Seperating the wheat from the chaff in the field of summer transfer rumours.

Silly season
I've always hated going shopping with the women in my life. You see when I go shopping it’s a very simple, quick and painless experience. What do I need? A grass strimmer? Right try that one, no too small and weedy, get me a petrol powered one, rev it up, yeh lovely I’ll have that where do I pay? Ladies on the other hand like to stay out for hours on end, days even, looking for what they want. If they want a little black dress they'll start by going into every shop on the High Street at least twice and forming a shortlist of approximately 12. Then they'll go round for a third time and cut that list down to four or five, then revisit those again and finally pick one at which point the search will begin afresh as they go around all the shops in town again looking for an identical dress at half the price.

It seems that QPR’s approach to this latest transfer window is going to be rather effeminate. For instance we decide we need a centre half, we have a look at Martin Cranie (£3m at least), Danny Shittu (£3m at least) Anthony Gardner (£1.5m and injury prone), Gareth McAuley (£2m), Kristian Timar (£1.5m) and in the end we settle on Kaspars Gorkss (£250k). It seems we’re playing a similar game with the left wing as well with the likes of Peter Halmosi, Adam Johnson, Zoltan Gera and Lee Cook all spoken of in almost ‘done deal’ terms before being dismissed as too expensive or too much of a risk. That should in my opinion mean an aggressive chase of another Blackpool player, Wes Hollahan (pictured). More on his situation shortly.

This womanly method of making a purchase has led to many Meadowhall induced migraines in my life and it seems glancing around the message boards that the QPR support, many of them recently £600 lighter courtesy of our new season ticket pricing structure, are suffering something similar.

“Is anybody else worried…” “they should get their fingers out” and “look how much *insert team name, this week Nottingham Forest* are doing already” are all common posts at this time of year and have all been in evidence over the last ten days. I’ve even been guilty of it myself. “Mifsud would be a good signing but the way things are going unless their contract is up or has a juicy clause in it we're not interested,” I said on the message board earlier in the week. As I said in this column last time out no matter how many times our new owners talk about long term plans and slow and steady progress and no drastic spending it seems we’re just not listening.

The problem we have at this time of year is that it’s the only month of the year that football people get to enjoy a little bit of a break. Between the final play off match and the first week in June there are no games, no international tournaments, no training, no nothing. So just like in half term week when the airports fill up with chav families eager to spend their benefit payments in Ayia Napa with three or four snot nosed, badly behaved kids in tow during late May you’ll find footballers in silly head gear checking in Louis Vuitton washbags and heading off to Dubai, Vegas and anywhere else that people on upwards of ten thousand pounds a week like to go and play. And sun bathe. And roast the locals.

The managers, chairmen, directors of football, agents and associated hangers on need a break as well so the whole thing seems to grind to a halt for a few weeks. Grimsby Town under Alan Buckley last summer are the only club in living memory that did no business whatsoever over a summer break – and Buckley always has been a law unto himself. We need to be calm people, players will arrive soon. In fairness to QPR with three signings already tied up we’re ahead of just about everybody else in our division for players signed so far.

Of course newspapers and Sky Sports News’ ridiculously over hyped coverage of everything can’t switch off for a month, and try as they might to convince us otherwise nobody really gives much of a toss about cricket or tennis or rugby union. Therefore while our heroes are out of the country the pages of our papers, the airtime on our radios and the bile spewing forth from our televisions becomes dominated by rumours on who’s going where, when and for how much. Yes friends, silly season is well and truly upon us.

Bobby Zamora, Wes Hoolahan, Kaspars Gorkss, Freddy Eastwood, Robert Earnshaw, Anthony Gardner, Marlon Harewood, Freddy Sears, Adam Johnson, Lee Cook, Peter Halmosi, Kristan Timar, Martin Cranie, Kevin Phillips, Zoltan Gera, Ben Watson, Mark Hudson, Ched Evans, David Nugent, Clinton Morrison, Gareth McAuley, Sammy Clingan and more besides have all been linkedto QPR in the last fortnight. Message board posters are falling over themselves to be the one with the ‘done deal’ post, the conversation with somebody’s Dad, the key line from down the pub, to the extent where the same person can rule out signing Kaspars Gorkss altogether on Thursday only to say he’d be signed by the end of the week three days later.

