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Connolly cuts his QPR losses leaving potential unfulfilled
Connolly cuts his QPR losses leaving potential unfulfilled
Thursday, 23rd Aug 2012 00:06 by Clive Whittingham

QPR today confirmed the departure of 24-year-old Matthew Connolly to Cardiff City on a three year contract while at the same time pursuing the signature of 34-year-old Ricardo Carvalho on loan. Sigh.

Perhaps it’s little wonder that most of the professional footballers at the very top of our game seem to be thick as sun-warmed pig shit.

Wayne Rooney, for example, is arguably the outstanding English player of the last decade and yet he probably thinks a thesaurus is the one with the brightly coloured collar and venom spitting ability that accounts for Wayne’s Knight’s slobbish character in the original Jurassic Park movie. There goes ‘Wazza’, a couple of brain cells rubbing together frantically searching for a spark, sleeping with prostitutes behind his wife’s back and swearing into Sky TV cameras while at the same time terrorising defences at home and abroad and propping up England’s attack for several years.

The experts talk about players who are capable of forming a picture in their mind of what they’re going to do next before they actually execute it. But then they also talk about the best players operating on instinct. Perhaps the more intelligent footballers over think things.

QPR fans will remember Clarke Carlisle being crowned Britain’s Brainiest Footballer by an ITV quiz show during his time at Loftus Road. They’ll also remember him searching for answers to his despair at the bottom of pint pots and packets of Marlboro Lights when his knee fell apart. We’re all currently being treated to the terribly worthy – and potentially entirely made up – angst-laden ramblings of The Secret Footballer in the Guardian. And we’ve all been watching Matthew Connolly for some time now.

Footballers can be dangerous when they start to think.

Matthew Connolly was, until today, the second longest serving player left at Queens Park Rangers having arrived at the club since January 2008. He was part of the first batch of players signed in the transfer window following Flavio Briatore’s takeover of the club and arrived along with Fitz Hall, Patrick Agyemang, Fitz Hall, Kieran Lee on loan from Man Utd and the converted loan deals of Akos Buszaky, Hogan Ephraim and Rowan Vine. Arriving from Arsenal’s renowned youth set up via a loan spell at fellow Championship side Colchester he was, arguably, the only one of the lot with any long term potential.

Potential is certainly something Connolly has never been short of at QPR. As you would expect from an Arsenal academy graduate his ball control, passing ability, awareness, technique and positional play was a cut above anything else at QPR, or in the Championship, before he’d even arrived and started to play. He was a thinking man’s centre back, outwitting rugged centre forwards rather than trying to out-muscle them. Aged just 19 when he arrived but already playing like a man of ten years experience, Connolly gave more hope than most who have come and gone at the club since.

Connolly signed for Rangers on January 2, 2008. Hogan Ephraim, signed on loan five months before Connolly arrived and awarded a further contract extension today for reasons unknown, is the longest serving player at the club. Hogan Ephraim.

Today we bid farewell to Matthew Connolly who has joined Cardiff City on a three year contract for an undisclosed fee. He leaves QPR exactly the same player he was when he joined – only four and a half years older.

This is perfectly understandable. When Connolly first arrived the team was managed by Luigi De Canio who, despite speaking very limited English, showed in his nine months at the club what can be achieved through coaching individual players and the team as a unit. QPR were flawed, because the players weren’t good enough, during De Canio’s reign but they were good to watch and effective because he took what he had and he coached them to be that way.

Since then Connolly has played under eight different permanent managers, none of whom have lasted more than 18 months. Five were in situ less than six months. In that time, according to Soccerbase, QPR have been involved in 119 permanent player transactions (discounting loan deals) - 54 in and 65 out.

Of those 54 players brought in and 65 released only Alejandro Faurlin can be said to have improved during his time at QPR – and he started from a pretty high personal level anyway. Not a single one of the 65 departures has been picked off by a bigger, more successful club for a profit. Players like Fitz Hall, Peter Ramage, Mikele Leigertwood, Kaspars Gorkss, Damien Delaney, Paddy Kenny and others have come to QPR, earned lots of money, and left for a sideways or backwards move exactly the same player as they were when they arrived. Some - through injury, advancing age or plain bone idleness – have left a lot worse than they were when they arrived: Rowan Vine, Alessandro Pellicori, Matteo Alberti etc. Many have cost a pretty penny upon arrival only to leave much later for nothing after years kicking their heals on lucrative contracts.

Managers at QPR haven’t had time to coach. They’ve come in, they’ve signed or been presented with a layer of six to eight players in the transfer window, they’ve attempted to put some sort of team together and then they’ve been sacked. Only Neil Warnock, after De Canio, was given any sort of time and control and he got the team promoted but having done so he too then became much more likely to turn to the transfer market than coach and improve what he had at his disposal already.

