| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post 22:57 - Sep 14 with 836 views | loftboy |
" we support our team through the bad times" as a 47 year old I can totally see where he's coming from, seen some magic seasons, notably the 87-88 one where I was convinced after. 8 games we would be league champions, and some bloody awful seasons 2012-13 probably being the worst, that i can take, but how will I keep my 9 year old interested? He started in 2009 when he was 4, within a year he was watching us storm the championship but since then he's had two seasons of crap and one of mediocrity only enhanced by the last 5 minutes at wembley, this is definitely going to be another season that goes to the wire regarding relegation. Just hope I can keep him interested. |  |
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| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 11:49 - Sep 15 with 667 views | Ingham |
That's what supporting a small club especially is all about.
There seem to be two approaches to the game, generally speaking. The overwhelming majority of Clubs go in for the usual apparatus of empty promises and baseless dreams. Just keep talking about a new manager, a new ground, a new badge - we've had them all.
The optimism this engenders raises expectations and replaces the realism necessary to address the Club's REAL limitations, with a view to learning the game, and actually finding out whether we CAN develop a more effective way of performing long-term. The Gregory era was remarkable, but we never lost sight of what a small Club we were.
But we also seemed to understand that the others, almost without exception, and despite all THEIR big talk, were losers. Great managers did it. Ramsey's achievement at Ipswich was unparalleled. Robson gave Ipswich 10 years in the 'Champions League' positions, with two more title near-misses.
But great managers are very rare. And great 'systems' for achieving success almost unknown. The Boot Room at Anfield, and that's about it.
That should encourage us to believe that there are opportunities for a Club which starts from scratch, and replaces high expectations and big talk with down to earth know-how. QPR is like a pianist who books only the bigget and best venues for his concert tour, but who has never learned the instrument.
Even your young son might appreciate a Club that was able to fashion SOMETHING at any level, as it tried to unravel the mystery that is football.
I did, in 1960-62. It was fun, and I was only 8-10 years old. I've seen what Stock and Jago, Venables and Sexton were able to do, WITHOUT changing what made us QPR in the first place, and not Man Utd or some other global brand.
I prefer that. After all, other kids will find that every Club loses most of the time, and most Clubs lose all the time. It IS the taking part, not the winning, because that's what generates the excitement.
We might be dangerous if we were focused on just one thing - football. Like Bill Shankly, Ramsey, Chapman, Ferguson, Paisley, Clough and Taylor. Sort that out, and all the rest will fall into place.
We used to develop young players. We used to pick up veterans will something still left to offer, and uncover some impressive talents to enhance the basic formula.
Supporters always have hope. Converting hope into premature expectations, based usually on nothing except what the investors hope for, which is a rise in the share price, and a chance to sell off the ground, is nonsense.
When we're brilliant enough to have 40,000 on the waiting list, we'll be big enough and wealthy enough to pay for the 'world class talent' Fernandes mentioned in the summer.
Most of the others won't even try. THEY are lumbered with 'businessmen' and branding and soulless stadiums and overpaid, underperforming mediocrities too.
Even our rivals, even Chelsea supporters, enjoyed the spectacle of little QPR strutting their stuff, and dumping some giant BECAUSE we were small and unpretentious, but GREAT to watch. They also felt sorry for us if we lost in the Cup Final to a cocky wannabe big Club like Spurs.
And the young supporters understood the gradual improvements required, and that we couldn't win every week because it just wasn't possible.
Now we don't know what we are. We aren't good. We aren't 'building' anything. We don't develop anything. And we lost almost £200 million on a squad which was the worst top flight QPR side ever. Let alone the big Club we'll need to be in a 40,000 capacity stadium.
Even in 1962, at the age of 8, I could see that moving to White CIty was a strange idea. I was a kid, and the grown-ups knew best, of course. But we couldn't fill Loftus Road, even with a good Division 3 side. If we'd signed Greaves and Haynes and Denis Law, perhaps. But Chelsea couldn't fill Stamford Bridge except for big matches, even with Osgood and Cooke and Co.
It isn't an admission of defeat, quite the reverse, to recognise that we are not good, not big, not talented. We know we can be, but that is something we have to LEARN.