Undoubtedly our team needs strengthening. We seem to be after one further centre half but otherwise we’re pretty well sorted in defence and in goal. The wide midfield areas need addressing on both sides, but particularly wide left, and the attack is in real need of additions in my opinion. Looking at the three promoted teams last season West Brom had Miller, Moore, Phillips, Bednar and Gera, Stoke had Fuller, Sidibe, Parkin, Gallagher, Cresswell, Bothroyd and Ameobi, Hull had Campbell, Windass, Fagan, Folan, Pederson, Barmby and Garcia to select from in their attacks. We have Agyemang, Blackstock, Balanta and Vine. I rest my case on that front – one proven goal scorer at this level and a promising Campbell type loan from the Premiership to go with what we already would be appreciated.

I know we keep being told that QPR is not a rich club, it’s a club with rich owners but I’ve got to admit the summer, and more to the point the ridiculous amount I’ve paid for my season ticket, is making me a little bit greedy. Much as the demise of Gretna this week has again highlighted the need not to spend above your means and rely solely on benefactors, the kid inside me just wants us to go and splash three or four million quid on somebody and show the world we mean business. I’m clearly not alone. So many times already this close season I’ve seen QPR fans turning their nose up at very competent players. Bobby Zamora, Robert Earnshaw, David Nugent and Wes Hoolahan spring to mind as names that have been dismissed out of hand across the message boards. These are good, proven players at this level.

Talking to a Blackpool supporting friend of mine before our match with them at Loftus Road in March he seemed confident they had enough to stay in the Championship last season but was concerned that second season syndrome may strike on a Colchester level in 2008/09. The reason – the most impressive players in the Blackpool squad have strangely low release clauses in their contracts and sure enough half the division has spent the summer so far sniffing around winger Wes Hoolahan and centre half Kaspars Gorkss. Nearly a month ago we spoke again and he mentioned that QPR were very keen on the latter, a Latvian centre half, and with a £250,000 clause in his contract it seems that he could shortly be the latest addition to our squad.

Now of all the centre backs we’ve been linked with Gorkss is the least inspiring, although seven goals from the back, full international honours, the Blackpool player of the year award and a towering header at the School End against the R’s last season should certainly not be overlooked. Personally if he does sign I’ll be happy and to be honest I'm surprised we haven't been linked more strongly to his team mate Hoolahan - another with a cheap release clause in his contract. If it's a cheap option for the wing we're after you won't do any better at this level than him.

Although the child inside me still wants to see that big bollocks multi million pound all action centre forward in here as soon as possible, I’ve a certain admiration for the way we’re going about this ‘richest club in the world’ business. It’s very QPR so far, and at a time when many are questioning where the club’s identity is going/has gone that’s a good thing.

Like a record baby
The dust has settled on the season ticket price release and, yes, I’ve renewed. I’ve had to cash in a portion of my savings previously marked for grown up things like getting on the property ladder to do it but the season ticket is now purchased. I have to say the lad that spoke to me in the box office was superb considering mine was an awkward request – Northern the Elder’s season ticket needed to be upgraded to an adults from an OAPs, changed from his name to mine, and changed from his address to LFW towers. Nothing was a problem though and I even managed to stop him before he told me it was a £3.50 booking fee and £4.75 postal charge. I’ve paid it, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it or hear it.

I may have given the box office staff some stick in the past, but I feel a bit sorry for them this summer. Like the innocent call centre worker I once subjected to a 23 minute long tirade of abuse over why my broadband had ceased operations for ten days without a reason being given – a world class example of swearing that resulted in my life time ban from speaking to anybody employed by Orange - they are the victims of decisions made over their heads. Like I say, the guy I spoke to was brilliant and I do hope we’re not, as a group, subjecting the people in there to too much abuse for something they have no control over.

Ali Russell’s comments on it all at the QPR 1st AGM took some digesting. Like the staff in the box office I do feel to some extent he is merely putting forward the will of those above him in the food chain. Clearly he’s had more involvement than the poor sods answering the phones – the gold, silver and bronze system now in place at QPR is identical to the one in use at Russell’s former club north of the border. However the targets set by the people setting the prices are clearly very hard to reach and has led to some extreme measures.

