Timing is everything — Fans Forum Wednesday, 16th Mar 2016 22:15 by Clive Whittingham Director of football Les Ferdinand, manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and CEO Lee Hoos were on the panel for a fans forum on Tuesday with FFP, new stadiums, training grounds and squad matters all up for discussion. Timing is everything — with your career move, with your golf swing, with your punch lines… and with your fans forum scheduling. Oh to have be shuffling uncomfortably on the unforgiving plastic chairs of the W12 club a month ago, watching Les Ferdinand, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Lee Hoos facing questions post 3-1 home defeat to Fulham. They’d have been washing the bile off the walls. Even a fortnight ago they’d have been sitting at the top table after a 2-0 loss at MK Dons and things may have been a little feisty. But after the two best performances and results of the season so far against Derby and Brentford the smiles shined almost as brightly as Les Ferdinand’s watch — which incidentally looked like it cost more than all the money I’ve ever earned in my life. The media team probably couldn’t believe their luck. That’s a rather cynical view, for two reasons. Firstly, though it may be yet another false dawn, the club does actually seem to be making some steady, sustainable progress for a change. QPR have, for once, gone out and hired a specialist in his position at clubs like ours in Lee Hoos, and he reiterated Tony Fernandes’ recent claim in an interview with this site that despite believing last summer Rangers had “fat chance” of complying with the financial fair play (FFP) regulations this season he is now confident we’re going to squeeze under the limit. A remarkable turnaround from less than 12 months ago when, according to Les Ferdinand at this event, he arrived at a club which was one of the “top ten payers of wages” in the Premier League. Cheers Harry, best of luck Derby. Regardless of whether the last two results were good or not, the team does seem to be improving in shape, style, confidence, fitness and solidity. Rangers are fifth in the Championship form table since the end of the January transfer window, and they’re improving in this way while shifting out the players like Leroy Fer, Sandro and Rob Green who were previously lauded as the answer to steamrollering this division again. QPR have reduced their wage bill, shipped out what seemed to be their best players on paper, and lo and behold got a good deal better and more cohesive as a unit. That doesn’t surprise me at all, and makes the outpouring after the increasingly rare defeats ever more over the top. Secondly, the club has improved how it communicates and deals with its supporters. This forum of little over an hour was positively serene compared to the two hour battering Phil Beard took in this room a couple of years back when it transpired that not only had the CEO of the time not been responding to supporters’ emails, he hadn’t appointed anybody else to do it either and so one relatively small individual grievance about failure to attend school events, or address season ticket move concerns, after another was cobbed at him as it was the only time he’d ever made himself available to receive them. Similarly, Ali Russell before him endured a torrid time in the wake of the season ticket price hikes and Gold Silver Bronze banding — introduced with zero consultation — when some attendees couldn’t help themselves but to actually stand up and shout and scream at the rather bemused looking Scotsman. QPR are communicating with their fans, be it through Lee Hoos’ supporter’s consultation committee, through fans forums, through the media team meeting with the fan sites or whatever. None of this was taking place two and a half years ago, and it meant an ‘us and them’ attitude built up and often tiny issues were allowed to grow and fester for months, possibly without anybody at the club knowing or caring that they existed. This regular contact means events like this will be calmer, tamer affairs and that’s no bad thing — it also means issues big and small are being dealt with quickly. I see responses along the lines of “zzz zzz” when the club Tweet out minutes of these meetings, and yes having been to a few of them there are times when you’re sitting there wondering who really cares about whether the bus driver to Sheffield Wednesday was a bit rude, or what date they put on the new club badge. That cringeworthy moment from yesteryear when a top table of two footballers, a football manager, the CEO of a multi-million pound business and the owner of that business were harangued over the water pressure in the ladies toilets in South Africa Road is, justifiably, held up as a nadir of these events. But this is far better than it used to be, and both club and supporters are reaping the benefits of it. There’s also criticism that it’s the “same old faces” in attendance all the time. Full of our own importance, loving the sound of our own voices, only there for the free beer tokens, pursuing our personal agendas that the vast majority of the rest of the fan base doesn’t care about and so on. The club has worked hard to open these events up