The microphone disaster at Loftus Road on Sunday provided a reassuring hand on the shoulder for those who think our club is about change beyond all recognition

Welcome to the new QPR, same as the old QPR
You had to laugh really. There were more than 16,000 QPR fans inside Loftus Road on Sunday, most doing as they were told and taking their seats early for the 're-launch' of their club. The sun was shining, the ground was packed, there were Hoops everywhere. The feel good factor threatened to lift the stadium clean off the ground and float it away.

By half past one the pitch was a hive of activity. The players of QPR and West Brom warmed up at either end while in the middle preparations began for the big moment. A long royal blue carpet was stretched out from the tunnel to the centre circle with what looked like giant speakers positioned on either side. In front of the Ellerslie Road stand fireworks were prepared and down in front of the dug outs a scrum of the world's media, inspired by outlandish morning reports that Zinedine Zidane was about to be presented as the club's new manager, was in full swing with everybody trying to get the best shot.

Nobody was quite sure what was going to happen and we waited with baited breath as the man from London Tonight did his piece to camera down by the tunnel. Suddenly it all began. Billy Rice, reading from a script, announced that this was the start of a new era for Queens Park Rangers and everybody cheered a bit. It's hard to tell where one era ends and another begins, no matter how many times you might try and force the end of one and the start of another, but essentially since 1995 we've been in the "thoroughly shit" era at Loftus Road and consequently a little bit of cheering is to be expected as it's declared finally over. You could almost hear the weather worn Rangers fans exhaling and saying "thank God for that" although in fairness most of the more well travelled QPR supporters were still in the bar at this stage and it was quite hard to hear them up in the stand.

Then out came Stan Bowles, Gerry Francis, Les Ferdinand and Paul Parker. They got the usual warm applause but that was immediately interrupted but two huge jets of flame erupting from what I'd originally thought were giant speakers down on the pitch. The heat of the things nearly took my eyebrows off in F block so I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be much closer. They nearly induced a stroke in Stanley and Gerry looked like he'd be requiring a change of pants afterwards as well.

After almost killing two of the club's most celebrated former greats it was time for the big announcement. Not the appointment of Zidane despite the more "in the know" members of the message board community being "able to confirm" that news earlier in the day, but the unveiling of our new club crest. Members of the Junior R's unfurled a king size bed spread with the new motif on and then took it down to the School End to show the hoards of bemused West Brom fans, most of them dressed as Scooby Doo.

Then the moment we've been waiting for since he bought the club, Flavio emerged onto the blue carpet and, trailed by the world's media, made his way out to the centre circle to address the crowd. Those that fear the new era and hate the badge and deep down probably wish we were still skint and rubbish and at death's door just so they could have something to moan about need not fear. As Flavio took the microphone from Billy Rice and started to speak to us it was clear that something was wrong and after a few seconds everybody realised that the curse of the QPR microphone had struck again.

Like a returning villain in Batman cartoons the QPR microphone rears its head a couple of times a year, often at the worst possible moment and just when you'd forgotten all about the last time. It denied 90% of the people who attended last year's AGM the opportunity to hear anything anybody said, it regularly strikes at the Player of the Year dinner forcing most guests to sit and listen to a lot of mumbling for 20 minutes before Martin Rowlands stands up and everybody applauds, and now just as we were about to hear what our leader had to say it struck again. We may have a board worth the thick end of £30billion but we can't find a microphone that works or, even more embarrassingly, a back up. Now we'll never know what Flav had to say - who knows he could have been keen to announce and exciting merger opportunity with Fulham. We'll just never know. I suspect a horse's head may be in the back of a DHL lorry somewhere as I write this, speeding towards the home of whoever's responsible for the Loftus Road sound system.

Afterwards I met with Ali Russell, essentially the club's Chief Executive, who was lured down from Hearts earlier this season. Anybody that can deal with Mr Romanov must have some serious skill and patience in the business and sporting world and Russell is certainly very experienced and approachable. He spoke of a keenness to communicate properly with the fans and stated a desire to meet with me and the other website/fanzine editors regularly for feedback in both directions. All sounds good to me and it's an excellent idea and gesture to have the website and fanzine people down to the club for introductions and getting to know you sessions as I had on Sunday. Thanks to Mr Russell for his time and effort.

