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Reply | Ollie's Press Conference Ramblings
at 16:16 23 Nov 2016
Ladbroke R says "I was never a massive fan but I can listen to Holloways polemic on all manner of things if he keeps winning". That's must be what matters. Talk won't cost a winning manager his job even if he talks nonsense, and talking sense won't keep a losing manager in it.
Interested to see how long he can keep it up. |
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Reply | Magilton's QPR score 12 in a week - History
at 00:05 15 Oct 2016
Yeah. That was the strange thing. Even the TV commentators took it for granted that we would win. I can't remember that ever happening in any game, to tell the truth. 2-1 down at half-time away from home, and they talked as if our winning was inevitable.
Amazing football. He didn't start very well, if I remember. Then he had a purple patch of astonishing fluency, where we seemed to have been playing brilliantly for years, so comfortable were we with it.
And it just vanished into thin air. Can't remember anything like it. A run of surprisingly good results, yes. But not that brief air of utter superiority on the ball. |
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Reply | Andrea Leadsom's dodgy CV
at 00:06 18 Jul 2016
Maybe Danny's right, Disco. Labour's chaos won't be imposing itself on anyone any time soon. The only ship their cluelessness looks like sinking is their own. Though don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting for a moment that May and Brexit amount to a government or a policy either. What evidence is there of that?
So while there is a certain logic in saying we should be more afraid of them than the others because the others, not being elected, don't constitute the same sort of threat, I see no sign that the cons' spin doctors' orders are anything other than to be carried along on the tide, and to stick to the script that they're waving, not drowning.
You never know. Even Scexit - from Beyond the Grave, and only lately Undead - may yet rise up to walk alongside Brexit and Labour through that long, long Zombie Night.
Just saying. [Post edited 18 Jul 2016 0:08]
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Reply | Michael Gove - Proper Ranger
at 16:00 23 Jun 2016
Horrifying to read Dorse's account and supporting posts.
Saw him the other night talking about Brexit with a studio audience and confess to being mildly astonished - but then again, not, I suppose - that he couldn't answer a single question about how, in his opinion 'taking control of our borders' would be managed, and if it was, what evidence there was that it would actually work?
Rather glad Brexit hasn't happened already, to tell the truth, having spent several days commuting to Moorfields Hospital Eye Casualty dept. Hope Gove and Johnson will rally round Old Street with a few 24-hour shifts when the time comes, because there bloody well won't be any medical staff on duty if they really do intend to bring off an ethnic cull just to fall in with their slogans.
Cider says apparently a lovely bloke if you meet him, and I'm sure he's a genuine R. But then the same could be said of most of us. Well put, mate. And it's nice that Dorse talks bollocks with like minded people. Especially if he means us. Hope any other casualties of the armchair reformers are recovering as well as my left eye!
Great thread. |
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Reply | God is fading
at 21:52 30 May 2016
Great discussion. Point to kensalriser, among others, I thought.
I'm not sure that nature does 'work', to refer back to an earlier post. The distinction requires us to know what it would be for nature not to work. If the purpose of a watch is to tell the time and it doesn't do so, it isn't working. We decide what it's purpose is, so we decide whether it works or not.
But what is the purpose of nature? If there is no evidence that it has a purpose, how do we know whether it is working or not?
And how does the Scientific Model of the Universe - which does both from time to time - purport to explain the real Universe by MEANS of the Science that makes up the Scientific Model, when the real Universe never does either? |
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Reply | NORWICH IMPLOSTION
at 11:17 19 May 2016
So much fence-sitting, especially from DW. So what are you saying, you don't like them or something? |
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Reply | One Night In Winter
at 11:22 17 May 2016
Both interesting writers. Enjoyed the Stalin books and a couple of the Dalrymples. |
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Reply | The LFW Brexit Poll
at 01:55 14 May 2016
Hello Brighton - you may be right, mate, and we'll see an unseemly rush from the Scots and the rest of the UK respectively to save face by rejecting the others first, and therefore a single or maybe Double Rejexit? |
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Reply | The LFW Brexit Poll
at 23:32 13 May 2016
I see, Juzzie. But won't Basingstoke say it may be strong enough to prosper inside the EU, too? That is not uninteresting in a debate the partisan nature of which automatically makes win/win - or lose/lose - unacceptable because we must choose, and the more areas where there is little to choose, the less meaningful - and urgent - the need to choose at all. Especially if in or out will ultimately make little difference.
Any area of the economy which is strong enough (or too weak), may be unaffected, and we might ask ourselves whether most of what the UK and the European states do will be untouched either way.
I don't know. But fervent advocates of one solution or another may not know either. And as many have pointed out, we can't know what new variables the future will bring, and which view they will favour. [Post edited 13 May 2016 23:39]
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Reply | The LFW Brexit Poll
at 23:12 13 May 2016
Perhaps Europhiles are no more enamoured of the creepy crawlies scuttling about beneath the other European states than they are of the vermin that slither about under ours.
If so, and the battle lines lie between the British and European populations on one side, and the usual vested interests that threaten them on the other, and which are lodged as deep underneath Westminster as they are beneath Brussels, it might be worthwhile reminding us that whether WE find Brexit or Remain convenient or unattractive, neither will present our enemies with any obstacle any more than they'll present us with an easy solution. Only a means of kidding ourselves we've found one when we've just found the usual suspects again.