to a wider circle — tickets are distributed at random to people on the season ticket and membership databases — but even if it was just a first come first served basis, pay a fiver and you can come in, you would still get largely the same group. We are a small club with a small support base. There are some for whom QPR is a passing interest, some for whom it’s a hobby, some for whom it’s a passion, some for whom it’s an obsession and some for whom it’s an unhealthy part of their lives. There are some who go once a season, some half a dozen, some to all the home games and some all the bloody time. In the same way as it’s the “same old faces” making up the 360 in the away end at Blackburn Rovers on a Tuesday night, so it’s the same people who care enough and live locally enough to be at Loftus Road on a work night to attend a fans forum like this. QPR could, as they did during the Ian Holloway era, move these events away from the ground — I believe Hammersmith Town Hall was used, as well as venues in Ruislip, Twickenham and as far out as Staines and Slough even were used in the past. But it adds a venue cost to the club, and I’m not overly convinced there are 200 QPR fans in Ruislip absolutely desperate to attend a fans forum if only it was taking place at the end of their road rather than half a dozen stops down the Central Line. QPR feel like they’re taking baby steps forwards, and events like this — however dull or weird or off-piste they go at times — are a small part of that. If anybody is desperate to go to the next one, feels they’re being excluded, feels they’ve got a proper salient point to raise but have never been allowed, please get in touch and you can have my ticket. On the field- Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink (JFH) said he felt the team was clearly improving. “The boys are working hard, I’m very happy with their application. We are getting to a better shape and organisation. We're seeing more smiles from the players and that's important. You want a training ground to be a happy place where players want to come and work and sweat and moan a bit but laugh afterwards. I don't want to go into numbers, I'm not looking at that, I’m looking what the team is doing together. Are we gelling? Are we harder to beat? Are we organised? Are we seeing the work we're doing on the training pitch go into games? Are we more comfortable in games? I must say, we are improving. There’s still got a way to go and we need to keep improving and getting better.” - Assessing the season as a whole Les Ferdinand (LF) said the amount of players the club needed to move on from last season meant a lot of personnel had to be brought in on a budget, to keep some sort of a team together while reducing the wage bill. “In the Premier League we were in the top half of payers in that division and we couldn't sustain that. At the end of any one season you want to replenish with two or three players maximum, we were replenishing with 13 different players. It’s impossible to get everyone right, they had to fit with the budget and some of them will go this summer. I don't want to bring another ten players in.” JFH added that any improvement must be sustainable: “We have to be competitive as possible. We're going to try and make the team as strong as possible without putting the club in trouble.” - JFH was asked specifically about why Jay Emmanuel-Thomas and Yun Suk-Young had been loaned out. JFH: “Jay Emmanuel-Thomas very, very clearly didn't fit into my plans and we had to loan him out to get him football but also as much money for the club back. Simple as possible. Yun Suk-Young is a different scenario - we don't know if he will get a work permit for next year.”
- Contract renewals. LF: “Junior Hoilett has improved under Jimmy. He's in the last three months of his contract [said with a wry smile] and he's got to put himself in the shop window. We're grateful for that because he's now performing how we know he can perform. We didn't think Ale Faurlin would be able to play the amount of games he's played - he's a quality player and has shown that. These guys are on contracts and if they fall in line with the budget we have maybe discussions can be had. JFH decides first whether he wants them, and we negotiate from there - I speak to the owners, the finance director, and see if we have the money to meet what Junior or Ale would want going forward.” - LF’s influence on team selection. LF: “Let me assure everybody here, I've had four managers since I've been here, I've never once picked a side. I'm not here to pick the side, I'm here to work with the manager to get the best players we possibly can within the budget. I would never pick the team for the manager.” - Squad rotation at MK Dons. JFH: “Junior became a dad for the first time. He was not at the training ground from Thursday until Saturday. The girlfriend had a very long and difficult delivery, but all is good with the baby and mother and father. We had to decide whether to pick him without training and I chose not to. Seb Polter was ill the week before and was still feverish, same with Matt Phillips. Those were decisions taken out of my hands really, I did the best thing for them.”
