QPR remained quiet on transfer deadline day, which is more than can be said for the presenters on Sky Sports News, but with Akos Buzsaky ready to return we're nicely set ahead of a busy few weeks.

All quiet on the Western Avenue
Well our owners have stuck to their guns. There will be no outlandish spending on players, no massive transfer fees, no hoards of new arrivals, no big names on a final pay day – we will be building slowly, with young talent, and we will be doing it cheaply where possible. I particularly enjoyed a thread on our message board on deadline day that asked why there was still a light on at Loftus Road at half past 11, “Cleaner forgot to turn it off” came the response. Funny because it’s true.

Despite the hilarious suggestion that Fraizer Campbell was about to sign on loan, 12 minutes later he joined Spurs, QPR promised to be quiet on deadline day and were as good as their word. Some haven’t been as content with that as I am – there’s been much swearing and cursing that Martin Cranie has gone on loan to Charlton despite most QPR fans showing a willingness to walk bare footed to Portsmouth and carry him back to W12 on their backs, and there’s disappointment among fans who actually believed we were in for Campbell and stood any chance at all despite five other Premiership clubs bidding for him.

For me though I’m in my ‘2-1 away defeat’ mood – I didn’t expect us to get anything, and we didn’t, so I’m not happy but I’m not surprised. Quite philosophical I’d say.

Had we gone to Bristol City and repeated our abomination of a performance from the Sheff Utd match I’d have wanted new signings on Monday, and lots of them. But the more we play the more I think that afternoon at Bramall Lane is going to be looked back on as an exception rather than a rule. We’ve changed the system since then and looked good doing it, we’ve beaten two poor teams easily and got a point against a good side away from home playing a man light for half a game. Sadly I was on a kamikaze mission with my ‘other woman’ Hull FC on Saturday so missed the trip to Ashton Gate but the reports I have heard have been positive.

After Sheffield United I said we needed Cranie and Nugent, and certainly those two would push us into top three contention I think. But do we really want to go up this season? We must be wary of a promotion too soon – just ask Derby County. Nugent turned down a move to Wigan on Monday so it seems clear that his motivation lies solely in money rather than actually playing any football so maybe we’re best off without him. Besides Dexter Blackstock has scored seven in 12 now and is in terrific form – I’m not yet convinced by him but I see little point in dropping an in form, young striker we own for one we’ve loaned in and have little chance of signing like Nugent or Campbell. And since the fabulous Matt Connolly moved back to centre half I haven’t thought about Cranie once to be honest.

We lack cover at full back and up front but we’re nicely set for a good top half finish I think, and that’s fine by me as part of a three year plan.

People also spoke a lot about Ben Watson on Monday, largely because Neil Warnock said at the weekend that Watson had turned down Nottingham Forest and wants to come to QPR. Sadly for Watson we don’t need him at the moment, while Palace were pissing us about on that front we signed Parejo and Ledesma and with Mahon, Leigertwood and Rowlands in good form and Bolder, Ephraim and others waiting in the wings we’re pretty well off in that position. This time next year when Parejo has gone home we can pick Watson up at the end of his contract and make Palace pay for playing silly buggers.

Effectively we actually have a new signing ready to go against Southampton, a bloody good one at that. Akos Buzsaky is back in full training and featured for the reserves against Charlton on Tuesday. I think we forget just how good this boy is and I can’t wait to see him back out there. He is the division’s outstanding attacking player as far as I’m concerned bar none. I’d play him behind Blackstock with Parejo and Ledesma with Mahon and Rowlands further back although Dowie seems to have the horn for Mikele Leigertwood so I doubt we’ll see that. Buzsaky will play somewhere though, he’s far too good not to – Lee Cook’s position looks vulnerable to me at the moment as he can still be, kindly, described as ‘finding his feet’ after an injury hit season. We won’t be talking about Ben Watson if the Hungarian gets back firing on all cylinders I’m sure.

This little team of ours that’s shaping up quite nicely at the moment for me faces a two week break now followed by a hectic period of seven games, four of them away, in less than three weeks. Sandwiched in between two televised games with Southampton and Birmingham are five other matches including a trip to Aston Villa in the League Cup.

We were at Villa Park just three seasons ago in this competition and in truth were comprehensively outplayed by David O’Leary’s team who never really got out of second gear. Having Nolberto Solano in the team was more than enough to deal with us and the night ended up being dominated by events off the pitch rather than those on it. I’d hope that over the course of 90 minutes we’ve improved sufficiently to give a better account of ourselves this time around although Villa have improved immeasurably themselves and are a team I love to watch so all in all, despite my pleas for a game I could drive to after work in Derby being answered, I’d prefer to have seen us take them on at Loftus Road rather than Villa Park where we could be on a hiding to nothing. It will be interesting to see how our team goes in that one and Villa have even more games over the next three weeks than we do, including UEFA Cup trips abroad, so they may send out a scratch side.