If so, in and out might be equally unsatisfactory. So we might be better off suspending judgement until they are UNDOUBTEDLY acting in our interest, and for our benefit.
Which, given the doubts and disinformation abounding in all directions, is hardly the case today.
Looking at it from another perspective, I'm curious to know whether there is yet any equally snappy term to match Brexit for a Scots departure from the UK, following on the heels of a Brexit or not, and whether anyone thinks Brexit or Remain, or anything else, for that matter, makes Scoxit or ScUKoff more or less likely? |
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Reply | What is 'success' for QPR?
at 22:14 28 Mar 2016
Surely terryb is right, derby.
It isn't for lack of wanting to be successful that we aren't, it's for lack of the first clue how to go about doing it. That is the underlying issue that is never addressed. A new ground is easy, compared to a completely new way of playing and winning, effective enough to increase matchday support by 50-100 per cent.
Why is it that, despite all the new stadium proposals we've had since god knows when, we've never seen a QPR with the remorseless determination to succeed that other Clubs have seen in our lifetimes, especially at Liverpool for 30 years.
They changed things on the pitch. Not just for a couple of half-decent seasons, before slumping again. But from promotion in 1962 to the end of the era almost 30 years later. That is very unusual, and that is the point. Dozens if not scores of Clubs have new or redeveloped grounds.
What few of them, virtually none of them ever do, is change things on the pitch. Either one Club dominates them all for 15 years, or a handful share out the honours with the rest nowhere.
Where is the evidence that anybody at QPR has even the first clue how to increase the Club's support in the way that some suggest? Even Gregory didn't. He got much bigger attendances by providing the Club with more of the big occasions that would draw the crowds. We still get bigger turn-outs from our Wembley, play-off and other days out, of course.
But how many of those occasions have we had? We can't even get past the first round in the Cup competitions. Achievement is the yardstick, not ambition. Every bunch of losers has ambition. All you have to do is say the words.
I love LR, but a Club that already had 40,000 season ticket applications year in year out because we were simply that good would be a powerful argument for a new stadium. And in THAT case, it would make sense to ask why any supporter would stand in the Club's way.
My impression is that nobody has ever tackled this problem because it is quite simply beyond them to do so. In fact, it is beyond them even to identify what the problem is in the first place.
Still a great debate. |
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Reply | What is 'success' for QPR?
at 14:07 27 Mar 2016
Great first post from Frankie, and a great thread. Have to agree with NorthernR, though, steve. If new stadiums have the magical effect that developers claim, how come every Club isn't successful?
Among other things, the points made in favour of a new ground sink without trace when we survey the whole range of League Clubs, all of which have had the benefit of playing in new Grounds for the entire history.
If so many of those grounds became unsuitable the LONGER a Club had it, where is the logic in the Board pretending that things will go so much better over the long term?
If so many of those Clubs win and have won practically nothing in their entire history - City and Chelsea only breaking out of the mould of permanent mediocrity when their ground capacity shrank dramatically - why is the mere possession of a ground of whatever capacity an indicator of a Club well run, let alone profitable, let alone successful?
Why is it that Clubs like ours are so eager to get started on moving the Club to another building, and so obviously terrified to embark on all the things that could possibly make doing so worthwhile.
Transforming the way we recruit players, say. And I don't mean a few pious platitudes about academies and training grounds, but actually DOING it.
Or, first of all, actually finding OUT if they can do it.
A few years ago big money by QPR's standards was spent. But not on big stars. Not on real quality. We didn't bring a manager of proven pedigree to Loftus Road, the kind of character who knew what it took to win the Title or the Champions League, or at least establish us in the top four.
It wasn't that they turned out to be crap, either. It was that they were nothing special in the first place, even if they had played to their full potential.
Why is it so frightening to begin doing this? We don't have to start with stars. Or big spending. We can start by finding out why so many teams are obliged to dump their managers once they hit the inevitable long, losing run?
Put an end to that. Stop leaking goals. Learn how to squeak past sides which outplay us. Learn how to keep doing that, year in, year out, for 10 or 15 years for starters.
And see how much attention, how much admiration, and how many season ticket applications we get for our football and what we've achieved so far ...
... and, like Arsenal, we'll know how many we can attract to a stadium of a given size. They built a ground for not one single supporter more than they had applying for season tickets. And they're a Club which has won the title in every decade since the 1930s bar the sixties (when they built the team that would win it the year after) and the present decade, which isn't finished yet.
If the new stadium is so viable, let Fernandes or Mittal or whoever build it. Lets see how viable it is. And let the Club rent it, on a game by game basis, for our big home Cup quarter final games and the like, and then, when we're attracting 40,000 fans regularly through the quality of the football the likes of Fernandes and Mittal know how to produce, take it for a season, then another if we are successful, and so on.
This is the same racket as the Club is exposed to with the players. The Club's interests never come first, and are never protected the way the players' or the investors' are. If the players were paid only if they win in the new stadium, yes, it might well be viable, with their incompetence making the Club richer and richer as the long losing runs they usually manage with much difficulty generated the cash for the Club to replace them. And then, if their successors similarly failed to impress, THEIR failure would fund their own replacements.
Instead, the Club just has to pay and pay, no matter how bad they are.
The same applies to the Ground. If the Developers, the Builders, the Investors, none of them were paid until QPR became as successful as they all like to PRETEND it will, then the Club could afford to just take a leap into la-la land.