Faurlin apart, not a single one of those 117 players coming in and leaving QPR since our glorious takeover in 2007 have improved. Hogan Ephraim, extending his deal today, is exactly the same player with the same fantastic attitude and glaring failings as he was when he joined us on loan from West Ham when John Gregory was the manager. He’s still got good technical skills, an admirable work rate, a welcome approach to his profession and a likeable personality. He still does nice things with the ball at times and scores the odd eye catching goal. He’s still built like a damp dish cloth, still playing well in pre-season and disappearing from the scene in mid September, and still too timid. Upper body strength can be built through diet and gym sessions and yet five years after first arriving at QPR Hogan Ephraim still looks like he might blow over in a stiff breeze. This is unforgiveable on so many levels.

Matthew Connolly is listed as weighing 13st 2lbs. If he does, I’d be surprised. I base this on a bizarre five minutes at a Player of the Year dinner a couple of years back when I had to prop him up in a tired and emotional state, and a picture of him taken this summer showing off his new sleeve tattoo when he displayed a torso almost identical to my own 11st frame. I wouldn’t fancy going toe to toe with Grant Holt built as I am, and neither did Matt judging by his various struggles with him over the years.

Connolly has the natural ability and brains to be able to play at centre half despite his slight frame. QPR have bred centre backs like him before – Paul Parker was tiny, Glenn Roder similarly ghostly in appearance – and could have done so again by pairing him with a more physical partner and coaching the pair of them. It looked like Neil Warnock may have done just that when he based our promotion winning team on a back four that included Connolly and Kaspars Gorkss at its heart. But as QPR stuttered in the latter stages of that season – losing three times over Christmas, then heavily at Scunthorpe and finally at Millwall – Warnock made scapegoats of Connolly and others. He dropped him and Gorkss abruptly ahead of a home match with Ipswich, then dropped their replacements Shittu and Hall after the Millwall defeat.

By the end of the season Connolly looked nothing like the first choice centre half of a title winning defence. He was nervous, mercilessly allowing balls to bounce on the edge of his own penalty area, and causing as many problems as he solved. He would dither, over think, and find himself robbed of possession by the thick people who had no problem with either of those traits. He’d stood still football wise for three and a half years and now he was regressing mentally. Had he been dim perhaps his mistakes wouldn’t have affected him but he’s not and they did.

He was left out of the team at the start of the Premiership season only to suddenly find himself flung back into a struggling team in December for the visits of Man Utd and Sunderland to Loftus Road. There you go Matt, you sit there picking your feet for six months then come in and mark Wayne Rooney. The consequences were predictably disastrous.

Warnock took Connolly out then slung him back in again out of the blue for a New Year’s fixture at Arsenal where, again, he clung onto the game by the seat of his pants. Then he was loaned out to Reading where he was excellent for three weeks before getting injured.

Warnock is famed for his man management ability, and rightly so when you listen to what he’s done for people like Sean Derry. He handled Connolly abysmally.

Meeting Matthew Connolly is enough to restore your faith in footballers. He’s articulate, intelligent, down to earth and nice. Faced with a lucrative contract from the good people at Loftus Road he invested in a tattoo business in Hatfield, recognising that tattoos were coming into fashion and Hatfield didn’t have a tattoo parlour. Other footballers in the same situation stuffed all the cocaine they could find up their nose and shagged Danielle Lloyd.

At the infamous Player of the Year dinner in 2009 - when the first team turned up late, hung around in the bar during the meal, and then left early for a nightclub - Connolly sat attentively at his table, collected his Young Player of the Year award, and stayed long after the others had gone, talking to the youth team players. It was only his choice of company that reminded you how young he actually was himself. He interviewed well, and spoke up for QPR and how much he liked the club even when the entire place was descending into a farce and had nothing to like about it. At the height of the crisis, between the ludicrous reigns of Paul Hart and Mick Harford, he won a point at Blackpool with a flick up and volley from 20 yards that fizzed into the net and would have graced any game in the world. He then pointed to the badge on his chest.

When I look at him the frustration is so enormous it makes me want to find a flap of skin on my forehead and start peeling layers off my entire face.

It’s ironic that we’re playing Norwich this weekend, a few days after his departure, because Carrow Road has served as a microcosm for Matt’s QPR career. In September 2008 Connolly was sent off on that ground for two foolish, naïve pieces of rash play. In January 2011 on the same pitch against the same opposition he was sent off again for a foolish, naïve piece of rash play that enabled Grant Holt to do his trademark turn and theatrical flop onto the ground to draw a card. Three months before that Holt had done exactly the same thing to Connolly at Loftus Road to win a penalty which Wes Hoolahan missed.

There’s no progress here. No lessons being learnt. These are the same mistakes, the same failings. Connolly looks – facially and physically – exactly the same as he did when he arrived. Like Ephraim there has been no bulking out, no physical maturity. He does the same things right and wrong as he did when he arrived, only now the lack of progress and coaching has drained him of his confidence so he’s added a nervous tameness to his game. That’s the sum total of five years at the mercy of a conveyer belt of managers at QPR: he’s the same player he was when he started but he’s more scared of things now.

I can’t help but wonder, as we chase the signature of 34-year-old Ricardo Carvalho on loan for the season after a 5-0 opening day home defeat, why nobody at QPR ever looks at coaching what we already have here rather than trying to buy somebody new all the time. Hopefully this will change as Mike Rigg’s influence is felt.