- In a later question about how much training influences team selection, with players often getting selected regularly despite playing poorly (big Paul Konchesky shaped elephant in the room at this point) JFH said: “you have to trust your players. Some people deserve a second chance, some deserve more than that, some you have to take out straight away. If the player plays and gives me 100% and didn’t perform that week, I’m more inclined to give him another chance.” LF added: “In my own career, until Gerry came here I had a tough time, I’d been booed by the supporters here. If I hadn’t had a second, third or fourth chance maybe I wouldn’t have become the player I did become. No manager will put personnel out there he thinks will lose him the game. There can be all sorts of reasons you don’t perform on a weekend.” - Jack Robinson. JFH said the young full back, who’s yet to make a QPR appearance more than 18 months after signing from Liverpool, is at a “fragile point”. JFH: “We got him almost where he could play matches, then he had a set back where he couldn't train for three weeks with a pain in his calf. He had a second injection in that to take a cyst away. He trained today (Tuesday) with the group, hopefully he has a good week this week. If he sustains this week he can play Monday in the U21s and if he comes through that he will be available for selection. He's had a very difficult injury, a career threatening injury, it's very normal for him to have little setbacks, we need to nurture him through and get him strong enough to play matches. He's definitely in my plans.” - The U21 league. LF says it's not competitive enough. LF: “You need to send them out on loan to get them experience at men's level. Some boys come in at U8s, then go U10s, U12s, U14s, U16s, playing the same guys. They get to U21 and they’re still playing the same guys. There's no competitive edge so unless you go out on loan you won't get the experience and managers won't trust you. That's why a lot of our boys are out on loan — Darnell played last season when he wasn’t ready but we had nobody else.” - JFH’s Rolling contract. LF: “99% of contracts in this country are based around a year and the terms of a three year contract is a year of severance pay if they leave or a year of compensation if somebody comes in to take them.” JFH simply said it was “still rolling” to much applause and laughter.
- The issue of the Under 18s getting heavily beaten most weeks — 6-1 to Palace on the day of the forum — was raised. LF: “It's a position that needs to be strengthened, not just the U18s but all the academy. There is a misconception about youth teams winning, it's not about teams winning at that level. I saw Norwich got relegated from the Premier League a couple of years back but their U21s won the youth cup. It's about producing players for the first team and we haven't done that for a long time. I'm not overly fussed about the U18s losing, we might only produce one player, or two. I've got a youth programme from Brentford v Arsenal in the youth cup and every single Arsenal player went on to have a professional career, from the Brentford side not one of them are playing today, and Brentford won.” - A Twitter question asked whether a different promoter would be used for pre-season this time so we can have “a proper one” after the farce of the cancellations in Italy last summer. LF said “yes a billion percent” and continued “when I came in last year the pre-season was in the process of being done. The people who did it last year had done it for us before, this time we were let down. The only thing you want as a manager is for your pre-season to be right. We’ve been and looked at venues where Jimmy wants to take the players, overseas for ten days or so, we need to make sure the games programme is right.” JFH added: “It’s the foundation. That’s where you start. Team bonding, everything, very important. It’s a special time. We are trying hard to make sure we get it right.” - Expectations next season. JFH simply said he wanted the team to be as competitive as possible. LF said we were aiming to be top half and hopefully pushing for promotion. LF: “This season was about sustainability at the start but we kept some big hitters and the viewpoint had to change. I think Jimmy is doing a good job, the team is heading in the right direction, there need to be additions but that’s always the aim for this club.” One from the floor asked JFH if he’d take promotion this season if they could make the play offs — he said he would take “every win and every promotion whenever. It’s why we’re in the game.” - Scouting. LF said the cub’s match analyst has been moved across to analysing potential signing. After that the scouts will have a look, after that LF and JFH will have