And if that is just too stupid an idea for words, isn't it just too stupid an idea for words for QPR to do the same thing?
There is nothing wrong with the Ground in my view. The Ground, like the Club, is small, has modest sized support, no long history of success to attract more, and is generally lacking in all the things required to make it much bigger, more successful and wealthier BECAUSE of the people who run it.
No-one stopped this lot or their predecessors making us a byword for football, a Club so desirable to support and follow that one huge arena after another had to be put up to accommodate our fanbase.
In fact, the ground is the only thing that DOES work consistently. Is still working, and is still fit for purpose.
When we have all the qualities of a Club that can fill a much bigger ground consistently for maybe the whole century that ground may last, we'll know what kind of ground to build, and we'll have the resources to build it.
As I say, if they're so clever, so knowledgeable about the game, and their predecessors, all wealthy businessmen except for Paladini, are similarly talented, why aren't we the biggest and best now?
I enjoyed your post. This is a perennially interesting topic, especially at a Club like ours, and the game is always changing - in unexpected ways, which is why so few grounds - virtually none - hold the kind of crowds they once did. Our could hold 35,000, maybe more, but it never did, except when we hosted Leeds on the way to the title. Two years later, it was our turn, for a game which, if Liverpool had lost on the same day, would have seen us crowned as champions.
We got barely more than 31,000.
And now that there is no debt, as we are told, why is losing Fernandes a problem? The Club, if it is indeed living within its means, is perfectly viable, and is still a contender to get in the Premiership where it will just be handed £60 million in cash a year merely for turning up.
I go back to the business of learning the game. Why is that always a non-starter? Why is borrowing money so much more important, when we don't have the know-how to spend it wisely? Why is a new ground so much more important when we lack ALL the qualities required to fill it regularly?
Great thread. |
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Reply | Playing budget slashed by a 1/3
at 17:39 20 Mar 2016
No. What a Club is worth - or is claimed to be worth - is not the same thing as the price, it is the basis for calculating the price. In practice, it is perfectly possible for all parties to agree a price which is nowhere near what either thinks the Club is worth, depending on any number of factors.
Chris Wright came to believe he had paid more than the Club was worth. That is meaningless if the two amount to the same thing.
To doubt that the Club was worth what he paid makes sense. To doubt that he paid what he paid does not. Once the deal is completed, the price is fixed, done and dusted. But the Club's worth may fluctuate, even for those who imagine its worth exists over and above what various interested parties from time to time believe that worth to be.
And given that, it may very well be that the Club IS worth 'roughly' what has been spent on it. In the event that what was invested corresponded to the value of what it was invested IN.
I know what you're thinking - surely that is hardly possible at QPR. For shame! The money MAY have been wisely spent. It just doesn't seem to be so.
As far as conversion goes, I think it is the effect of conversion on the Club's prospects that is being called into question, not least by supposing that it may not have happened at all (in the event that the debt was written off instead). What the shares are worth may be a matter of opinion, with buyer and seller valuing them differently. Even if what they were worth was the same thing as the price, we have no idea what the price they fetch will be, so that is academic for the time being.
But as far as the percentage of his shareholding is concerned, I'm sure we all understand that if TF has suddenly acquired many more shares than he had before, his percentage shareholding MUST have increased vis a vis his fellow shareholders. Obvious to all. I'd say.
Of course, none of this clears up what he meant when he said the debt was stadium related. Nor what the financial status of the Club might be if it is drawn in to a vast redevelopment programme, the outcome of which, especially long term, is unknown.
Personally, I don't think any of the above qualifies as an 'anti-TF rant', and particularly not where I commend him for writing off the debt (if one or two of the other posters are correct in thinking that this is what he has, in fact, done). |
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Reply | Playing budget slashed by a 1/3
at 01:03 19 Mar 2016
I don't think anyone is saying they wrote the debt off, pom. That is quite a different thing.
If they did, they just lost an asset with a face value of £150 million. But, unless I'm mistaken, that isn't what they're saying. What they've done is converted the debt asset they owned to a share asset they own.
So they're not out of pocket at all.
It is worth bearing in mind that TF told us that the debt was 'stadium related'. It wasn't clear what debt he was talking about, or which stadium, come to that. But a debt of that size could hardly be related to LR. But it could hardly relate to the new ground, could it, which doesn't exist? And which would cost £200 million to build, according to TF's stadium spokesman, Beard.
On that basis, how would £200 million already squandered on non-performing players be related to the new ground, unless the new ground is security for the debt? If the money is gone, wasted on players, where will the £200 million required to build the new ground come from?
If there is no debt, it can't be related to any ground. Even if the debt is converted to equity, there's no debt in that case either.
Of course, it goes without saying that if he HAS swallowed the entire debt himself, just written it off, gone, out of pocket £159 million and nothing to show for it, brilliant! For QPR, anyway.
After all, he ran it up, he was responsible, you're thinking, so why shouldn't he? Why should the Club be burdened with the cost of his mistakes?
CERTAINLY he should get credit for losing his own money instead of QPR's. That is the kind of big spender we need.
On the other hand, if the debt is now in the form of shares, so to speak, a buyer must still come up with the £150 million to buy the shareholders out (if the shares are worth whatever the debt was worth). That will come straight out of the pocket of the buyer, and go straight into the pockets of TF & Co, rather than into the playing squad.
