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I know there is a lot of fans out there not particularly complimentary about TF but just remember we are a relatively small club trying to be big. Be thankful there is a board with money who do appear to care and make things good. We have a gate of 18k which to be honest doesn't generate enough to bring in the top players but there is a plan with a new stadium and a new training ground. Relegation is another set back but I am genuinely happy we have a Chairman who at least gives a sh...t! Let's see what the next few months bring. Enjoy the Summer everyone.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 18:58 - May 10 with 7041 views
I'm not sure I agree. "Trying to be big" and "top players" kind of implies that we as a fanbase have had Newcastle style expectations of unnatural grandeur that the owners are struggling to meet. Really I think all we've ever wanted is for whatever money the club has to be spent effectively so it does as well as possible, rich or poor. We know who we are as a club but the owners unfortunately still don't.
One thing it is fair to say is that hindsight is 20/20 and TF has made all his mistakes in good faith - and if we claim to have known they were all mistakes at the time ourselves then we are liars quite frankly. I don't think of him as some sort of rapacious cynical vulture like some clubs have been saddled with. We say all this stuff about foundations and football expertise at board level for instance while forgetting that that's exactly what TF tried to do with Mike Rigg - "the most important signing I'll ever make at the club" were his words if I recall correctly. It's sort of amazing that every single thing he's done proactively has managed to balls up this badly.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 19:04 - May 10 with 7012 views
The Chairman shows the fans zero respect, with childish tweet after childish tweet.
"The decision is made on my future" Still lets keep you all guessing rather than treat you with the respect you deserve, maybe you will start begging me to stay.
"Got my dream manager" Still lets keep you all guessing rather than treat you with the respect you deserve. Actually I should have kept it shut till Clement was in the bag, I know I will pretend it was Ramsay all along.
Players at club now are playing for the badge. (If I say it enough maybe they will give a siht
Supremely confident we will survive (Despite being 1/100 on with the bookies)
Crass decision after crass decision. Sure he cares, so does John Carver
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 19:21 - May 10 with 6947 views
Exactly what winds me up with Tony. We can't have a chairman that has an overwhelming desire in life to be a judge on Britains got talent. His time in the position has been a compete and utter shambles. He is a totally useless chairman. Nice guy yeah, but he is just god awful at the football business
If we were a club in the North or Midlands, or even one further out of central London, we wouldn't be on TF's radar drawing the crowds we do. Or Briatore's, or any other foreign buyer with entry money to the big boy's playpen. We're in an accessible part of one of the wealthiest cities on the planet. We are going to get their attention for that reason, and that reason only.
That brings unique challenges for our investors and different, but equally difficult, ones for us as supporters. Thing is we don't get a choice about the kind of club we want to be, they do. It's their investment opportunity and/or plaything. QPR is never again going to be the club I watched in the 70s. The best I – or any of us – can hope for is that we have owners who understand that we'll never be really long-term happy. Because most of us are fundamentally at odds with what they want. There'll be moments of bliss, like this time last year, but mostly we'll be somewhere between dissatisfied and enraged (like today.) I do think Fernandes has learned that (something Briatore never did) and can live with it. Whether we can is up to each of us as individuals
[Post edited 10 May 2015 19:50]
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 20:57 - May 10 with 6785 views
Speaking as a neutral on this matter, Tony comes across as a very nice bloke, who obviously cares about his club. But he seems more devoted to his airline business and not very finger-on-the-pulse, when it comes to QPR.
I can't think of another Premiership club where, on the day of a crucial game, news would break that a regular first teamer has a problem with his residency visa & therefore, isn't available for selection. That's administrative incompetence of the highest order. How was it allowed to happen?
Why were the team's pre-season fixtures so weak & unchallenging? Championship side Bournemouth played Real Madrid, two summers ago. How come the best that could be organised for QPR, a Premier League team, were RB Leipzig & Athlone Town? Who the hell organised that?