Supporters are proud that we're small, but we're big enough to have a chance. A little humility and honesty is the place to start. Guys like George Graham won titles with the likes of Gus Caesar, a likeable player whose chief talent was making everyone laugh.
It can be done, but we haven't even started. In fact, we've abandoned the basics that got us started in the first place, a youth policy for one. Youth won't provide any Club with success, but a Club like ours won't BUY success either.
Or, at any rate, we're not doing so. City or Chelsea won the title spending about what we spent those two years in the top flight. All those old nostrums - that football is an easy game, foot ... ball - and all the rest had something in them.
After all, we've been making excuses for our perennially overpaid, underachieving squads and managers and chairmen for 20 years and more. Can we really NOT wait to study the game, to learn it properly, and to develop the kind of skills that will enable us to exploit the delusions of the rest?
Are we so masterful already that we kid ourselves that LR really IS too small (meaning we're too big, I assume), and we've nothing to learn?
I hope your boy hangs on in there, because no-one saw 1967 coming, let alone 1976, but we also knew that it was special, and we noticed the gaps when Gregory took us down as well, and started the rebuilding process again.
If he had been less interested in moves and mergers, we really might have become another Liverpool (albeit a smaller one), and Club like ours is better able to cope with 'relative success'. You only have to to see United sacking good managers because they didn't win (or Chelsea). The madness is that we sack ours too, and with monotonous regularity.
If Warnock or Holloway weren't good enough, how good were the people who sacked them? Maybe it is time the chairmen dismissed themselves, and stopped subsidising their own regimes with the Club's money. As a rule, they're gone soon enough, anyway, when they cash in as soon as when the big promises are shown up for the empty words they are.
Football is not business. Business is not rigged so that only one can win. Your rivals don't enter your place of business and stop you doing your job, but ours do it every other week with almost monotonous regularity.
Football is not vaguely 'competitive' like business. It is a competition, not merely 'competitive'. Gladiatorial, and every game is sudden death (as Derby found out last season).
They all say they can turn the Club around, in fact, they all say it all of the time. The winners are always doing something else, while the losers make the latest round of excuses. |  | | |
| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 11:52 - Sep 15 with 663 views | rsonist |
Could you elaborate on that? |  | | |
| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 12:05 - Sep 15 with 641 views | paulparker |
Sorry the 99/00 was the worst season ever |  |
| And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
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| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 12:07 - Sep 15 with 635 views | londonscottish |
The main thing I have to seal with my 10 year old is the p*ss taking at school on a Monday morning from the plastic kids of the plastic dads.
I just tell him to ask them what game they last went. Seems to stop the conversation dead... |  |
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| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 12:21 - Sep 15 with 588 views | Monahoop |
| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 12:05 - Sep 15 by paulparker |
Sorry the 99/00 was the worst season ever |
Correction. 68/69 season was the worst. 18 measly points. Bottom of the pile. Whacked 8-2 by Man Utd [ yesterday was nothing compared to that fiasco ]. The season I began following the club. I think I needed to see someone then, but I think I've left it too late now. Just take what it has to take following the R's and sod the rest. |  |
| There aint half been some clever bastards. |
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| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 12:24 - Sep 15 with 580 views | AlbRanger |
I take a more simplistic view than Ingham:
I've said to all my kids as they grew/are growing up that there WILL be good and bad times. Also that if they want food on the table and a roof over their heads they can jolly well support QPR because I've suffered so why shouldn't they?
Seems to have worked so far. |  | | |
| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 12:25 - Sep 15 with 574 views | N12Hoop |
I tell my kids that if they try change allegiance they'll have to pack their bags and leave home. It seems to work, especially as they are all under 10. |  |
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| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 16:15 - Sep 15 with 442 views | loftboy |
| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 12:05 - Sep 15 by paulparker |
Sorry the 99/00 was the worst season ever |
We won more than 4 games though | |
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| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 16:20 - Sep 15 with 432 views | paulparker |
| Carrying on from something Ted said on another post on 16:15 - Sep 15 by loftboy |
We won more than 4 games though |
Just about Loftboy
im still having counselling over seeing Michael Ngonge & Sammy koejoe upfront, | |
| And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
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