So that's not quite the same thing.
And may mean we're not much better off, unless there is a genuine benefit from not having to report vast losses to the unsympathetic football authorities.
And Bhatia made out the Club was 'debt-free' a few years ago, and, of course, it wasn't. And before that, it was implied that the 'ABC' debt was no more, but only the lender that had changed. It is extraordinary that there is still a charge at companies house that, in effect, represents the £10 million Richard Thompson squeezed out of Chris Wright 20 years ago.
But generally, I like the way you're thinking. That it is admirable that they SHOULD write off at least all the debts which are down to the decisions they've made, to ensure the Club isn't burdened with them at a time when the authorities might penalize QPR. So if the - I think it is called the Amulya debt, the one attached to LR - If that, too, is wiped out, and the Board members truly are taking the hit in their accounts, rather than leaving QPR to struggle on burdened with their losses, they should be encouraged in my view.
Writing off all the losses every year, if they have no idea how to make a profit. And if they don't, for the authorities to penalize THEM instead of QPR. The Club isn't running up losses on TF'S airline's tab. Why should he run up losses on QPR's?
But that goes to the whole question of why they're all so shrewd and hard-nosed and good at making money when they're representing their own interests - apart from QPR - and so incapable of doing so they're supposedly representing the Club's.
It isn't as if all the money goes on successful campaigns, and signing our world class stars. Most of our squads are useless, most of our managers are sacked in very short order.
The Club has never made even a penny of profit over all these years, not as far as I remember. But the present regime back through their predecessors apart from Paladini arrived wealthy, and left wealthy, being at least millionaires, and in at least a couple of cases, billionaires.
Is the debt run up by TF's predecessors now gone too? The total sum must have been closer to £200 million. Even better! [Post edited 19 Mar 2016 1:48]
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Reply | Playing budget slashed by a 1/3
at 18:56 17 Mar 2016
The important thing is to bear in mind that the future has to be achieved, it isn't 'decided' in advance.
If that were the case, we'd have had big money from the City from Chris Wright, instead of incurring a £20 million debt to provide him with his £10 million. We would be in the Champions League as Briatore and Bhatia promised. and debt-free years ago on the same basis as Bhatia implied.
It is the essential difference between all the losers and the handful of winners. The losers know all about the future. It will be just whatever peachy outcome they'd like.
The winners know how hard it will be, and are doing what they can to make it happen.
They used to say those who could, did, and those who couldn't, taught, a slur on the teaching profession I've no doubt.
But in football, it's very near the truth. Those who can, do, and those who can't, tell themselves - every time - that THIS time it will all come together.
We need to learn to judge our capabilities using hindsight. Optimism is meaningless for the purpose. We know which teams and players were good in the past, and EXACTLY how good. We haven't a clue about the value of JFH, new stadiums, or new policies about player recruitment, spending and the like.
That is part of the fun. Finding out! But finding out means not knowing. And that means managing risk as far as that is possible.
Once we know our results and performances, we know how good we are. Before we know that, we know nothing. And if our history is anything to go by, it takes years, if not decades, to find out.
We have no idea how hard it will be, how clever or gifted the people doing the job will prove to be, or how tough our opponents will be, let alone how changes in the game and the economy will affect the Club, and whether anyone who IS good will stay longer than they do here, which is not very long.
We don't know what further nightmares like the Taylor Report and the lifting of wage and freedom of movement restrictions are round the corner. Like the economic crash in the early seventies that left Chelsea with just a part of their vast new stadium built, and their eclipse as a serious candidate for honours in the top flight for 30 years.
These things needn't inhibit us from getting on with what needs to be done. As the people running the Club - and representing it - have generally shown little aptitude for the game, and generally done very little to improve the Club's finances, profile, support and success ratio, we might start at the beginning and ask ourselves whether we know anything AT ALL.
Anything that is seriously convertible into profitability, success or significantly increased long term support, for example. Even the managers who've had some success with us and elsewhere have not met with unbounded joy or admiration (Holloway, Warnock and Redknapp) and have soon been moved on.
As things stand, it may take years to work out where to start. Let alone to gauge whether we are making progress. And that is one of the more alarming possibilities. And more or less a racing certainty if the last two or three decades is anything to go by.
That is one of the more alarming things about the way we do things. Nobody seems to learn the lesson of our own incompetence. That we seem to have so little idea of what needs to be done. Decisions and appointments and signings are made. And then it's back to square one in no time.
And why should it be otherwise. Everyone makes so much money out of crap performances, crap results, crap appointments, crap signings, that we are effectively INVITING them to come here and be crap.
We may imagine that the wages we pay are dictated to the Club by the marketplace, and that we have to sign crap as expensively as possible because even crap is expensive in the modern game.
But if that is so, we should be asking ourselves how many other aspects of the Club's activities are beyond improvement or even modification by the people running or representing the Club? |
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Reply | THE EFFECTS OF GOOD MANAGEMENT
at 17:36 16 Mar 2016
As long as they understand the implications of keeping a manager long term. The Club has never done anything of the kind since Alec Stock was ditched in 1968 after ten years
The problem we've never solved has its roots, I suspect, in the swallow Bazza has noticed.
Although we're all signed up to waiting for as long as it takes, are we behind the manager, come what may?