After having time to study the prices I would say, in the club’s defence, that season tickets have been pretty cheap recently. We need to pay for better players, better performances, a higher quality product and all the rest of it. We can’t pay League One prices and expect Premiership performances. Inevitably though this concession leads to the greed that I spoke about earlier and if the club thinks fans will be happy paying £600 to watch Sammy Clingan and Kaspars Gorkss they’ve got another very long, very hard think coming. If people are being asked for Premiership prices, which these undoubtedly are, they’re going to be expecting Premiership players and Premiership performances. I feel sorry for Iain Dowie almost as much as the guys in the box office.

Ultimately though I can just about accept the need for an increase, all be it a big one, because with only 18,000 seats to sell we need to make as much money from them as possible. It doesn't make sense in a ground as small as ours to give away 600 tickets for free in the main stand for instance. We can’t simply expect our owners to chuck vast amounts of money at players and build the club’s debt up further – I come back to the Gretna example from earlier. If your club isn’t self sufficient it dies as soon as the money men supporting it walk away. If you’re only spending what you’re bringing in then you’ve a chance of survival in times of bust and sadly if QPR only spend what they’re bringing in we’d be on a League One budget because the ground and the fan base is small. The revenue needs to increase dramatically and increasing the ticket prices is the easiest, quickest way of doing that.

However for a club based so much on brand and image all of a sudden, it's hard to either justify or defend the cack handed way it has handled the whole thing. To allow senior board members to say price rises would be “10% or something normal” at public meetings only to then raise prices between three and fifty times that much is not on and should be apologised for. The late release of prices is ridiculous – it has given people just three weeks to find the money for these tickets. The postal charge and booking fee is a public relations disaster – charged for giving the club money, charged for having them send you the thing you’ve already paid for. The lack of an early bird renewal discount provides no reward whatsoever to the fans who bought season tickets last season when the club was at death’s door – you may remember they couldn’t even work through our applications because the bank wouldn’t let them process card payments they were that skint. And we still handed our money over. The Upper Loft is extortionately expensive for a behind the goal view that really isn’t that good from the vast majority of the seats. The cost for families is extortionate - £1600 for two adults and two teenagers to sit behind the goal at QPR, that’s a disgrace. It’s also strange that seats in the Upper and Lower Loft cost the same as they do in South Africa Road – which not only offers the best views but is also having a load of work done on it this summer to improve facilities.

It’s terrific to see supporters’ groups getting together and uniting in the face of these price rises as they did again in Hammersmith at the weekend but the message is clear, as Ali Russell said at the QPR 1st meeting – “people have a choice, they can pay it or go elsewhere.” That attitude is all well and good if the five year plan to cement QPR in the Premiership comes to fruition. Build it and they will come. For Christ’s sake they’ve found 15,000 football supporters in Wigan since they got into the Premiership so I’m sure QPR will manage just fine should they ever get there. However should this all go a bit Chris Wright on the new owners and we find ourselves still playing Barnsley in five years time and paying £600 each to watch it then they may find that those people that were told “pay or go somewhere else” may take some serious tempting to fill the vast banks of empty seats.

Next season I would hope the club learns lessons and:
- releases the prices earlier. Much earlier. By mid April at the latest
- restores the early bird renewal discount
- scraps the postal charge and either removes the booking fee or greatly reduces it
- reassesses the prices being charged for seats in the Loft
- introduces a family ticket that costs less than a second hand car
- doesn’t spend the final six months of the season telling us the prices are going up x amount only to raise them by y.

That’s all old ground really though and has been done to death across the internet community over the past few weeks. I’ve renewed so I can hardly talk can I?

A final point though, again taken from Russell’s comments at the QPR 1st meeting and once more relating more to the poor handling of the rises by the club’s rather than the actual rises themselves which, like I say while I think they’re excessive, I can see the logic behind.

Every few days since the prices were released we’ve been treated to a story on the official website about how we’ll they’re selling. Within three hours of them going on sale there was a story talking about “record numbers” and an “exceptional response” and while that’s terrific news for the club I do wonder whether we really have the details for how many people bought tickets in the first two hours and 45 minutes last summer? Do we take a check every hour?

