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Jimmy's nice figure raises Fulham stakes - Preview
Friday, 30th Sep 2016 18:52 by Clive Whittingham

Yet another tumultuous week in the recent history of Queens Park Rangers finishes at Fulham on Saturday - a ground QPR have been routinely stuffed at but cannot afford to be again.

Fulham v Queens Park Rangers

Championship >>> Saturday October 1, 2016 >>> Kick Off 12.45 >>> Weather — Warm and wet >>> Craven Cottage, Fulham, SW6 6HH

I can cope with babies in the main. They get plonked on me at family Christmases by my long-suffering mother in an attempt to instil broodiness, or parental longing, or some fear of missing out — anything other than a burning desire to get to the next Queens Park Rangers match. We’ll sit there and there’ll be gurgling and dribbling and sudden, dramatic bowl movements and the baby will wonder why I’m doing these things and laugh.

But soon the baby will scream, or shit itself, or throw up everywhere, at which point I’m happy to return it to sender and disappear off into another room to watch an old episode of Goals on Sunday and do the voices of Reidy Reid and Alex McLeish myself. “How do you do it?” I’ll ask the parents, as they literally wipe the faeces of another human off their hands, and they’ll tell me it’s not when the child is making a bloody racket or exploding fluid everywhere that you want to be worried. No, because when it’s loud you know where it is, and what it’s doing — it’s over there, being a pain in the arse. When it’s quiet, however, it’s often in the bathroom trying to get the lid off the bleach, or out the front of the house playing with the traffic, or in the living room sampling the nice smells the gas fire can make if provoked.

And so we come to Queens Park Rangers, the most errant of all football’s errant children. Things had all been ticking along nicely off the field for a while: an excellent CEO flanked by a director of football who splits opinions but is nevertheless far better than the system we had before; a more sensible business plan; some more reasonable spending; a public commitment to reduce the club’s reliance on agents. Results haven’t been good, but QPR is at least not eating itself with £80,000 a week mercenaries any more. We’re like a smoker who’s gone from 60 a day to ten. Still not good, still some long term consequences of previous excess to go through, but better.

Once more, our club had returned to an afterthought for the press. Column inches were exactly that, rather than yards and yards of catastrophic headlines. I was starting to wonder whether we could get a sign to put up in Batman Close like they hang outside nuclear power facilities — 134 days since a PR disaster. Things have been quiet. Too quiet. We should have seen it coming.

When The Daily Telegraph announced it was set to publish a series of articles showing rife financial foul play within the sport earlier this week, and succeeded in claiming the scalp of the England manager Sam Allardyce inside 24 hours of the first piece being published, I guess we were all just waiting for the QPR connection to surface.

Would it be Neil Warnock? The paper’s claim that one former Premier League boss was securing pay rises for players as long as they paid half of the money back to him rang a few Jason Puncheon bells. Puncheon, we must say, retracted the remarks and apologised. Would it be Mark Hughes and the Taffia, whose “special friendship” with super-agent Kia Joorabchian was partly responsible for wasting what could turn out to be QPR’s final chance to become a genuine Premier League club?

Surely our old chum ‘Arry would get a mention. A man who was found not guilty of tax evasion, at least in part because of a claim he “can’t fucking read or write”, despite him using an offshore bank account set up in the name of his dog. In a Thursday Evening Standard column littered with absolute belters, including the claim that Scott McGarvey — the agent at the heart of the Telegraph’s sting — is “a bit of a character”, Redknapp said: “I can't say I agree with entrapment”. I shouldn’t fucking wonder mate. Quite a big word for somebody who’s illiterate as well.

But no, even worse than that, Wednesday’s paper landed with Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, the current man in the crosshairs at Loftus Road, splashed across the front page. The Dutchman, it was claimed, agreed to take £55,000 from a Far Eastern firm looking to get into the business of transferring foreign players into the UK. Conversations about whether or not Hasselbaink needed a striker were mentioned. Not enough bone in my skull nor walls in my house…

QPR announced a full investigation immediately, which has quickly reached something of an impasse because the Telegraph have refused to give the club the full unedited video, or the transcripts.

The immediate reaction from many was that Hasselbaink would have to go. Now Jimmy is hardly Mr Popular around W12 at the moment, and I dare say a few were glad of the excuse to shift him on as Rangers’ winless run stretches to six matches and the football descends to into some sort of hideous Dave Bassett wet dream. But there were plenty of others, myself included, who have been saying the last thing we need now is another managerial change who also couldn’t see how he could continue in the job. Credibility shot. Position untenable.