I don't mean our usual 'getting behind him'. Which is telling ourselves that he's the man, that he has what it takes, and - generally - that his short-term decisions signpost the way ahead in the long term.
That, I think, is where the tree gets poisoned. Already, he has only one way out.
Win. And that's my advice to him. He shouldn't imagine that anyone will back him through those long losing runs we're so familiar with, beyond the usual however many months before looking bad for so long has damaged his credibility beyond recovery.
Whatever manager it is, and whenever that manager turns up, I suspect that the ONLY way we'll ever get ANYWHERE is to start from scratch. Without deciding how good it will all turn out to be in advance, which is what we do every time, burying each and every manager under an expectation that HE is the one.
Why? The Club has never managed to get it right - in terms of long term consistency, in nearly 140 years. Even Gregory couldn't stabilise the Club at or near the top, or even in the same division, for very long.
Like a kid taking his first piano lesson, we have years and years of learning the game - from lesson one - ahead of us. And what bothers me is that we seem to lack any interest in failure. Already, it's looking good. Oh, sure, we're 'realistic' about it. But if we're doing less well than we are just now for the next five years, who will be right behind JFH?
We all know the answer to that. He'd be lucky to get five games of really bad results. And certainly, after five months, it would be the countdown to the exit.
Failure, that is where the lessons will be learned, because that is what we're good at. We can do that in our sleep. Turn even the good times into disaster in days, and certainly in a handful of years.
If he can begin to understand why things go wrong, not just because of the obvious deficiencies, but just when you think we're turning the famous corner we never seem to get all the way around, then we might be dangerous, because so few of the other useless f**ckers will make the effort, ANY kind of insight into why all the good intentions are sabotaged will go a long way.
But will we do what we usually do, and back off long before that. Stock was gone when he'd done well, Jago too, Holloway too, and Warnock too. Just not well enough.
We are so great, we can't tolerate even brief failure after brief success.
It won't be possible to change our ways, at least I don't think so, if we can't make EVERY performance and result of interest.
Otherwise, all we'll get is the usual escapism, and the usual way of perpetuating it. Sack the manager, and start dreaming that THIS guy is the one.
As we all know, when a manager doesn't need us - in those rare instances when he is doing well for a year or so - we're right behind him. It's true. Winning is the required magic. At those times, he can go anywhere, and we need him, or his results.
But as soon as it goes belly-up, he's dead in the water, and it is the optimists whose rejection kills off any possibility he has of surviving.
Because he looks bad. And because we don't have any OTHER way of judging whether we're on our way except winning.
That makes sense. But it will not give the guy time. That, I think, is why most of the managers I can think of who really had a big impact had that impact instantaneously.
We may get lucky. He may just get everything right right from the off. In the event he doesn't, what IS plan B to keep him at the Club indefinitely?
Can we go on watching the usual floundering for long enough for the coaching staff to identify why we flounder, and the Club to begin to FIND OUT - no successful manager has much to tell about how he works his magic - what remedies will actually WORK.
After all, detecting slight improvements is far more difficult and uncertain than detecting a guy who just wins and wins and wins. Yet so many successful managers are obsessed with losing. Defensive strategies to win games when things are NOT going your way are often the mark of a real winner, like Mourinho when he is not off his head, or George Graham, and all the other success stories before him.
Good luck, and prepare for the worst, JFH, and merely hope for the best. Forget the optimism, replace it with realism, we don't need to be optimistic, because everyone hopes for the best, and that is all that is necessary.
Great thread, pom. |
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Reply | What we need
at 21:16 5 Mar 2016
Yes, well, Dave has a point, doesn't he?
As far as winning goes, if not now, when?
Sure, we must be reasonable, we have to wait. For what, though? And for how long? It will be a major change of policy not just at the Club, but among the supporters, too, if JFH gets any longer than any of his predecessors to turn things round. And he may already be aware that when something good HAS come along at QPR - and that goes all the way back to Gregory and Stock 50 years ago - even the Managers with two or three good years behind them were gone in a few months when they failed to fulfil the short-term need to win.
Either they weren't given the time to get things right a second time - despite having done so at least once, and in Stock's time at QPR, twice, including the early 60s side - or they didn't want it (like Sexton and Venables). Essentially, we haven't had anyone, ever, who lasted very long.
Except, of course, Gregory himself.
Giving the manager a chance means nothing more than giving him a chance to start winning. And if he can't do it now, then he needs to start pretty soon. JFH's recent run looked promising, and no doubt he hasn't been here long enough to get it right, but isn't that Dave's point? Going by what we've seen over the last 20 years, he isn't going to GET long enough.
Not because he hasn't got what it takes, but because the Club hasn't. The people who run QPR have never built up a fund of know-how that tells the Club when a losing run - or a run like JFH's which isn't either a losing or a winning run - indicates that things are getting better, and today's defeats will become draws, while yesterday's draws will become wins.
Nobody ever seems to have the slightest idea. Any more than they seem to have any idea why they appointed the current manager except that he isn't the last guy, and they got tired of him.
To know that the foundations of ACTUAL improvement HAVE already been laid, that is a ery different thing. But that brings us back to Dave's original point. How do we know? The only real evidence is winning, and, short of that, playing well enough to give us good reason to think that the wins will follow soon.
Dave's logic - instant success - is exactly what QPR's is. We don't win, we get rid of the Manager. Even the voices saying we should give him time only mean we should give him time to start winning, if the past is anything to go by.