I remember on our last visit there were a lot of people in the away end I didn’t recognise as regulars at QPR away games, or any QPR game for that matter, who seemed to be there purely for some aggro. There was an unpleasant atmosphere throughout and it kicked off massively afterwards with tragic consequences. West Midlands Police, traditionally the most obnoxious and inept force we have to encounter on our journeys around the country with QPR, had that down as a low category event and basically sent a couple of community support officers to police the 30,000 crowd. You can bet they’ll be out in force this time, and I dare say there will be a few Villa fans who feel they have a score to settle.

Here’s hoping for no repeat of what happened on or off the pitch three years ago – it’s an attractive tie on paper and hopefully on the Thursday morning we’ll be talking about the football, a good QPR performance, and nothing else.

Happier times and future worries
I stumbled across an old video the other day that had various QPR clips and matches on, including our 2-1 victory against Liverpool live on Sky on a Monday night in 1994.

That match is always remembered as the one that finished Gerry Francis at QPR because despite the victory, and one two days earlier against Aston Villa, he walked out because of Richard Thompson’s insistence that Rodney Marsh should come in above him as a Director of Football. It’s easy to forget about the actual performance and victory that night against the backdrop of Rodney up in the South Africa Road stand adjusting his QPR scarf, but it really was a super show from Rangers.

From first to last we were in the faces of the Liverpool team and just when it appeared that we’d tired a second wind blew up and Sir Les broke Liverpool’s seemingly unmerciful offside trap to stride through and win the game. I hadn’t originally planned to sit down and watch the whole thing but I actually found myself captivated by just how good QPR were, time dulls the memory of the quality of people like Ferdinand, Gallen, Sinclair, McDonald and even Steve Hodge really were.

The QPR team that played that year and the two or three seasons before was the best I’ve ever seen. Although I come across as a grumpy old man I am in fact only 23 and my first season as a regular down at Rangers was 1992/93. We’ve never scaled the heights we managed that season since (maybe it’s something to do with me?) but I actually read a post on our message board recently, and on the Indy R’s site I think it was, that said the team that finished fifth in the Premiership under Gerry Francis actually under achieved by not finishing higher or going for one of the cups.

I’ve always idolised and aspired to that team in my mind and it was a point of view I’d never seen expressed before but it could well be a fair one. Obviously Man Utd won the league that season as you’d expect but the other three teams above us were Aston Villa, Norwich and Blackburn and looking at those three sides all these years later it would be fair to say that a team with the country’s best centre forward in it, not to mention two other England internationals, the outstanding goal keeper from Italia 90 and so on could have actually done better than it did.

Watching the season video for that season back again, as I of course had to do with all these thoughts washing around in my head, it’s amazing how many points we threw away. I mean it’s easy, and right, to remember Les’ double hat trick over Easter, Wilkins’ chipped goal at Wimbledon and things like that but it’s also easy to forget how many times we lost stupid games live on Sky, Darren Peacock falling over at Aston Villa, Tony Roberts letting a 40 yarder go through his legs at Ipswich, losing 1-0 at eventually relegated Nottingham Forest and so on.

It’s highly unlikely that teams like QPR and Norwich will ever make the top five of the Premiership again. In fact it’s highly unlikely that Blackburn or Aston Villa ever will again despite the fact that they’re only three or four places away based on last season and their start to this one. The top four are just so far ahead in terms of finance now that the rest of us have no chance at all of ever being champion of this country unless you strike a pot of gold as Man City have this week and that’s pretty sad if you ask me. Despite our wealthy backing we’ll never manage it again I don’t think – Bernie Ecclestone admitted as much in his interview with the BBC at the weekend.

Still we’re told the Premiership is the best and most entertaining league in the world and the viewing figures and performance in Europe of our teams would suggest that is true – however I really don’t see what we have now as a sustainable situation. We have the second least competitive league in Europe behind Scotland with everybody already knowing the top four before the season has even kicked off – on what we’ve seen so far this season even Arsenal and Liverpool are now struggling to keep pace so we could well have a Scottish situation where the title for the next decade or more just alternates between Chelsea and Man Utd. We also have the most expensive ticket prices in Europe. I find myself wondering how long grounds will be sold out when, just for example, it will cost a Father the thick end of £100 to take his son to Stamford Bridge to watch Chelsea play Portsmouth on day one – a match with a predictable result and one that’s on the television anyway.