But the more you read the Telegraph’s copy this week — on Hasselbaink and everybody else — the flimsier the cases get. Hasselbaink has a clause in his contract saying he is allowed to do private work in his own time, and somebody offering you £55,000 (Hasselbaink was famously the league’s lowest paid manager on just £60,000 a year at Burton Albion) to go to Singapore and chat shit to businessmen who don’t know the first thing about football is an offer anybody would consider. The minute the mention of player transfers happened he should have been up and out of there, but his response “bring me a fucking good one” seemed more jokey than anything, particularly as he’s only part of the process for signing players at QPR. If anything, and the “Les’ boys club” brigade won’t like this, the whole episode has only served to highlight just how absolutely vital a director of football is at QPR.

I’m trying to decide whether the Telegraph is keeping its powder dry, and there’s some big names and big allegations to come. Because honestly, at the moment, the Allardyce thing apart — and even he only suggested how you could get round the rules, rather than admitting to doing it himself — the whole thing feels like they’ve taken a big swing and missed. English football, a totally unregulated industry awash with billions of pounds of television money, that allows its clubs to put out all their transfers as “undisclosed fee” and has recently relaxed regulations and licensing of agents, and all you got for ten months of undercover work was the assistant manager at Barnsley trousering a lousy £5,000 in a motorway service station and a coach at Southampton saying people in the lower divisions were open to bribes?

The Hasselbaink story feels half-finished to me. It’s hard to believe a national newspaper would have wasted time with the coaching staff of middle of the road Championship clubs — the Barnsley assistant manager a prime example — without being tipped off first that they were prone to this sort of thing, which is a worry. But make Hasselbaink go through with it, get him to take the money, get him on tape agreeing that the money is merely a front for the real service he’s providing to your firm, get him to actually recommend one of your players to QPR, then you’ve got a story.

Offering an ungodly amount of money to make a speech, him accepting but saying he’s got to Google you, then getting no kind of commitment from him at all other than a few throwaway remarks about how he could do with a striker doesn’t feel like much to me. Certainly not a front page splash for a national newspaper. Some good quotes — “make me happy, give me a nice figure” — but substance? It does feel rather like the moneymen at the paper have put the squeeze on to publish something to justify ten months of expensive undercover work. A coach at Barnsley and assistant manager at Southampton, with a load of agents gossiping about bigger names you’re not allowed to mention? That’s it? Like I say, maybe there’s more to come.

Nevertheless, a manager on already shaky ground will do well to survive this. What usually happens in such circumstances is a settlement is agreed and the club and manager split, making a statement along the lines of “in order for the team to focus completely on the important Championship dirge coming up, it has been mutually agreed that the parties go their separate ways at this time”. QPR get to deny all knowledge, Hasselbaink sits on a beach for six months then re-appears around April with a few Sunday newspaper double pagers about what a travesty the whole thing was and how it’s affected his family and given him a burning desire to succeed once more - lo and behold he’s back in a job next summer, with the general perception changed from “he’s on the take” to “he was stitched up”. It's usually the best solution for both parties.

And the reason for that is because however little punch there is in the story, however unfair it is on Hasselbaink that he was entrapped in the first place and then splashed like this despite not really doing or saying a lot wrong, he has brought the club into disrepute. Simply by taking the meeting, by agreeing to sit down with these strangers, he’s put his employers in a really difficult spot. Something Les Ferdinand and Lee Hoos in particular, really didn’t deserve.

Ferdinand, for instance, has been banging his drum for nearly two years now about how QPR were a dripping roast for agents, but that’s no longer the case. Rightly or wrongly, that’s going to ring rather hollow now. Straight away on Thursday, when Hasselbaink and Barnsley’s Tommy Wright hit the news, message boarders were putting two and two together and coming up with eight over the Cole Kpekawa transfer between the two clubs this summer. That’s how it’s going to be now, every transfer will have an element of suspicion around it.

We’ve been told repeatedly about tightened budgets, money drying up, unable to compete with the biggest spenders in the division. We don’t have our names on the back of our seats any more (not a big issue by the way, don’t get me wrong) because they worked out it would cost £13,000 to do it after the change of badge — and yet here’s the manager getting paid £55,000 to give some speech in the Far East. Again, rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, that doesn’t sit right.

And for me the most damaging and relevent bit of the whole thing was the suggestion that Hasselbaink would be able to give the players three days off training during the international break so he could fly across the world and give the speech, which would be of no financial or reputational benefit to QPR whatsoever and was entirely for his own gain.