QPR doesn't seem to have any framework on which a Manager CAN build. We just slot one in, wait a short time, no fireworks, and he's out in very short order. And as Warnock, Holloway and Redknapp can testify, even when there has been fireworks, promotions, even, play-off Final appearances even, the Club has remained just as reluctant to put in place a structure to provide the support necessary to JUSTIFY our waiting for things to improve.
To date, it looks as though they've deemed it easier to just sack the bloke, and start again, raising all the same expectations they did with the one they just sacked for not fulfilling them.
With a system like that, the kind of manager who comes in, and turns things round very quickly IS probably what we need.
Short-term. Trouble is, that kind of manager is usually gone pretty quickly. And, I suspect, for the same reason that the others are. There are no foundations on which he CAN build something more enduring, and, of course, his talents will always be in demand, in part because he has the know-how, if only in a limited way, that Clubs like QPR conspicuously lack.
It is too easy to react to what seem like simplistic responses - 'get a guy like the Rotherham guy who wins right from the off' - if our complaint is, itself, the familiar and equally simplistic response - 'give JFH (or whoever) time'.
To date, we never really have given them time, even when a few managers HAVE got improved results and/or performances more or less right from the off. And that, I think, is also down to the Club's having no framework on which a Manager CAN develop the playing side, and no fund of know-how, experience and insight by means of which we can understand WHAT STAGE of that development we're going through, and how the performances which aren't getting us wins now ACTUALLY ARE the basis for future success.
We just tell ourselves that it's so. With this manager. Like the one before. And the one before that. And so on.
So much money, so much to play for, so many 'professionals', and yet no-one seems to have any idea. We're playing much the same sort of football we've been playing for the last 20 years, with comparable results, most of the time, even when the Club had pots of money in the Premiership.
Given that, it is easy to see why 'the Manager' is so seductive. It is exactly what Dave suggests. Because 'the Manager' can turn everything around.
Old Timers remember - or think they remember - when the Manager was just a name in small print at the bottom of the back page of the match programme. Trainer, or Coach, or Manager. Just took training, shouted at them a bit, and that was it. Then a few Managers made a name for themselves - tactically, or motivationally, or in their recruitment, or the formation they played - and the Game in general failed to make the distinction between the unusual ones - the winners - and the rest. Now every Manager has tactics and formations,. sees himself as a motivator, and as someone capable of identifying talent - and he CAN'T be.
But at least the guy who turns Clubs round quickly - if, almost inevitably, in the short term - does SOMETHING. All the guys we've had that we gave 'time' to mostly achieved nothing.
Of its very nature, a winning team is a rarity. At all but a handful of Clubs, a season which is pretty good is a rarity too. Smaller Clubs overperform, then subside, as things even out, and they slip back into the chasing pack, or worse.
The winners are always doing something different. If we're looking for that unusual specimen, a Manager who is good enough to be worth keeping, and grateful enough to QPR to want to stay, even when it is obvious we need him but he doesn't need us, then Dave's formula - or an enhanced one that enables us to get a long-term winner, is required.
If that is asking too much, and we should be thinking long term, and giving the Manager time, surely we need to give him SOMETHING TO DO WITH ALL THAT BLOODY TIME! To date, we never seem to do that. He's just left high and dry, with the supporters just waiting for everything to turn out right without any real effort, any real understanding, or any real practical experience of HOW TO DO IT.
I wish JFH luck. He'll need it, and he'll need to be good. But maybe Managers know that, and aren't all that bothered. Maybe they know that most Clubs have no idea whether they're good or not, and most Clubs don't know what kind of support they need to make the most of any talent they might possess.
Perhaps that is why they drift through six months or a year or so, and then drift off somewhere else, and on and on. It's a job, it's well paid, and there's always a new challenge round the corner. |
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Reply | Tweets, training grounds and tickets - Tony Fernandes interview
at 01:56 28 Feb 2016
I think the point about trusting the judgement of the people around you made by qprphil is worth considering. Sometimes the Club's support seems to be divided on this as on so many other issues.
When we have people of genius off the field and performers of brilliance on it, we'll notice. There is no need to trust what they tell us. They certainly don't. They make sure they get paid whether they succeed or not. The day they put their money where their mouth is and are paid only when they win - because THEY believe in it - is the day we can trust them.
If their money depended on the success we're supposed to trust them to bring, why, what a lot of hard-nosed realism we'd get then, wouldn't we? There would be no rush - in the boardroom - to talk about Champions League, world class talent, and 45,000 capacity - if they were HELD to it.
If the authorities fined the people at the Club (personally, not on QPR's tab), say £20 million for each reference to the Club being debt-free, for each reference to QPR in the Champions League, and so on.
They wouldn't be telling us what a great bunch of people they had around them then, and how much they trusted the manager. If the authorities made them put a figure on it, and put it down as a deposit, so the Club wouldn't be out of pocket when it turned out that the manager was, once again, unable to cope with a Club run by people like them.
If managers were paid whenever we won, because THEY trusted THEIR OWN judgement, that would be different, QPR could afford to take the risk. As it is, if things go the way they usually do, they'll all be gone, still wealthy, while QPR can't even make a small profit, no matter how much Premier League money and parachute payments is swilling around.
