TBH Aussie I think a bit is being missed, this is an exert from a piece that Clive wrote on LFW explaining the FFP situation and helps explain why we're doing what we're doing....
Up in Birmingham, they’ve signed a striker who would fit perfectly into the current QPR system. Sam Gallagher, 6ft 4ins, 21-years-old, product of a superb Southampton academy, a dozen goals in an awful Blackburn team last season (including two v QPR), great in the air, more mobile than Matt Smith, better back-to-goal game than anybody we’ve got on our books, perfect six-pack… he is, potentially, the perfect Championship point man.
Well, I say signed, I mean borrowed for a bit. Borrowed for a bit at a cost of £1.5m. Borrowed for a bit as long as they up his £10,000-a-week Southampton wage to £18,000. Borrowed for a bit at an overall cost of £43,000 a week. Money which, if Birmingham don’t get promoted, which doesn’t look very likely at the moment, will be entirely dead in a year’s time when Gallagher goes back to Southampton and they’re several million lighter and still short of a striker.
Amongst this lunacy, which is now widespread throughout the top two divisions, QPR aren’t even shopping at Lidl, they’re rummaging through the bins round the back of Kwik Save. The clickbait claim Rangers were about to pay £3m-£3.5m for Nouha Dicko (who went to Hull ‘instead’) presumably cooked up by somebody who hasn’t been paying attention. The suggestion from one of the more wilfully ignorant QPR Twitter accounts that “Lazy Les” had been enjoying his Bank Holiday or, rather more despicably, “too busy talking about Grenfell” and been beaten to the Dicko signing something of a low among many lows in the world of QPR on social media.
I say this a lot, but a quick glance through the LFW Twitter mentions tells you it’s probably worth spelling out an umpteenth time – maybe some finger puppets would help? The current Financial Fair Play rules mean QPR cannot lose more than £37m across the 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons. The last set of accounts, covering the 2015/16 season, showed a loss of £11m despite the maximum parachute payment, the Charlie Austin sale and the Raheem Sterling sell on all coming in. With reduced parachute payments, no Austin money and no Sterling money QPR have to find a way to ‘only’ lose £26m across 2016/17 and 2017/18. Otherwise it’s a transfer embargo, and what players we do have will have to be sold off on the cheap – please see Blackburn Rovers and Bolton Wanderers for examples of what happens in those circumstances. That’s without even addressing the previous FFP breach for which a result is due any day. It’s also without considering whether the board want to continue funding QPR’s losses to the tune of even £11m. Saying this to people who believe we’ve got £3m from Josh Bowler shloshing around, and that there are loads of good players out there for that amount in the current market that QPR are choosing not to sign for fear of making it too easy for themselves, makes you “an attention seeker” or “celebrity fan wannabe” or “on the sauce”.
Personally I think we've done well, gone back to what we used to do, buy low, develop, sell on at a profit....
Kudos to Les, Hoos, Holloway and Co.....