Ferdinand and Hasselbaink have responded to criticism of the team they’ve put together by, quite rightly, pointing out that players arriving in the UK for the first time from Poland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and into the Championship for the first time from lower divisions, need time to bed in, find their feet, work with their team mates. Ferdinand told LFW in an interview over the summer it could take 18 months for foreign players to settle here because of the style of football. He then said at the recent Fans Forum that the first thing he tells prospective new signings is “the manager here works hard, so if you’re not coming to work hard don’t come”. Hasselbaink has made a massive thing of his intense training regime, the fitness of his players. He said Michael Doughty was looking so good for Swindon because he’d done pre-season at QPR.

And yet here we are, casually casting three days of training aside so he can go and make a speech in Singapore? Especially galling given that the Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday nature of the Championship — Fulham tomorrow is QPR’s seventh match in 21 days — means that the international breaks are the only time you get to have a full two weeks of training uninterrupted by games, travelling, rest and recovery and so on. Surely, given the number of new players, given where they’ve come from, given the state the team is in and how it’s playing and the results it’s getting, the two weeks after this Fulham game should be spent hard at work at Harlington, not shooting off around the world on a jolly — however much said jolly is paying, and however many clauses you’ve got in your contract.

Again, every time somebody mentions how hard the players train, how hard the manager works, how it’s different at QPR now, it’s just not going to ring true is it?

Then there’s the songs and the taunts and the £20 notes being waved in the air that are going to follow Rangers around the grounds for the next few weeks as well, just as Tony Fernandes, Les Ferdinand and the ever excellent Lee Hoos — who has handled himself and the situation perfectly — are working so hard to change perceptions of our club.

There’s certainly not enough to sack Hasselbaink on what we have so far, and his position seems to have strengthened as the week has gone on — text messages have been handed over to the club, the Telegraph have refused to give QPR the transcripts, Hasselbaink gave a very strong Sky Sports interview today. He has, technically, done next to nothing wrong.

But I am, nevertheless, surprised he’s still here, and will be amazed if he rides this out, because of that ‘club into disrepute’ element of it all that he caused the moment he sat down for the meeting. A course of action he calls naïve, but is far stupider than that and, as he’s almost certainly not still on £60,000 a year at Queens Park Rangers like he apparently was at Burton, based on greed.

Fulham away, with QPR’s recent record there, and a big travelling support from Shepherd’s Bush could be make or break. Whether the players rally round and fight for a manager they enjoy working for, or use this as an excuse to down tools and get rid of a guy they didn’t much like anyway, will be an important factor in this.

Win, leave the field with the supporters chanting his name in support, maybe the whole thing will be a turning point for a QPR career that appears to be steadily drifting towards the place everybody else’s QPR careers tend to drift to. Lose, particularly in the manner we usually do on this ground, and that long old walk across the pitch in front of the away end may as well continue down the tunnel, out of the exit door and away for good.

Links >>> Lack of firepower — Interview >>> A £15,000 steal — History >>> A familiar face — Referee

It’s usually this bit we use for old highlights reels of fantastic QPR wins in this fixture but, well, you know. So here’s some outtakes from old episodes of The Crystal Maze instead.

Saturday

Team News: QPR finally have Seb Polter fit to start after a goalscoring cameo at Burton during the week — the Big Fucking German had been sufferin with a glute problem and then got an ankle knock against Birmingham last week. Idrissa Sylla was poorly during the week but is also now available too — will Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink dare pair them together from the start as worked so well for the final 20 minutes of the Brum game? Jordan Cousins, who tweaked his hamstring a week ago, remains sidelined. Yeni Ngbakoto has been away following the death of his father, but also has a thigh injury and is doubtful. James Perch, Jamie Mackie and now Jake Bidwell are on the long term absentee list.

Kevin McDonald is still grounded for the home side while Ryan Fredericks is yet to appear this season after falling down a well. Tomas Kalas is a doubt after a nasty reaction to some bad acid while Floyd Ayite has pierced his foot on a spike.

Elsewhere: All dozen games on a Saturday for once as this absolutely crucial round 11 of the Championship comes and goes like the businessman popping into the local brothel on his lunch break.

QPR go first, Wolves v Norwich is last, and there are ten matches in between including such modern day classics as Burton v Cardiff and Brentford v Wigan.

Newcastle United’s cold Tuesday night in Rotherham is actually a reasonably warm Saturday but that will still come as a bit of a culture shock. Likewise Aston Villa Train Wreck rolling into Preston with Roberto Di Matteo’s claim his team will definitely finish in the top six this season currently mathematical nonsense.