This is a sport where even the biggest Clubs are failures most of the time. For a Club like QPR, just one of a huge number of wannabes of more or less the same size and level of achievement, it makes far more sense to tell us that it is vanishingly unlikely that any expedient - short of sheer genius and sheer brilliance - will make very much difference. Success, even under Gregory, and such as it was, was brief. No sooner had we a good squad with a good manager than the manager was gone, the squad was falling apart, and we were dropping down the table again.
Sure, we can achieve far more than Leicester are managing this season. We can dominate the English game. It is possible. But any Club can. IF it has the required geniuses off the pitch and the required brilliance on it. And we won't need the Chairman to tell us. We can see all we need to know. Dazzling performances, unparalleled success, we'll spot that at once - I feel sure of it.
If Fernandes had been here 10 years, won 8 Premier League titles and 5 Champions League, and said 'I'm rubbish, I have no idea, I've made no difference at all', there would be reason not to believe him. He must have been doing SOMETHING RIGHT we would say. Because no other Chairman got anywhere near achieving what he achieved. Even if his technique was only 'masterly inactivity'. Whatever it was, we'd say, it WORKS.
So why is it so wrong, when things haven't gone well, to suggest he hasn't a clue? It WOULD be perverse to deny he didn't know what he was doing in the face of obvious success. So why does it make so much sense to suppose he does in the face of obvious failure?
QPR is run like a homeowner who has a leaky tap. We don't get Chairmen on the basis that they have a track record of plugging leaks, which is what we need. We don't even get Chairmen with the sense to turn the stopcock off to prevent further damage!
What we get are people who ask us to feel sorry for them because they have to run a Club that is underwater.
And even if someone does have the nous to hire a plumber, rather than merely another boardroom member who has OPINIONS about plumbers, merely stopping the leak won't transform anything else about the Club, any more than it will repair the long term flood damage.
We do the opinions. We have plenty of them, and we don't harm the Club by doing so.
It is often said that we're lucky to have TF. If we're so lucky when the Club has done so badly, what if he had done well? Would that make us unlucky? It is often said that when he embarks on a course of action, he's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't, but that isn't usually what people say of professionals, people with talent, a track record, or relevant qualifications. If they're hired to do the job, by people who know who is capable of doing the job, and they do it, then it isn't a question of damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
That only applies to people who don't have any idea what to do, so - indeed - they ARE damned if they do and damned if they don't, because they don't know how to make anything work. Of course, TF and the boys may all come good in the end.
Great. And when they do, then we'll know, and then we praise them for what they've achieved. Rather than try to guess how good they're going to be, and pretend we know how much praise to heap upon them for their future achievements.
It might be reasonable for the wannabe critics to wait until we know a manager or a chairman is really making a pig's ear of it. But if that is so, it is also reasonable for their wannabe admirers as well. If it is too early to judge, it's isn't only too early to run them down, it's also too early to big them up.
JFH seems to be getting results. But it's early days. Not just for the critics, but for the admirers. And he must get results. If he doesn't, he's gone, as most, if not all, of the managers we've had who've done well have been. Especially managers who've done well, we might say. Stock, Jago, Sexton, Venables, Holloway and Warnock were all gone within barely a season of their most significant achievement at the Club, for one reason or another.
TF hasn't demonstrated faith in any manager through a long period of adversity yet. I think the supporters would back a manager who was able to show us that we were constantly improving, even if it was only very gradually.
But it is much easier to persuade people you're good if you achieve spectacularly good results almost from the off. Jim Gregory did. People like Clough and Taylor, Ramsey, Revie, Shankly and Paisley (once they were able to sign a couple of players), Jock Stein too, I think.
Slight improvements may well go unnoticed, especially if they have little impact on results, because there are so many other factors to take into consideration.
Compared to the managers he has sacked in quick succession, TF gets off lightly. He's still there, year in, year out. But, of course, it doesn't do his reputation any good, because he's stuck with the consequences of his own decisions.
Perhaps he should have sacked himself, and kept Hughes, so Hughes's reputation, rather than his own, would have been damaged by living with the consequences of his own mistakes.
Instead, he let Hughes go, Hughes made a new beginning at Stoke, free and clear of whatever damage Hughes left behind at QPR, and he appears to be doing all right.
His record was okay before, too. Like Redknapp's, not THAT great. But not that bad either. So it may be that the problem lies in the boardroom, where the more unsuccessful QPR became, the bigger the big talk became. With Thompson, we were glad we didn't have to sell the ground. With Wright, we were going to be financial big shots. Instead, we just lost money hand over fist. Thompson took us down, Wright took us down again. The bigger our losses, the more absurd the PR. From the Wright dream, we went to Champions League, according to Briatore, and according to Bhatia.
There doesn't seem to be any engagement with the reality of the game. They're happy to tell us that the Club just doesn't generate the money to compete, but they don't develop the football side based on the limitations they're quick to point out when it suits them.
Instead, they're bragging that we're debt-free when we aren't, that we're signing quality when we weren't, that we need a huge ground when we don't, that we're Champions League when we're not even in the top flight.
Boasts, excuses, promises, and the failure to deliver on any of them. That's why so many supporters don't believe TF. Not that it is just him. The supporters didn't believe most of his predecessors either, once we'd had a chance to see if their punching power matched up to the scale of their pretensions.
And the supporters were proved right. It's the same rule for him as for JFH. Win. And admiration - not to mention astonishment - will be forthcoming at once. If we have to persuade ourselves - or be persuaded by a Chairman - that not winning means the same thing, no-one will be fooled.