a look. First time in the club’s history there has been somebody in that role. - A point was raised that opposition teams seemed to try and heavily influence referees, whereas QPR leave them alone. JFH said it was his belief the team should “conduct itself really well,” scoring more “brandy points” (which sound great by the way) than teams that are always in the referee’s face. “If you’re always in their face, they will remember, fact,” he said. Off the field- Lee Hoos (LH) said he was very encouraged by what's happening with the new stadium despite a recent letter sent out to some QPR groups from Car Giant reiterating their position that there would never be a stadium at Old Oak Common. LH: “We have a mayoral election in May, the two principal candidates fully support our bid for a stadium in West London. They're impressed with our community work, they accept we need a new stadium. “It takes me nowhere to get into a war of words with Car Giant and I respect Geoff Warren as a guy who cleared obstacles out of his way to build a good business. It's a big piece of land, we don't own all of it, he doesn't own all of it - he owns more than we do. One thing I have learnt is that the person who owns the land doesn’t always have the say, alone, in what actually happens. Car Giant put through a master plan that included a museum — the beauty of English property law is they’ve said we’re trying to put a stadium on land that isn’t ours but that museum is planned on land that isn’t theirs. “There’s a lot of interested parties in this — the council, the OPDC, the GLA, the mayor and we don’t even know who the next mayor will be. If I was coming in at the beginning of a mayoral term I’d have handled this differently, but there is absolutely positively going to be a new mayor and we don’t know how the landscape will change. In an ideal world we’d wait to see who the new mayor is, but the consultation period ends on March 31 so if anybody hasn’t seen it please I urge everybody to respond to that consultation. We need to keep ourselves front of mind with that organisation. What I don’t want to do is play our strategy in the public arena — I’m being as transparent as I can without shooting myself in the foot. “We need this stadium to survive. There are so many issues here — atmosphere and close to the pitch is great, but it’s expensive to run, we only have 450 people in hospitality… The club has been in admin once, was on the verge of admin again when Mr Briatore bought it, I don’t want to rely on ownership writing out a cheque every month to keep it going. However much money you have you soon get bored of that as we’ve seen at Bolton — that’s not me in any way saying the owners want out, I just want this to be a sustainable club. In terms of the ownership of the new stadium, we’ll go with the structure that’s the most tax efficient. Quite a few clubs I’ve been with has a holding company that’s a property company that owns the stadium, it’s the most tax efficient way of doing it. We need to take tax advice on this as much as anything else but am I worried about the owners who just converted £130m of debt to equity… I’m not too worried about that.” There is more information and links for submitting your views and support at the club’s official website or you can email the OPDC directly before March 31 localplan@opdc.london.gov.uk
- The lovely residents of Ealing have put forward an application for a public footpath running right through where we want to put the Warren Farm Training Ground. LH: “I can’t put a timeframe on this, the footpath application was scheduled to be heard this month and it’s already slipped. That’s the final hurdle, plus the opportunity to appeal that which is a three month period. I’m confident enough, we’ve spoken to people about building contracts up there and we’ve started with builders who are QPR fans. We’re getting everything ready anyway. “I don’t want the owners to write out a big cheque for the training ground, there are viable finance packages out there that stack up well for the club — paying off a bond on that training ground wouldn’t be massively more than we’re paying in rent at Harlington now. I’m looking at other more creative ways of financing that.” - LH reiterated there was a non-disclosure agreement between the club and the league on Financial Fair Play (FFP). He added it was new ground with a lot of uncertainty and QPR are challenging the validity of the rules. There is still no indication when it will be concluded. As for this season LH said: “If you’d have mentioned at the beginning of the year the FFP guidelines — which as I say we’re contesting so I’m not in any way shape or form conceding the validity of these rules to whichever lawyer may pick this up — and us being compliant this