We’ve been told we can buy 24 hours a day, presumably to pick up the market of students coming home from the pub at three in the morning and not going straight to bed – a market that lumbered me with a full set of Allo Allo DVDs back in my studying days. We've had breaking news stories telling us that Gareth Ainsworth thinks Loftus Road is the place to be next season, that we can renew online apparently and then this week we’ve been treated to the news that the ‘platinum’ area in South Africa Road has sold out. Now while I congratulate the club on their success it does again come with a bit of a question mark. Maybe the club could clear this up for me?

You see the thing is I personally know one man personally who sits in the seats that have been re-designated as platinum with his son. Neither of them have renewed yet, and we still have three days left with those seats reserved. So with at least two seats in that area yet to be renewed, and therefore presumably not sold at all with three days still to go, how can that area be sold out?

“I don’t do spin” said Mr Russell at the QPR 1st meeting. Somebody does Ali, somebody does.

Don’t bet on it
For the want of something better to do and in need of something to fill column inches I decided to turn my hand to predictions a month before the end of the season and, despite only three or four matches remaining until the end of the season, I didn’t do very well to be honest. Now you must understand that things change from day to day in football but fair’s fair, I stuck my neck on the line and had a bit of a punt, I’m not going to run away and hide from that. Let’s have a look just how badly it went.

Leicester to be relegated - I’ve put this one first because I actually got it right. Come on let me have that. Four games from the end of the season I went for the Foxes because despite having the best run in they showed a ridiculous ability to lose home fixtures against teams around them – consecutive games at the Walkers against Colchester, Scunthorpe and Sheff Wed should have been enough to see them safe but they won only once and consequently when they finally did turn it on at Stoke on the last day it was too late. After Ian Holloway’s comments earlier in the season I have to say I didn’t shed too many tears when I waved them goodbye either.

Fulham and Reading to be relegated with Derby - Hmmm one out of two there, and I thought Reading was the dodgy pick when I made it. The writing was on the wall for the Royals when they failed to score in six consecutive games at the most crucial part of the season. Marcus Hahnemann says one or two squad members weren’t too sorry to see the team relegated, two players refused to play in a reserve game against Tottenham and were suspended and in the end a thumping win at Derby on the last day was too little too late. Clearly the camp is not a happy one at Reading and I have to say I’m not totally convinced Steve Coppell staying on is a good thing for them. Fulham’s survival was remarkable and as much as I would have enjoyed a trip to Craven Cottage next season I have to admire and applaud the way it all came together for them at the end. Roy Hodgson gets unfair stick for me, probably brought on by the haircut and lisp, but he’s achieved a lot in world football and he never dwelled on the set backs at Fulham. His post match interviews were always looking ahead to the next match whatever had just happened and that was to be admired, as was their football. On the other hand Birmingham – the team that Eduardo suffered his horrendous injury against, the team that felt standing their biggest player offside in front of the keeper to gain an advantage at free kicks was a legitimate tactic, the club that has had two of its main directors questioned by the police this season, the team based in Birmingham – offered little at the end of the season and frankly, as with Leicester, I can’t say I was sorry to see them suffer. Even though that means one of our least enjoyable away trips is now back on the calendar.

Carlisle and Leeds to win promotion from League One - You’ve got to laugh really. Forest clinched the second spot on the last day, a club I barely devoted one line to. To be honest I don’t rate Colin Calderwood and couldn’t see Forest doing anything while he was in charge. In the end they had enough quality players to do it in spite of him and won seven of their last eight games. Carlisle were superb when I saw them at Forest earlier in the season but lost at Millwall on the penultimate day and then paid the price for changing their tactics against Leeds in the play offs after an hour of paralysing them by conceding a late goal and then losing the home leg to crash out. That dramatic comeback from Leeds seemed to cement my idea that their name was destined to be back in the Championship next season but they were well beaten in the final by Doncaster who “haven’t convinced me all season”. Like I say you’ve got to laugh. They were magnificent in all three play off matches and richly deserve their promotion after playing entirely the right way. It’s a shame to see Paul Green leaving them already this summer, I look forward to seeing their brand of passing football in the Championship next season all the same.

West Brom, Hull and Palace to go up - That’s not quite as good a prediction as it sounds because although I had West Brom right as champions I thought Hull would hang on to second spot and they didn’t – they won the play offs which I thought Palace would claim. Stoke, who went up in second spot, didn’t even have to bother with the play offs which I said they would do very poorly in.

So what have we learnt this week? Don’t take this column with you when you go to the bookies.

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