Why was there never a 'WOW' moment, when the club made a signing/loan? £34.5million on Fer, Mutch, Caulker, McCarthy & Sandro. All decent enough, but not exactly marquee signings, any of them. Leicester spent £17 million on just two players, Ulloa & Kramarić, whose goals have probably kept them up. Signings were often left until the last minute & you got the feeling that they weren't all the manager's first choices. I'd love to know the truth about how many times Mr Fernandes said: "No!" to Harry. Not saying that Harry was blameless in all this, but (with respect) he knows a damn sight more about how to build a football team than Tony does.
Some things about Queens Park Rangers are delightful. I love Loftus Road. I have a lot of time for the club's media team, who do a bloody good job. I like that the players are so accessible to the fans, through social media and/or in the way that they take time to pose for photos & sign autographs, before & after games. Last month, I was at The Hawthorns & lucky enough to see a magnificent 1-4 win. After the game, I watched on as Messrs Henry, Hoilett, Austin, Barton, Phillips & Zamora all took time to come over to the waiting fans and honour every single request for a picture/signature. Very classy! Very professional.
Now, if only that professionalism could manifest itself at EVERY level within the club, you might have a chance!
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 21:06 - May 10 with 6749 views
"Shows the fans zero respect, with childish tweet after childish tweet"
Do you often feel disrespected by children? TF says these childish things because that is how he is and imagines is what he would want to read as a fan himself. I agree it's crassly unprofessional and extremely frustrating and embarrassing but you make it sound like he's a master troll doing it deliberately to spite us.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 21:12 - May 10 with 6704 views
I would rather an owner who recognised us for what we are and represent and to stop trying to turn us into Real Madrid, at least loftus rd will be big enough for the next few seasons.
favourite cheese mature Cheddar. FFS there is no such thing as the EPL
"But he seems more devoted to his airline business and not very finger-on-the-pulse, when it comes to QPR. "
This is a logical conclusion to make. But there is one other explanation - that in comparison to the airline business football happens to be an unprofessional random madhouse populated by sharks and marks at the roulette table. I'm betting TF approached the airline business in the same way he did QPR - he saw some potential, drew up a fanciful vision, paid good money to hire well regarded experienced staff - and prospered. In football that gets you Harry Redknapp and Jose Bosingwa.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 21:24 - May 10 with 6653 views
I suspect, without any proof whatsoever, that we are just a advertising tool for AirAsia and Tune Group.
I would also add, again without proof, that the Old Oak Common project will probably be immensely profitable for anyone who develops property there. A football club is a key to open that particular door.
In the event that Old Oak falls through and QPR remain in the football league losing cash hand over fist for a sustained period, I suspect Uncle Tony and remaining shareholders will vanish like a fart in a gale.
Anyway, my point is this: They are here for the money, not the Balti pies.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 21:24 - May 10 with 6652 views
The owners are trying to run us as a big club which shows a complete lack of understanding of the club, that is the root of the problems. If the penny ever drops that we're not and never will be then we can get back to doing what we used to do well - bringing through youth players, lower league players & mixing them with a bit of experience and the odd star, if we do that well enough we could become established in the premier league, get crowds of near 30k, have a go in the cups and maybe break even, that's about as good as it will ever get and it doesn't need hundreds of millions thrown at big name players with big time wages to achieve it. Just time, patience, planning and investment in infrastructure.
Again, as I've said before, TF has made a lot of mistakes, and too often comes across as his own worst enemy.
As others have sagely pointed out here, many things didn't seem like mistakes at the time. A parallel is the general election : suddenly it seems obvious that Miliband got the campaign badly wrong, the surviving senior Labour MP's are queueing up to have a go, without much regard for the guy, it sounds to me. None of them were saying this last week, though. Blair is in the process of being re-idolised by folk who washed their hands of him. Politics, ain't it lovely.
I'll say again though what I've felt throughout : there's worse at Leeds, Blackpool, Charlton et al, and there for the grace of TF + the Mittals go us, West London location or not.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 01:10 - May 11 with 6413 views
The money he loses hand over fist is no more Fernandes's money than the profits his airline makes belong to the customers from whom the airline gets the money when it sells its seats, or or the salaries his employees' earn belong to the airline.
