With former Ipswich gaffer Jim Magilton now confirmed as QPR manager LFW looks at just how and why such a wealthy and influential board were forced into appointing somebody with such a meagre CV and where we go from here.

What is it doctor? Bad news I’m afraid
Well it could have been worse; it could have been Bryan Robson. Jim Magilton breezed into Loftus Road today and took with him, it seems, all the sharp knives from my kitchen and shoelaces from my cupboard upstairs. Either that or Mrs Clive moved quickly after the announcement to secure LFW Towers ahead of my arrival home from work – she’s an Ipswich fan, she understands.

Regular readers, hello to both of you, will already have gathered I’m not a fan of our new manager. I described him several weeks ago when his name was first mentioned in connection with QPR as a ‘bottom of the barrel’ appointment and I stand by that. If press reports are to be believed (always a dangerous thing to do to be fair) Magilton applied for the vacant job at our Championship rivals Blackpool earlier this close season and was not even considered for the short list – that’s a club that, with due respect, has vastly different aspirations to our own and one that went ahead and appointed Ian Holloway instead, a man seen as a tactical dunce by many QPR supporters.

It’s not a personal thing with Magilton for me. I could tell you a story about a time after an Ipswich home game when my girlfriend’s family were over from Northern Ireland and he chatted to them for quite some time outside the ground as if they were long lost friends, even speaking to one of their other relatives back at home on one of their mobile phones just to surprise him. I could tell you about the time he held a training session with the Ipswich Town junior disabled side that meant so much to the people involved, and the way he encouraged his players to do the same. I could point you in the direction of his QPR World interview today where he comes across as upbeat, ambitious, optimistic, enthusiastic and personable. Jim Magilton is, clearly and by popular consensus, a nice guy.

Nor is it some deluded belief that because QPR now have rich owners we are somehow entitled to expect high profile managers to fall over each other getting off the tube at White City to come and take the job here. My disdain is purely down to the fact that when interviewing for a job you look at experience and CV and weigh up whether that person can come and do what you want him to do in your organisation. Let’s not gloss over this – Jim Magilton was sacked by Ipswich Town last season because he spent plenty of money and failed to make the top six. Ipswich fans say he lost his way last season, he was stubborn and arrogant, he loaned out players that should have been in the team and played players that shouldn’t have been anywhere near it. He failed, and he spent plenty doing it.

QPR, one would hope, are starting to think about aiming for the top six now after a season of survival and one of consolidation. Why would you appoint somebody whose only previous experience of management saw him fail to do exactly what we want him to do for us? It’s like a David Brent scene the editors of The Office cut from the final show for being too ludicrous.

Ipswich fans also say he stabilised their club after Joe Royle and all their better players had left and is worthy of praise for this - I agree. However we have already done that. We’re stabilised, we’re rebuilt, we’re a solid mid table Championship team, now it’s time to push on. The appointment of Iain Dowie, while also unpopular with fans, did at least make sense in as much as here was a man with a proven track record of promotion from the Championship coming into a club that wanted to push towards that. Ipswich under Magilton finished ninth last season and the best he ever managed with them was eighth - we were eighth when we sacked Iain Dowie. It just makes no sense at all.

My other problem with him is that at Ipswich Magilton talked a good game when it came to transfers but rarely nailed his top targets. David Nugent just one player that was discussed at length and never arrived – even the ones he did secure like Gareth McAuley and David Norris took months on end to sign and came at inflated prices. Mostly he just turned to former team mates like Richard Wright, Pablo Counago and Tommy Miller. Talking a good game and not delivering is another frequent theme for his critics in Suffolk.

It is often said that the tide turns quickly against a QPR manger who embarrasses Flavio Briatore with a poor home performance in front of all his rich friends – would it be overly cynical or simplistic of me to suggest that Magilton’s tendency to bring his team to Loftus Road and play us off the park, including a 3-1 win last season that turned the board almost instantly against Paulo Sousa, is one of the biggest factors behind this appointment? We’ll never know. We do know that Flavio wants QPR playing attractive football in a 442 formation and that is exactly what Ipswich did that day – Town fans say it was their best away performance of last season, just our luck. One game does not a CV make but it could well have been an important if not decisive factor in the crazy world of QPR these days. As could, no doubt, the lack of compensation required to be paid to a former club by appointing Magilton – he is certainly a cheap option.

Flavio says Magilton did a good job at Ipswich and was always the top candidate. Like I say by those standards Iain Dowie was doing an equally good job here when we sacked him and on the second point I wonder why, therefore, it took four interviews and the thick end of three months to bring him here? Could it be that what Flavio actually means is Magilton was the top candidate once numerous others had pulled out or laughed in our face? Once again I’m forced to ask – just how stupid does our club think we are?

For me this is a meeting of two desperate parties – like a wedding between two 40-somethings who have suddenly realised their waist lines are expanding, their hairlines are receding and time is running out to punch out a couple of kids.

Magilton, however well he did in stabilising Ipswich initially, has not come out of that job well. I can think of few clubs at this level where the fans would be jumping for joy at his appointment – sacked for spending millions and not making the play offs, only a tentative last resort appointment in the first place and possibly only given the job at all because he had been such a super player for Town and he had a great affinity with the club.