Maybe TF doesn't know what to do. He could set about finding out, of course, but when has any of our Chairmen ever done that. Arrived as a novice, and spent a decade or more just learning the game? We wouldn't be impressed with lawyers who didn't know the law, or milkmen who didn't know how to deliver the milk.
If Chairmen don't know, why don't they find out? And if it is a hard game to learn, and we can't expect them to admit that, as it implies possible failure, then it is up to us to point out where things are likely to go wrong.
It's what they're supposed to do, but they don't seem to do it. And the supporters have always been the last ditch defence against the pretensions of Chairmen, as Gregory and Bulstrode and Marler and Wright found out when they clashed with the fans about mergers and groundsharing and all the other last refuges of the incompetent.
TF will be judged by his results. In that sense, football is an easy game. Just win, just be brilliant, and just keep doing it.
If that is impossible, they might try being more honest. They have nothing to lose because incompetence is obvious at once in an environment as abrasive as football. |
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Reply | Tweets, training grounds and tickets - Tony Fernandes interview
at 22:37 26 Feb 2016
Yeah, great thread, excellent interview by Clive, and quality posts from Neil, FredMan, Brian and others too numerous to mention.
Puzzling though.
At QPR, when we need a quality manager, or quality players, why is it the case that we just get someone who knows nothing about them, but who has any number of OPINIONS about these things? I know lawyers aren't exactly popular, but nonetheless, if you feel you need one, do you hire a qualified member of the profession? Someone with a track record of doing this kind of work? And an indemnity fund behind him so if he screws it up, HE'S out of pocket (or his insurers are). Not you.
Or do you get someone isn't a lawyer, but merely dislikes them.
The world is full of people who don't like them. Just as the world is full of people with opinions about football. We have tens of thousands of them supporting QPR. Those thousands of supporters can do the opinions. There are far more of them, their combined intelligence, understanding of the game, and of QPR, is many millions of times that of any member of any 'Board of Directors', and their views don't cripple the Club if they're found to be inadequate, uninformed, misconceived.
If the Club has a leaky tap, why does it end up, not with a plumber, who knows how to fix it, but someone who has no idea how to do so, but who spends YEARS telling us how difficult it has all been for HIM. How the Club just doesn't have enough money, when what is needed is a householder with the nous to turn the water off at the mains until SOMEONE WITH A BRAIN turns up who knows how to FIX THE PROBLEM.
No doubt the lack of money has something to do with all these leaky taps. And all the people doing legal and accounting and other work who, naturally, have no qualifications or experience.
Maybe that is the logic of it. The Club gets people who are adept at CREATING chaos, because what is GENERATED by the chaos is actually OWNED by the people who create it. Whether it is in the form of debt, or, if the latest story is to be believed, in the form of shares, which, while they will be a liability to the Club if the next owner must spend vast sums acquiring them, remain an ASSET to the outgoing Owner looking to sell them on.
Perhaps if the CLUB were to get something for ITSELF out of all these people, then things might be different. Will QPR own the new ground? Will their be enormous profits, which QPR will also own? Sponsorship, which will all come to QPR? If not, why? Why should we believe Fernandes REPRESENTS QPR if QPR is never the beneficiary of what he does?
Do his lawyers charge him for legal advice they give themselves, while taking for themselves benefits or profits that may result from the advice they're charging him for?
We hear this kind of thing all the time. This time everyone can be trusted. This time they're here until things are all sorted out. So this time, the tap won't just go on drip, drip, dripping. Flooding the place. Rotting the fabric.
While we go on hearing, week in week out, how difficult it is to run a Club which is underwater.
If we have the right people, and he knows that - he doesn't seem too sure himself, I notice - why all the excuses? Why not a triumphant roll-call of success, benefits and money accruing to the Club? Why does the process of getting things right always look so indistinguishable from getting them wrong again?
Do TF's employees and advisers go on telling him how wonderful everything will be for him, despite his never deriving any of the promised benefits from their work or their advice?
And does HE swallow all that? Or does he INSIST on getting what he pays for. If that is how he runs his businesses, maybe we shouldn't be surprised that our Champions League place and the world class talent required to achieve it hasn't quite arrived in the post yet, and Amazon haven't delivered the 45,000 fans to fill the wonder-ground which we were supposed to have by now.
Is that abandoned? Are we to believe the promises of a better tomorrow because the last lot of promises didn't come true?
When, exactly, WILL anyone feel OBLIGED to deliver? More to the point, what are the sanctions if they don't?
And when will our supporters get THEIR money back?
If previous regimes had known what they were talking about, they would have told us that it was almost certain the Club would get nothing. It would be very unlikely that anything they did would be of any value to QPR, although they would get big payoffs themselves when they sold up. It was unlikely QPR would end up owning anything, while they themselves remained wealthy and owned THEIR homes and other assets.
If we're scaling down our operations, why not be realistic? He can leave a little hypothetical window that says anything impressive is vanishingly unlikely to happen, but why don't the supporters go on pumping money into the Club just on the off chance that it might? [Post edited 26 Feb 2016 22:58]
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Reply | Hibs
at 14:46 1 Feb 2016
Yeah, nice one (and one in the eye for the Jambos). Hope the boys can rise to it on the day and it's on it's way to Leith. |
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