Whether it is wages, profits or loans, the source of the money is not the owner of the money. It is the person who receives the money who owns it.
The sinister difference in QPR's case is that Fernandes, as the Club's supposed representative, has not been prudent like the airline, or successful in his job, like the airline's employees.
Ensuring the Club has first EARNED the money the Club is so freely SPENDING at his direction.
If the Club's 'owners' were really spending THEIR money, the accounts would show that the Club was losing no money at all. His losses would appear in HIS account where they belong, not QPR's.
So it is QPR is giving HIM a free ride, not the other way round. For that, he should receive no thanks at all.
We are always being urged to imagine that there is something wrong with QPR. And to pretend that QPR must replace each bunch of losers with an even bigger bunch of losers.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 17:57 - May 11 with 6255 views
Yes, TF and his crew may be taking us down the road to financial oblivion - man, I hope not - but unless we start literally playing in a park with amateur players, or do an Ebbsfleet, someone has to provide funding, however leveraged, just to keep the floodlights on and the staff paid. It's a fair old cost and Fernandes and the rest of the board have done that. We should be grateful for that.
Of course, there are potentially huge financial gains to be made if OOC happens, but at the moment, there is no dyed in the wool Rangers fan with tens of millions to lavish on QPR out of pure love for the club, sadly.
RFA
"Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1."
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 18:25 - May 11 with 6226 views
I'm completely suspicious of Fernandes' financial dealings - bare in mind the money he invests in QPR is through Malaysian bank loans loaded against the club. He could pull out and leave us to repay the arrears, though that might mean he loses favour the next time he wants to buy some new planes on credit. I don't understand what he means by the shareholders being in it for the short, medium and long-term - they have no plan for any of these points as far as I can see.
It looks like short-term TF wants to beat Financial Fair Play, medium he wants to beat Car Giant to Old Oak Common and long-term he wants to build property in that area along with the stadium. All very suspect and completely contingent on others and extraneous factors. This is not sound business planning in any way.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 22:59 - May 19 with 6047 views
"but just remember we are a relatively small club trying to be big"
No we are not. We are a small club (and always will be) that the board are attempting to turn into a big club and failing miserably at it. Just not going to happen and i am glad. Take the training ground and academy but Fernandes and his ilk can shove the multiplex stadium where the sun dont shine. KeepLoftusrdRs . Fernandes is a buffoon .
[Post edited 19 May 2015 23:00]
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 00:39 - May 20 with 5951 views
Vancouver, that's an interesting point, but what do you base it on? We've had people like Fernandes for 25 years - Thompson, Wright, Blackburn - Wright's surrogate, whatever Paladini was, Ecclestone and now Fernandes. Big talk, big spending, big plans for the most part.
Yet even now, QPR remains the same Club it always was.
Small. Last time I looked it was small, despite all the millionaires and billionaires. Still at Loftus Road. Still the same supporters, and still the same size of support.
Nothing of any significance has changed, because the people mentioned above either didn't know how to furnish the Club with the required talent, or never bothered to.
The Supporters are still around. What is the average lifespan at QPR of a chairman post-Gregory? Surely it is the number of supporters we have that keeps the Club in being DESPITE what its Chairmen have done to it (or tried to do to it) over the years (including Gregory). As well as keeping it the size it is (in the positive as well as the negative sense).
This seems to me a similar point to the one made by Deano about 'we'. If the supporters effortlessly survive everything these people can do to QPR, and keep on pouring money in, while Chairmen are soon discredited and on their way, and the Club remains the same size as it always has, with the same lack of success, in what way does that suggest that Chairman are in control, and the Supporters - and their vision - peripheral?
Isn't it the failure of our Chairmen to produce the kind of footballing success the Supporters would welcome and approve of that makes THEM, the 'investors', so instantly dispensable?
The point about 'we' is about belonging, I think. We call it our Club because it is a Club, and a Club of the kind that people belong to, in the sense of identifying with it. That's what keeps the money coming in, that's why the Club profits from us (long after each bunch of chancers has headed for the hills).