Sheffield Owls and Brighton look to have a better chance ahead of their meeting at Hillsborough, while dark horses Bristol City will fancy their chances of pushing further into the top six at home to Nottingham Trees. Surprise early league leaders Borussia Huddersfield go to Ipswich.

Of the farcical crisis clubs at the other end we’ve already mentioned Cardiff, The Mad Indian Chicken Farmers are at Birmingham, and the Derby Chokers are at Waitrose having suspended Nigel Pearson for reasons unknown — but almost certainly hilarious — during the week.

The Champions of Europe against Bad Boys Barnsley concludes the round.

Referee: It’s the enormous head and suspect refereeing qualities of Lee Mason riding over the horizon and back into our lives this Saturday. A man known for the whole Ashley Young thing at Man Utd, and for booking Bobby Zamora for over celebrating his play-off final winner, Mason’s the perfect person to sooth the spiralling blood pressure of the QPR tarvelling support. Full inglorious case history available here.

Form

Fulham: Like QPR, Fulham come into the game on a five match winless run through September which included a home trouncing — 4-0 by Bristol City in the Whites’ case. In fact, having won the first three matches of the season including beating title favourites Newcastle on this ground, Fulham have only won one of ten matches in normal time since then, away at lowly Blackburn. Bristol City (in league and cup) and Birmingham have won on this ground already while a last minute equaliser was required to salvage a point against Burton and bottom of the table Cardiff drew 2-2. But we know Fulham’s record against QPR only too well — unbeaten in this fixture since 1980, victorious in the last five meetings at Craven Cottage scoring 16 goals in the process, 3-0 up by half time on our last three visits here and so on.

QPR: The draw at Burton on Tuesday extended QPR’s winless run to six, but did improve the away record marginally to two wins, a draw and two defeats from five road trips — Rangers only won four away games in the league in the whole of last season remember. Sebastien Polter’s equaliser also killed off the ‘no goals from open play’ stat once and for all. But Rangers haven’t scored more than once in a league game in seven attempts, and even the last time they did manager it ended in a 3-2 defeat at Barnsley. After four wins and three clean sheets in the first seven matches, QPR are without a shut out or a victory in six outings.

Prediction: LFW's followed Dylan's correct call of the Birmingham game with one of our own at Burton on Tuesday. Here's what we've gone for this weekend...

"Not expecting much away to Fulham. A score draw with Chery scoring for us would feel like a point gained at this point."

Dylan's Prediction: Fulham 1-1 QPR. Scorer - Tjaronn Chery

LFW's Prediction: Fulham 2-0 QPR. No Scorer.

The Twitter @loftforwords

Pictures — Action Images

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OldPedro added 19:34 - Sep 30
Always liked the Crystal Maze......
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QPRski added 21:02 - Sep 30
What happens should we draw? The saga continues to the next round?
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TacticalR added 22:32 - Sep 30
Thanks for your preview.

OK, babies are not everyone's cup of tea, but they can make a valuable contribution to society in the longer term (once they are house-trained).

That's a good point about QPR dropping out of the press - we had completely disappeared from the pages of the Evening Standard.

At the moment my annoyance at Hasselbaink is outweighed by my annoyance at the super soaraway Telegraph which seems to have gone to inordinate lengths to create this story, and so far has only caught some rather small fish (in terms of club football).

By the way, do we have a left-back of any description?
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Myke added 22:37 - Sep 30
Excellent piece Clive - journalism at it's best. I'm in agreement that we need another manager like a hole in the head, although so far JFH has been a huge disappointment for me since the Preston game. I don't include the Preston game because any team can have a stinker at any time, but how he responded to that has been poor and Newcastle was simply unacceptable. But you are dead right, regardless of the 'truth' behind the allegations I believe QPR should have acted as swiftly as the FA. To be that far removed from the fan base is worrying. You say his SKY interview was strong and for the most part it was, but it was almost as an afterthought (as if he knew it was the right thing to say but didn't really believe it) that he said £55k was a lot of money.
If we were top of the table playing the high-tempo pressing game as promised, then unless he was stone-wall guilty of a bung, then we wouldn't even be debating this. But we're in free-fall, playing crap football (and surrendered 6-0 to Newcastle) which makes his position even more difficult. You mentioned in your Huddersfield preview this was exactly the game JFH didn't need. I think that Fulham is that to the power of 10. I expect a heavy defeat and your prophetic 'termination by mutual agreement' on Monday, giving Les and Hoos 2 weeks to find a replacement. Maybe Joey Barton as player/manager!
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HastingsRanger added 01:49 - Oct 1
Outstanding and balanced view of the situation.

Thanks
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