season I would have laughed and said fat chance. However, I’m pleased to say I think we’ll do it. We’ve moved players on, the finance team has done what they need to do, we’ve cut expenses. We’re definitely moving in the right direction.” - A supporter asked whether those who’d met the original season ticket deadline would now be compensated as the window has been extended. LH reiterated the reason the club wants to move to this timeframe is looking three seasons down the road when the parachute payments — currently our biggest income — will have ended if the club hasn’t gone back up and the £5.5m that comes in from ticketing becomes the biggest source of revenue. - LH: “We want to get to a league where Sky and broadcasting is the biggest source of revenue, but I need to plan for worst scenarios. It’s not as important this year to get the season tickets out early, but it is next year. When we talk to JFH about players we need a degree of certainty about what the budget will be. With a March 31 deadline I know exactly what we will have in the kitty for the summer on April 1. We’ll know who’s on direct debit, who has paid, guestimate match by match. “We’ve extended it because it’s a transition year and people are struggling with it a little bit. But we will be going back to that March 31 date next season. We want to work with people who can’t afford it through the transition. To compensate would add extra cost to the club when I’m trying to eliminate that. The fans only care about what happens on the pitch, so whatever I can give to Les and Jimmy for that is what I’m looking to do. Compensation? Guys, we’re on the same team, we want the same results.” LH said a proper rewards scheme for supporters was in the works and would hopefully be launched for next season. He then pleaded with supporters, particularly those looking to take advantage of the staggered, interest free, payments not to leave payment until the mew April 15 deadline. LH: “By giving the chance for people to pay interest free it means we can’t do it through the website and the ticket office has to handle everything. I’m begging you all, please don’t wait until April 14 to renew, otherwise we’ll have to man up to the hilt, you’ll all be ticked off about delays. If you can do it now, the sooner the better, the smoother it will go. Please.”
- The current size of Loftus Road means we can’t host our own Player of the Year Awards. LH: “We’re looking for a venue for that and they’re either 200 people which is too small or we’d need to sell 450 tickets at £150 to break even. If anybody has any suggestions for a venue, that’s the hardest thing. We looked at Bush Hall, it’s too expensive.” - LH didn’t believe the Football League would follow the Premier League in capping away tickets because the Premier League can afford to pay it with their TV money and the Football League can’t. He says he’d like all season ticket holders to have their tickets subsidised at away matches but is not a fan of free coach travel because it doesn’t benefit everybody. - Andy Evans (AE), CEO of the Community Trust, was called forward to discuss the proposed Ex-Players Association. AE: “Discussions have taken place with Charlton and Simon Milton at Ipswich who have similar schemes. We’re not looking at a fund giving, grant giving organisation to help players fallen on hard times because it’s hard to manage and when you think of how many ex-players QPR have it wouldn’t be financeable if they all needed help. We’ve decided to build on what takes place on matchdays and would like to formalise an Association for next season. We want to see as many ex-players as possible coming back on a matchday, and we want to build bit by bit. The Ipswich advice was start off small with an event and then build from there so that’s the intention.” - New badge is nearly done, on schedule for next season, will launch before the end of this season. - The Play Football pitches that have opened on the old astroturf pitch on South Africa Road were raised and LH said an announcement was imminent about the club partnering with Play Football to utilise that facility. - Joe Hylton asked if the much disliked fence between the Q and R Blocks, which obstructs the view of the far end, could finally be removed — nearly two decades after the Portsmouth riot which caused it to be put up. LH said he would ask the licensing board and remove it if they don’t have a problem with it. - Vic Stevenson said local pubs that operate a home fans only policy would like the club to issue different coloured tickets to away fans. LH said he couldn’t see that being a problem to change either. The Twitter @loftforwords Pictures — Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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