Apart from losing money, what power has the Board demonstrated that it has over QPR? The power to sign some of the worst top flight players ever seen? To set at least two records for failure (a longest losing run and a longest away losing run)? To run up total losses of £200 million? To keep the Club permanently fighting relegation?
Was 0-6 at Man City a demonstration of their mastery? Did TF inform the City players that he owned more shares in QPR than they did? Did that work? Can he vote himself a success, or does it have to be earned through know-how, skill and experience? Is going down again an indication of how completely the Club answers to his will?
But football clubs don't work that way. 'Competitiveness' in business is a pallid shadow of what a football competition is. Where your opponent comes to your place and stops you doing ANYTHING you want to do. That isn't business, but it is football. In football, you're not as successful as the Board tells its shareholders it is, but as your record says. That's the killer. Someone else decides whether you're good.
Especially the Supporters.
It is objective, not the subjective fantasy of power that the Board wallows in. Champions League, world class talent and all that. And a new stadium to hold 45,000, 40,000, 35,000, 30,000, none of them seems to know.
In a competition, especially the gladiatorial football kind, where it is sudden death every week, we are only as good as our OPPONENTS' talents, size and spending power. None of which is under Fernandes's control. Just owning shares at QPR buys nothing at our rivals, and it is our rivals we have to overcome.
No, it is the Club's Support - AND the sheer muscle of our opponents - that keeps us the size we are. Oh, and the vastly superior negotiating skills of the Players and their representatives. While the Boardroom people lose tens and hundreds of millions of the Club's money signing nonentities, the Players just get richer and richer at QPR's expense. Surely that is because they have such clueless counterparts to negotiate with, who can never even match wages to performance, still less make a profit at what they do?
So perhaps it is not surprising, given their inability to perform in almost any way at all, that our Chairmen have never changed the size of the Club. That would require talent of a completely different order any of them has possessed (or any other Club has ever possessed, come to that). Clubs can overperform, no doubt about that, but their size doesn't change.
Nobody has ever made a small Club a big one, not since the early days anyway. You do need to know what you're doing, and success in football, unlike business, is rationed. In business, every newsagents can be a success. In football, it only possible for one Club in any competition to win. Even if every individual at every Club is as talented as Messi. In that sense, football is not about talent. The odds are always stacked against a Club, and particularly the smaller ones. And we know that that is so before a ball is kicked, every season without fail. One wins, the rest are losers.
That is why merely cranking up the spending is pointless.
There is never any indication that the people running the Club have grasped this, and they depart, unsuccessful as ever, while we stay and 'welcome' the next crowd, who have no more idea than the last lot, except to come out with the same platitudes, the same meaningless fantasies.
Still, the beauty of the Supporters' position, the real fun, is that we are never to blame, no matter how bad they are. No matter how bad things get at QPR, it is always the Chairman's fault. Even if he is successful, it is our Club (in the sense that we belong to it) and the credit is the Club's (partly, of course, because the money is the Club's). Unlike the Chairman, we do not hamper our own ambitions, through our own lack of ability. Supporters want the best person for the job. Everyone else - players, managers, board members - want the job themselves.
Our way is competitive. Theirs is not. That is why they seem invariably to fail when they do things their way. Try winning, try talent, try real know-how, skill, creativity - as the Supporters would prefer - and they might succeed. But they prefer their pretence of being in control.
The myth that they are spending their own money dies hard. But the accounts make it abundantly clear that the losses are the Club's, not theirs, so the money spent is the Club's. The source of the money the Club borrows from isn't the owner of the money spent any more than the source of an employee's wages or a firm's profits is the owner of the recipient's wages or profits.
What is the reasoning behind losing so much money so pointlessly?
Do we not have a League these days where a small Club like ours can get, say, £60 million a season just for being there? No? Pity. Well, if such a competition ever comes along, we could manage just fine. They might name it the Premier League.
Knowing how to spend £60 million a year is the point. Not easy, but there is no point borrowing £200 million and squandering it if we have no idea how to spend £60 million intelligently, let alone profitably. I am interested to see how Fernandes tackles things from now on. There is always the Champions League and world class talent, of course, as he and Bhatia have said. And surely Mittal has the money.