On Sunday I treated, if that can possibly be the right word, myself to Spurs v Chelsea followed by Aston Villa and Liverpool. Both of these games ended in draws and three of the four teams fielded just one striker with varying degrees of support. In the first match Tottenham had men stacked behind the ball and relied on ever decreasing counter attacks before celebrating a point like a victory at the end. Gus Poyet was even congratulated by the interviewer afterwards. Yeh, congratulations Gus, two more points dropped.

That was nothing compared to Aston Villa v Liverpool in the afternoon though. Both teams set out to sit deep and soak up pressure, but of course with them both doing that there was actually no pressure to soak up. Both decided that the inevitable nil nil draw was fine by them and so the television viewers endured ninety minutes of them kicking the ball backwards and forwards at each other waiting for the final whistle. It was turgid.

It seems to me that with the foreign coaches and players we’ve brought into this country, the money we have available for such meagre achievements as finishing 17th in the Premiership, and the fact that you only have to finish fourth to get in the “Champions” league we’ve created a situation similar to the one English television viewers used to hate when watching the Spanish and Italian matches. The emphasis is massively weighted in favour of not losing a game, rather than going out to win it.

The majority of matches are now played between two teams with one striker, intent on not losing first and foremost and maybe winning should the chance present itself. It kills me every time I see Rafa Benitez, allegedly one of the finest coaches in this country, standing on the touchline and constantly telling his team “get narrower, get tighter.” I always though the idea was to get wider, and get good quality service into a striker but then I grew up watching Sinton, Sinclair and Impey. In the modern game they’d probably be used as support to a lone front man. Liverpool always look lost to me when they need to win a match – especially so against Standard Liege last week. They’re so accustomed to going for a draw and hoping for a win that when they need to overturn an aggregate deficit or something similar they’re not sure how to go about it.

After the Chelsea and Villa games I settled in for Numancia 1 Barcelona 0 and Deportivo 2 Real Madrid 1 in the evening. Both superb games, high octane, all action, between four sides going all out for a win. It was nothing like the Spanish football I recall from five years ago and more – the players were in each others’ faces, flying into tackles and playing at a frightening pace. It was like an old style English match. Although Barcelona and Real Madrid dominate in that country there is still a good chance that somebody like Valenica, Villareal, Deportivo and other clubs like this can not only break into the top four but win the league outright, and all three of them have done so in the last decade.

The Premiership games I’ve seen so far this season have been so much less entertaining than the ones I’ve seen in Spain I’ve scarcely believed it. The style of play seems to have completely swapped over the past five years or so. More scarily for the top flight the QPR Liverpool game I have on tape was better in quality and entertainment than anything I’ve seen in the Premiership so far this season. A decade ago nobody thought anything would ever get close to Serie A. Now it’s a broken league ignored by most and played in largely empty stadiums – a situation created by saturation television coverage. The Premiership is in danger of shooting itself in the foot – although in fairness fans of clubs like us, or even Aston Villa, who used to dream of seeing their captain lift the league title probably think it already did that many years ago.

Light up, light up
Did anybody tune in to Sky Sports’ coverage of transfer deadline day night? Have you ever seen anything so ridiculously over hyped in all your life? It was embarrassing to watch and in the end, despite demands from the presenters every three seconds that I do nothing of the sort, I decided the best place for me would be in bed asleep.

In fairness all these 24 hour news channels they have to come up with all sorts of shit to fill the time but Sky Sports News, with the ridiculously dramatic intro music, over excitable presenters, over hyping of every little detail and constant BREAKING NEWS: DARIUS VASSELL SCORES TWICE ON RETURN TO MAN CITY RESERVES text at the bottom really does scrape the barrel more than most.

On Monday night me and the other bloke (with dog) that form the nucleus of their viewing figures were tortured unmercifully by Jim White who woke me from my slumber at a little past eleven o’clock screaming like a startled banshee that they had the exclusive pictures that proved Dimitar Berbatov was about to be unveiled at Manchester United. What they actually had was the blurred shot of the top of somebody’s, possibly Berbatov’s, head through an upstairs window of what we were promised was Old Trafford but could easily have been Jim White’s house.