But amongst all this glamour, full houses, new badges, fireworks, flame throwers, professional approach, open lines of communication it's reassuring to know that QPR is still essentially QPR. It may have been annoying and embarrassing at the time, but like a comfy old arm chair or a child's security blanket the microphone disaster was strangely reassuring as well. As the Champions League winning QPR team is introduced to the crowd in years to come it would be lovely to think that Billy would still be down there, frantically shaking the microphone up and down and tapping it on the palm of his hand as it cuts out between the names of Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo.

You R's. Onwards and upwards.

Alas poor Olly, we knew him well
While QPR proclaimed the start of a new era, a key figure from the recent past at our club was enduring an even worse afternoon than the microphone man at Loftus Road. Few can have taken pleasure from watching Ian Holloway on the Championship on Sunday night, barely able to answer the questions put to him after Leicester's relegation and eventually sloping off down a dark corridor admitting he'd never felt more devastated.

Ian is of course a modern day legend at QPR, winning us our first promotion in a quarter of a century at Hillsborough in 2004 and being carried aloft by his players in front of the 8000 travelling Rangers fans that day. He put together a QPR team that cared about wht it was doing, and that was a breath of fresh air to the fans who'd suffered the antics of the likes of Ready, Morrow and Kiwomya before he arrived. QPR made steady progress every year under his management, although some of his harsher critics say he had enough time to save us from relegation in 2000/01 when he took over in the Spring. Time yes, tools no.

He built a new side while we were in admin, stopped the rot, took us to the play offs and then to promotion. He consolidated our position back in the Championship and even had us in the thick of the play off hunt for a while. The following season we regressed slightly though, the first time we'd done so with him in charge. He made poor signings like Mad Dog Doherty and Stefan 'paper bags in the park' Moore and although the R's made a good start by Christmas we were heading in the wrong direction and playing some really terrible football.

He divided opinion among the supporters almost as much as he'd united them in his first three years in charge. Some said he was doing the best in a bad situation, others said he'd taken us as far as he could and needed to be replaced. In the end they were both sort of right - Holloway was incapable of taking us beyond mid-table, but with the financial restrictions in place at QPR at that time nobody was capable of doing any better than he did. While I certainly didn't appreciate travelling down to London on a Tuesday night to see a meek and pathetic surrender to Leicester City only to have Holloway point an accusing finger at me and others who'd predicted a defeat on the message boards I felt he was harshly done to when he was finally removed - and the subsequent collapse under Gary Waddock underlined just how well he was doing in difficult circumstances. When you've got Rangers fans hoping we lose to Luton Bastard Town because it will bring the manager closer to the sack you know your days are numbered I suppose.

After a protracted and embarrassing gardening leave saga Holloway pitched up at Plymouth and over two season built up a super little side by scowering Europe and coming up with the likes of Halmosi, Timar and Seip. Again he seemed incapable of taking a team much beyond mid table at this level, although Plymouth knocked on the play off door at the start of this season, but the Argyle fans loved him and had good reason to.

This season though opinion started to turn against the fiery Bristolian in all quarters. He moaned at the Plymouth fans for not turning up in big enough numbers to support his squad building technique - which has always been based on quantity over quality. He lambasted the Argyle board for their strict wage structure and budget constraints, he came out in jealous rages when QPR came into money accusing us of paying Scott Sinclair £20,000 a week just for a loan. Barely a week went by when he wasn't mouthing off about one thing or another that didn't concern him. Meanwhile behind the scenes he was hitting the self destruct button with his Plymouth team: David Norris was promised a transfer window move, Akos Buzsaky was off loaded as an unsettling dressing room influence, the chance to negotiate a contract clause that was eventually capitalised on by Wolves out of Sylvain Ebanks Blake's contract was passed up.

He became well known at QPR for his humorous outbursts but his tedious BBC column and propensity to repeat old gags, the 'badger in mating season' line seemed to get rolled out after every single victory, made him tiresome. And then he shot his mouth off once too often. "There's no way I'd go to Leicester, everybody knows what Plymouth means to me, you'd have to be an idiot to think I'd go there." Five days later he was gone. Fom hero to villain in one fell swoop.

He apologised, but followed that up with some nonsense about being King Lear after years of acting in Eastenders - quick insult to Plymouth, QPR and Bristol Rovers there in one line.

I remember after his sacking at QPR a special issue of 'In The Loft' was released, seemingly with the expressed intention of slaughtering him. Clearly the editor didn't have much time for him and made that plain, I don't think I ever made it to the end of that magazine - at the time I disagreed with just about every word but it seems I just had a higher tolerance threshold than him for bullshit because looking back now I can see exactly where the guy was coming from.