But that source of power seems closed off to QPR too. Mere spending to bring us the title. Why? Between them they have the money.
But the Club doesn't. And it is the Club's money they are spending.
The Supporters are the mirror of the Club. When it does well, we're pleased. When it doesn't, we're not. That is what supporting the Club means. Putting QPR's interests above those of Fernandes or Mittal or Bhatia or anyone else. They can try displeasing us, try losing as many games as possible, and antagonising us, make as many bad signings as they can, lose unimaginably large sums of money, and proclaim their power over the Club.
But who will believe them? Who will be impressed? Among supporters of other Clubs, they're a laughing stock. I bet THAT intimidates our opponents.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 06:08 - May 20 with 5876 views
I love Tony. His job was to get the best manager and back his manager. He did that with Warnock, then supposedly the best man for the job in Hughes and Redknapp and they both fcuked up bigtime, and Tony somehow gets the blame.
He's got an awful lot wrong, been awfully naive and we all wish he'd keep quiet, but it wasn't for the want of trying. Talk about ungrateful. A peculiarly British trait, sadly.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but i thought Bosingwa, SWP, Joey Barton, Junior Hoilett, Chris Samba, Steven Caulker, Jordan Mutch, Vargas, Isla, Sandro, Alex mcCarthy were all excellent signings.
Wow, in fact looking at that list, it beggars belief the abuse Tony gets off some. I only hope it's a moronic minority and not the people with any sense, or my faith in humanity will deplete ever further...
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 07:01 - May 20 with 5844 views
>>Vancouver, that's an interesting point, but what do you base it on? We've had people like Fernandes for 25 years - Thompson, Wright, Blackburn - Wright's surrogate, whatever Paladini was, Ecclestone and now Fernandes. Big talk, big spending, big plans for the most part.
In one sense you're quite right. Chairmen of clubs have always had plans other than the success of eleven men winning a match on Saturday afternoon. In the 19th century they figured it'd keep their work force sober, and win some votes should they run for Council. These days the stakes are just that much higher.
But in another sense things have changed dramatically. Whatever their faults Gregory, Thompson, Wright all shared a degree of understanding of what football meant to the average supporter. Even if, as in Wright's case, they seemed to have no particular knowledge of, or even love for the game. He'd have known because you couldn't grow up in the UK and do otherwise.
This awareness didn't mean they necessarily gave a sh*t about QPR, but, like the fans, they understood the club's context. They realised, I think, that there were constraints on what QPR was, and could be.
Briatore didn't have a clue about any of that, nor did he care. His vision was a conveniently located boutique club, that happened to play football, to entertain his billionaire friends. Fernandes doesn't understand it either, QPR was available so he bought it. He'd rather have had West Ham but WTF. Basically neither of them comprehend football as a culture (though, importantly, I do think TF is trying.) That's what separates them from previous chairmen, and us. There's also the issue of scale. Whatever Thompson or Wright might have fantasized is dwarfed by Fernandes's schemes.
The challenge for us, as supporters, is to find a way to maintain/preserve the club's "soul" (for want of a better word) in the face of wealthy ignorance. There's no easy answer, and anyway I'm the wrong person to suggest one as I live 4,500 miles away. There has to be a way, but whatever it is it can't happen without the club's owners. Because, though it's spirit belongs to the fans, it's body belongs to them. The one can't exist without the other.
[Post edited 20 May 2015 7:03]
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 08:14 - May 20 with 5776 views
Are you on a wind up? Boswinga? SWP? Samba? Caulker? Mutch? Excellent signings?????? Deary me....you must have been one of the numptys on the pitch on Saturday celebrating relegation and chanting Uncle Bungle's name....? yer thought so.
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 08:34 - May 20 with 5750 views
vblock, I think that was pretty rubbish as a comment.
What Tim was saying was that with hindsight its easy to draw different conclusions, but at the time the signings seemed to good. He didn't say they proved to be or look to defend of excuse those that failed.
You probably need to take a breath before posting mate.
Never knowingly understood
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Rangers - A difficult club to own on 09:07 - May 20 with 5722 views
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