QPR are no prize catch either. Magilton is the fifth different permanent manager of Briatore’s 18 months at the helm and three of those, Paulo Sousa, Iain Dowie and John Gregory, are yet to get another permanent number one job since leaving Loftus Road. It has become a poison chalice. Rangers operate a Sporting Director system so a manager will not have a chance to buy his own players, Flavio Briatore has admitted he told previous managers what formation to play and which goalkeeper to pick, newspapers report that his interference went further still, Iain Dowie was sacked after winning eight of 15 matches and Paulo Sousa was removed in farcical circumstances. Ticket prices are sky high, supporters have been told it is a four year plan for the Premiership and consequently expectations have sky rocketed to such an extent that it has destroyed the atmosphere at home games – as Magilton himself will know only too well from Ipswich’s game in W12 last season.

He may be desperate for a job, but Magilton has walked into a real tough task here and if he is only given the same amount of time and subsequently goes the same way as Dowie and Sousa then Magilton will find himself with two failures and sackings on his CV and the prospect of having to go in as a number two to somebody else, or drop down the divisions to get another chance staring him in the face. For QPR that scenario would see us searching for our sixth manager in less than two years and the candidates next time round are likely to be even less inspiring than the rabble we have been linked with this time. We have created a situation for ourselves where no proven manager is likely to want to come here after everything that has happened and work with a chairman with Flavio’s reputation – therefore we have had to take what we can get, a big risk. For the sake of Magilton and QPR this risk needs to come off.

So what next?
Firstly Flavio Briatore should shake Jim Magilton by the hand today, take his seat in the director’s box and leave him the hell alone. Enjoy the fine food and facilities he has brought to Loftus Road, enjoy the football if that is possible, enjoy being rich and owning a football club. If Jim wants to buy a player he can go to the board and pitch the idea and ask for funds. Do not try and make his signings for him, do not try and pick his team for him, do not tell him he is not allowed to play one up front, do not tell him which goalkeeper to pick – leave him the hell alone. He is not my choice and I'm not sure he will do any good but he will stand a better chance if allowed to go at it in his own way, rather than working under the restrictions Dowie found placed on him.

Secondly Jim Magilton should still be our manager in 18 months time. Unless we are in the bottom three in spring or something catastrophic like that we should not even be thinking about changing managers again for at least 18 months, preferably two years. The turnover of managers has created a situation where we can only attract meagre candidates to the role and it has not done the team any good either – further changes will only exacerbate that. Briatore has had long enough to pick this appointment, he has interviewed the man he chose four times, this is it now – the bed is made, hop in. Magilton should be able to settle in, bring in the players he wants, mould the team as he sees fit and then 18 months down the line when his contract is up for renewal only then do we decide if he is doing well enough to be kept on. The time we gave Dowie and Sousa was pitiful, it was no time at all to judge a manager particularly when, in Sousa’s case, he came in mid-season and inherited a squad of players he had nothing to do with signing.

Thirdly fans need to come to games willing to support the team and the new man. The Dowie appointment was unpopular and the atmosphere right from day one was horrible. Expectations should be suitably lowered by last season’s bore-a-thon and the appointment of a low profile manager but I fear some may turn on Magilton far quicker than they would have done another candidate simply because they don’t like his appointment. I’m honest, I don’t think this is a good appointment at all, but I am not going to sit in F Block next season and smile to myself if Doncaster Rovers score. I want Jim to succeed here and be the QPR manager for many years because if he does and is then QPR will have been successful and there is still no feeling like watching a successful QPR team. If you are angry at the appointment express your displeasure at the board, don’t renew your season ticket, don’t buy merchandise – but don’t sit there and abuse Magilton every time we go behind in a match. His job will be hard enough without us making it more difficult.

...and finally
As always, LFW welcomes the new arrival to QPR. That may seem laughable given everything I have just said but I don’t see a lot of point in lying and saying I wanted Magilton all along. I didn’t, but I wish him all the very best. He does at least know the division, although in a league where the ball spends 90% of its time in any given game being knocked into the channels you have to wonder just how important that is, and his Ipswich teams have always tried to pass the football which is what we want at Loftus Road. He will know our players and what is required and it might improve him as a manager to get away from a club that he spent so long at as a player and one where a good number of his players were his mates – although admittedly that’s because they were the only ones he could persuade to sign there, God stop it Clive this is meant to be a positive end. He has also been appointed as the “manager” and not the “first team coach” which could signal a much needed change of direction from the board and senior figures at Loftus Road.

One thing in his interview that did strike a chord with me was talking about momentum – the importance of a good start. QPR fans showed with Kaspars Gorkss just how quickly they are willing to write somebody off and the atmosphere around the place and towards Magilton will be vastly different even as early as the middle of August depending on whether we win two or lose two of our first three games. If we can get off to a good start, even with a couple of scrappy lucky wins, we may yet be alright.

Nobody will be happier than me if I am sitting here this time next year reading comments on articles along the lines of “you’re a fine one to talk, you didn’t even want him in the first place” after we have had a wonderful and successful season. From today Jim Magilton is like us – he will take great delight from QPR successes and great pain from QPR failures. I’ll call him on his mistakes and praise him for his triumphs on LFW and fans will do the same at games but the most important thing is whatever your feelings towards his appointment let’s try and make sure we are pulling in the same direction come August and he is given a fair crack of the whip by fans, board and websites.

Photo: Action Images

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