Like I say, hard not to feel sympathy for Holloway this week, but equally difficult not to feel that he's brought it all on himself. He left a job for life at a club chasing the play offs to take up a position at one of the division's worst sides for monetary purposes. Money to spend on players, money to go in his wallet, and he made no secret of that. He mocked the former clubs at which he'd made his name and then proceeded to spend his first ever sizeable transfer budget on the same useless old cloggers he'd always chased after when his club's were skint. Barry Hayles was bought from Plymouth and Steve Howard from Derby. Matt Oakley came in from Pride Park as well, and Lee Hendrie from Sheff Utd. And Leicester got worse, and worse and worse.

Holloway had Hayles playing right wing within three weeks - surely now with money to spend there was no need for any more of this square pegs and round holes business that infuriated the QPR fans so much. I mean Georges Santos up front and Steve Palmer in midfield was barely forgivable at QPR when we had no other option but to celebrate finally having some money to spend and then still playing a 36 year old striker wide on the right made Olly look daft. Leicester were abysmal when they came to Loftus Road and easily beaten.

The Leicester fans lambasted him for taking both his strikers off and replacing them with midfielders out of position when drawing 0-0 with Bristol City - Holloway gave them a mouth full back when he should have admitted his mistake. He celebrated a last minute winner against Crystal Palace in the worst game of football ever played like he'd won the World Cup Final and as the Foxes slipped closer and closer to the bottom three he still found time once a week to produce 2000 words for the BBC on such topics as "why do Easter eggs taste better than normal chocolate". As a lesson in winning friends and influencing people it left a lot to be desired.

The 'badger in mating season' bollocks got a final airing after a 1-0 win at Barnsley three games before the end of the season but Leicester's last three home games were against Colchester (bottom), Scunthorpe (second bottom) and Sheff Wed (third bottom) and after only managing to win one of those the writing was on the wall. Southampton's win at the weekend relegated the Foxes after they did everything but score at Stoke and ended up with a draw.

The sack now surely awaits. He'll get another job, managers can live off promotions for decades and he's certainly got plenty of credit left from taking us up, but I sense his flaws may well come back to haunt him again and again. Holloway's success is based around motivation, team spirit and loyalty. As QPR fans saw all too clearly in the 'behind the scenes' coverage of our preparation for the Blackburn cup game, when few if any of the players appeared to be listening as Olly and Breaker told them how to cope with the suspended Stephen Reid, after a while the same messages of motivation and commitment start to wear thin. Sooner or later you need tactics and intelligence, something Holloway has shown a distinct lack of this season.

When, and it is when, he returns to football I only hope he's taken on board what Mark Hughes said after that cup match at Ewood Park. Less of the comedy, less of the BBC columns, less of the poking fun, jibing and bitching about QPR and his other previous clubs and more managing and focus on the task in hand. Perhaps if he'd done that this season Leicester wouldn't have been relegated or, far more sensibly, he would never have left Plymouth in the first place.

...and finally
With the unfortunate defeat to West Brom bringing the curtain down on another eventful season at Loftus Road it's time once again to give a few acknowledgments and thankyous to the various people who've helped with the website over the past 12 months.

It's been a real season of change at Loftus Road - from the worst team in the league and bankrupt to the "richest club in the world" and promotion favourites for next season almost overnight. I cannot remember being so excited about a new season so early in the summer as I am now, normally I need a good month or so just to recover from the stress of it all but to be honest I'd start the new campaign this Saturday if I could.

There has also been plenty of transition at LoftforWords resulting in some long sleepless nights and "if you don't put that f---ing lap top down in a minute I'm going to crack you over the head with it" themed arguments at LFW Towers in sunny Sheffield. Back in the spring of 2007 BSkyB purchased Rivals as part of a package that also saw them take over Teamtalk, 365 and a number of other sports sites. This, on the face of it, was good news as Rivals had been allowed to drift as a network by the previous owners, UKBetting, and was technically flawed to the point of being permanently broken - regularly crashing offline for days at a time.

Sky papered over the cracks in the technical side of things and set about redesigning the sites - again good news on the face of it with Rivals really starting to look its age as well as falling apart at the seams. It soon became apparent though that what Sky wanted from Rivals and what the publishers and users wanted were a million miles apart. The initial designs were like a football themed Facebook and the message boards were an embarrassment. That, and the "we won't be designing by committee" reply to the publisher's concerns, spawned this ClubFanzine network and back in August, on the eve of the Bristol City game, I agreed to move LFW here.

