pieces used somewhere else. There was a particular set-piece that Bayern Munich used a couple of years ago which we thought we’d try but it didn’t quite come to fruition. I don’t think it’s anything to be embarrassed about copying top teams. There’s where we all want to be.” His club crave a return to the Premier League but are rebuilding sensibly. “The club just want to refresh after what’s been not a great five years and get the team heading in the right direction, building a new training ground and bringing through young players like [Eberechi] Eze who went to [Crystal] Palace to make money for the club. That was a real big boost. It’s about bringing on sellable assets.” Dickie himself is a valued asset, linked with Premier League clubs, but he is clearly loving it at QPR. “It’s a real community club,” he replies. “Les [Ferdinand, club legend and now director of football] is a big influence. He’s been really impressive in the stand against racism.” Ferdinand’s club re-named Loftus Road the Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium in memory of their former youth-team player, who was stabbed to death in 2006, aged 15. “Naming the stadium after Kiyan was a huge boost for the community and a really nice touch from the club,” Dickie continues. “It’s a club that looks after its roots. They do loads of work on food banks, feeding and helping the homeless, and the club does a lot of support for Grenfell. We’ve done as much as we can for the community during the pandemic. Now to have fans back in the stadium is such a big boost, mentally for everyone. “I love the stadium. It’s a really-old school football stadium, a proper stadium, loads of character. Although it only holds 20,000, when it is full and rocking it certainly feels a lot more. Fans are tightly in, they feel on top of you, it’s great. “All these nice, new modern stadiums are great but it’s refreshing to be in a stadium like QPR’s. Visiting fans like it, the away end’s great, two tiers, and the atmosphere it creates is brilliant. Sunderland are a big, big club and they’ve had a really good start to the season in League One. They’ll bring loads of fans.” Roll on tomorrow and the EFL Cup.
A class player on and off the pitch. Still needs some tweaking but you can tell he is ambitious to learn and improve. He knows he’s not the finished EPL player yet - but I’m hopeful it is in there ready to come out! Can also tell he appreciates the club, which is refreshing to hear these days.
I copied it from the Times (for which I have a subscription) to a new (blank) Word document, then deleted the photos and tidied up the format, then copied it from Word to 606. I thought it an interesting insight and worth sharing. Because you're worth it...
This should happen more in football. Lose - you get paid. Win - you get paid much more. This would stop players thinking that sitting on the bench at a better paying club would be better than getting a win bonus and playing.