White’s infuriating obsession with hype and excitement, the various reporters stood out in deserted car parks at Tottenham and Man City pretending they were surrounded by news and updates from all corners of the clubs, was nothing compared to the work experience student they kept turning to back at the studio. With three mobile phones lined up on the desk on top of a notebook that, on closer inspection, clearly had “- bread, -milk, -toothpaste” written on it we were supposed to believe that this small boy had his finger on the pulse of every Premiership manager. With alarming frequency the camera would pan across to him for an update on nothing very much.

My personal favourite moment from “Andy” on the evening came at about half past ten. “I sent Peter Kenyon a text about an hour ago that said ‘It’s all quiet at the Bridge Peter is anything happening?’ and he hasn’t replied. I phoned him just now during that last ad break and his phone was switched off. I think the Robinho to Chelsea deal is still on.” Where on earth did he get that conclusion from after that? He reckoned Martin O’Neill’s phone was off as well. In fact everybody he was supposedly trying to call had their phones off. The idea that all these managers and chief executives had their phones switched off at 10pm on deadline day was about as believable as his claim that he’d “just spoken” to Arsene Wenger. In the end he stuck to the rule of all good rumour mongers and ‘in the know’ people – if you don’t know then make it up, if it turns out to be wrong blame “a source.” I was ready for killing him by half eleven so, like I say, I went to bed.

In the end most of the hype passed me by – probably because QPR were not involved. Once all the dust had settled the thing that stuck with me most was the picture of Dimitar Berbatov leaving Tottenham’s training ground with a roll up cigarette in his mouth. I have no idea why this should stick with me but it did, and does, and it’s started to irritate me almost as much as the Avid Merrion character with his mobile phones on Sky Sports News.

Upon further research I discovered that Wayne Rooney also likes to puff away, Man Utd’s forward line now has the lung capacity akin to that of the front two in an over 40s pub side, David James was on 20 a day until recently and Matthew Etherington and James Collins at West Ham both take time out on an evening to go outside and spark up.

Now call me naïve but I can’t believe this.

Let’s get the “Bobby Charlton/Garincha/Stan Matthews/Stan Bowles smoked” argument out of the way right now. Sure they did, but so did everybody they were playing against. The pace of the game was different, there was much less emphasis on endurance fitness, medical science has advanced since then etc etc. It’s an irrelevant argument.

I always thought that in the modern game where players can’t take a dump without somebody testing it to make sure they’ve eaten enough chicken and pasta in the last 24 hours, where a supposedly skint club like Barnsley will book a wing of a hotel up for a whole day for a match 30 miles away at Scunthorpe United so their players can sleep before the match, where we have computer programmes that chart the distance covered by players in a game and how they tire through the 90 minutes, that no smoking clauses would be in all contracts.

As a West Ham fan I’d be absolutely furious that James Collins, who has drawn a handsome wage from that club for several seasons now despite being almost constantly laid flat on his back with one pathetic injury or another, aids his recovery process by giving his body a healthy dose of carbon monoxide every now and again. In fact I don’t even have to look at West Ham, as a QPR fan I was bloody furious that Tommy Doherty sat out Rangers games for the best part of a year with one injury or another all the while puffing and drinking his time away.

David James admits in his Guardian column this month that he wouldn’t be playing any more had he kept the habit up, how he couldn’t finish endurance runs when he did smoke, and how he can’t believe how much fitter, faster and better at his job he is now without the tabs. And he’s a bloody goalkeeper. I cannot see how you can honestly look yourself in the mirror and say you’re as fit and durable as you can possibly be as a Premiership footballer if you smoke regularly. You can’t. However fit you are with the fags, you’d be fitter without, and I think for the money Rooney, Berbatov, Etherington, Collins and all the others who may be out there are on they could just bloody well cut it out for a couple of years.

This in turn got me thinking, I just can’t let the bloody thing go, about our own squad at QPR. Do we have smokers in our team? Were there smokers on the pitch in Hoops at Wolves last season where we were blowing through our arses in the final ten minutes and eventually surrendered two points? Are there people who I’m paying money to watch who adversely affect their ability to do the job they’re paid handsomely to do, with my season ticket money, by smoking when not on the pitch? It’s eating me up inside.

I know I’m mad, I need help, but I’d like to know. All information and tip offs on this subject would be appreciated. Usual address – loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk

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Two users have commented on this article. Click here to add your thoughts:

Agree with your views, except that I am disappointed we didn't get Michael Mancienne. Seems he's nowhere near Chelsea's 1st team but is still playing for England U-21s. He must be one frustrated footballer! - Gerry

'We have the second least competitive league in Europe behind Scotland with everybody already knowing the top four before the season has even kicked off' - You obviously aren't aware of Olympique Lyonnais in the French League then? - Dave

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