Never again. Joining a new network is certainly no fun, the site didn't work, the users weren't happy, it was a mess. In the end I had to go cap in hand back to Rivals - not pleasant. At least the defection seemed to kick Sky up the backside a little bit as the new site design was scrapped and better consultation with publishers promised. It was something of a surprise then in October to be shown one screen shot of the new Rivals sites, which as we all now know look like the creation of a mentally deranged four year old with a wax crayon, and told it would be launching in one week and we should start transferring content. The new Rivals sites are, in my opinion, horrible. They're slow to load, look amateurish and the message boards are dire. It was clear from the drop off in traffic that you all felt the same and with that in mind, and the way Sky forced a launch on me on the day of the Palace home game when I was in London for two days nowhere near my computer, had me all ready to jack it all in for good.

Under persuasion from QPRReport I set up a temporary board to keep the community together and then after Christmas moved here again - by this point the teething problems had been ironed out and we now have the site you see before you today. Not perfect, but getting there and sure to improve with big plans for next season including, hopefully, video content by August.

From a website point of view it's been a season of kicks in the teeth from clueless executives in ivory towers who think they know best. Going from having the busiest QPR website to nothing at all was a pretty humbling experience and trying to sort the mess out while I was supposed to be enjoying Christmas was not fun.

I'm going to start by thanking my long suffering girlfriend Sarah for putting up with my bad moods and late nights during the aborted site move, the Rivals relaunch fiasco and finally the move here. She's admitted to a loathing for my lap top recently, can't say I blame her, so I try not to turn my back for too long in case she goes all Glenn Close on me and whacks in the oven on a high heat but she's been superbly supportive all season so a massive thankyou for that.

Thanks also to Stuart (Northern the Elder) for his sound advice both over the summer when we first looked to move away from Rivals, and over Christmas when I was miserable and wanted to give it all up. He's never given me a piece of bad advice yet and that remains the case. Thanks also to Neil SI, WatfordR and Smiffy for the shoulders to cry on, lengthy MSN and e-mail chats and ultimately kick up the arse to get going again.

Thanks to the writers who provide such superbly researched and written copy for this site, often when they really do have more important things to be getting on with. Sam Hill, Brian Power, Ashleigh Rose, David Price, Nathan McAllister, Anthony Harris and Bosh67 have all written some superb stuff for LFW in its various guises over the past 12 months and deserve huge credit. I very much hope they'll all be back next season.

Special thanks, kisses and bowing must go to Tracy Stent. Match previews, match reports, AGM and POTY write ups, message board posts - the woman is a QPR treasure and really must win supporter of the year sooner rather than later. This site really couldn't survive in its current form without her, she's superb.

Tony Gibson has also stuck with us through some tough times - writing excellent news copy, putting up with me during the winter, and treating me to a large night out in Blackpool as well. Huge thankyou to him. Cheers mate. If you get a chance, visit Tony's blog by clicking here The extra traffic may help to make up in some small way for all the texts I send him at work asking him to do stories for us!

Thankyou also to all the users of the message board. We've already signed up more members than many of the other QPR message boards and our topics total is hurtling towards that of sites that have been round twice as long as we have. With a million page impressions a month give or take we're certainly making great strides and it's all down to the loyalty and perseverance of you lot out there so thanks for sticking with us. If you haven't posted on the message board before, sign up and get stuck in. You'll find it makes the working day so much more bearable.

If I've missed anybody out then I apologise, I reserve the right to discreetly add names to this article as they come to me! Over the summer we've got the usual comprehensive season reviews and previews planned, as well as a Euro 2008 diary with sweepstake so look out for that. We'll also be running a series of 'Top Fives' where we attempt to find the best and worst of QPR over the years - we'll be looking for your help with that feature as well. I'm also hoping that the fans' vox pop will return once the fixtures have been released in June. There may well be a redesign of certain aspects of the site and initial ideas and screen shots from the developers look very encouraging. Video content for the start of next season is also in the pipeline, although don't worry it won't be my ugly mug staring back at you from the lens side of the camera.

Just finally, thanks to Dave Thomas not only for keeping us all entertained with the superb AKUTRs, but also for plucking me off the terrace at Colchester and taking me home when I'd gone down there with no way of getting back like the bloody silly fool that I am.

Looking forward to doing it all again next season.

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