Or perhaps, perhaps, Matthew Connolly isn’t actually very good: too slight, too nervous, not assertive or aggressive enough. We’ll soon find out, because from tomorrow he’s working under Malky Mackay who was a bloody good centre back in his day and is, in my opinion, the Championship’s outstanding managerial talent. Mackay is fast developing a reputation for coaching the best out of the players at his disposal.

I think this is a superb move for Connolly and for Cardiff, but we’ll find out soon enough.

Tweet @loftforwords

Pictures – Action Images, Neil Dejyothin

Photo: Action Images



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nadera78 added 01:12 - Aug 23
Agree 100% with this article. When QPR was at it's best, in the dim and distant past, we would pick up players like Connolly (Danny Maddix, Paul Parker anyone?) and nurture them. Within a few years they'd either be shown the door or have improved sufficiently to warrant a nice transfer fee from one of the clubs with more money and less interest in developing players. Which is ironic because that's exactly what we've become. And we, as a club, are poorer for it.

Successive owners have indulged in fantasy football and too many fans have lapped it up, demanding more and more. I never thought I'd look at a club like Swansea and think "that's what we should be doing". Oh well, another three or four signings before next weekend and then it's only a few months before we get to do it all again.
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RType added 05:10 - Aug 23
Good stuff as always, but I'd say you have to include Adel as having improved since he's been with us. Still flawed of course, but much improved.
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ozexile added 05:13 - Aug 23
Great article. Unfortunately it's all true.
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Neil_SI added 07:28 - Aug 23
I always liked Matt Connolly and wish him well at Cardiff. He represented us really well in his time here and he was very fond of the club even when at times it hasn't treated him with the greatest respect.

Strangely I was never that bothered about the way he let the ball bounce. He had a few blips in that department for sure, but I think his more pressing problem was his skeletal issues with his back and his lack of agility.

He has plenty of good attributes, but he has two ways to approach his career; one is bulking out his frame to become more physical. That would improve him, he'd retain everything he has but have more power, the second, is to work on his agility and speed work. If he does both, then he'd be a very sound player, but often I felt he played without trust and confidence in his own body rather than his ability.

At 24, he has plenty of time to come of age though, and I hope he does. A nice lad, who with a bit more work, deserves a shot in the Premiership when his time comes.
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Spaghetti_Hoops added 08:07 - Aug 23
All true. Though I have never been a great fan of Matthew Connolly because I could never see the skill and presence on the ball going anywhere, but as you say that is probably the clubs fault as much as Matt's. I would like to think that players would take their careers into their own hands but that may be easier said than done. Certainly Matt and Kaspers seemed to get little positive assistance to build their promising partnership from Magilton and Warnock.

I have got to the point where I cringe with every new rumour and signing however good the player and successful their career. I know that the players can only go backwards with us, with the current madness for hiring a new bunch every transfer window. Please somebody stop the carousel and start building a team. Please.
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hoops_legend added 08:21 - Aug 23
Fantastic article and I for one will miss him greatly! I am sure to watch some cardiff games looking out for connolly and helguson!

Your points are right on the money and I would have loved if one of our many managers had handed connolly the armband and told him how important he is. That would have given him the big man feeling and lifted his confidence. We might have been watching him play week in, week out in the prem.

I actually think he played well vs man utd last season marking rooney well and ur match report says as much however a couple of familiar errors did lead to goals vs sunderland.

Hope he does well at cardiff and maybe, just maybe, there is a premierleague footballer there - god knows we have seen a number of times when we think there is!
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YorkRanger added 08:36 - Aug 23
The Club feels a little bit worse off today. For all his limitations you just have that feeling with Connolly that he is the one that got away and in that respect the club shares as much of the blame as he does.
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Antti_Heinola added 11:14 - Aug 23
Always liked him. And the frustration is understandable. I think many of us felt he'd one day captain the club and grow into a fantastic centre half. Possibly due to so many managerial changes, that never happened. Hope it goes well for him at Cardiff.
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Charlie1 added 13:12 - Aug 23
Classy player

Central defence or holding midfielder? I think at times, successive managers were never sure on his best position. Nor perhaps Matt.

Always stuck up from him on here when many slated him.

Best of luck Matt, I fear you will be missed.
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baz_qpr added 13:37 - Aug 23
You can have all the attributes in the world, but if you can't get your head right then you will not progress. I liked Connelly a lot, I think Warnock absolutely destroyed him, but if he is ever to progress he has to be much much more mentally tougher
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TacticalR added 13:40 - Aug 23
Like Ákos, a cultured player, but a bit of a mystery man.

Let's not forget he was part of the meanest defence in all four divisions the season before last. However, he suffered a mysterious crisis of confidence towards the end of the promotion season.

After promotion, he was low down the pecking order, and didn't play much, but was suddenly called into the hardest games against Manchester United and Arsenal, games which Warnock obviously did not expect to win.

Maybe a bit lacking in that commanding quality you expect in a centre-back. My guess is that he's a bit like Anton Ferdinand, in that he needs a commanding CB alongside him to perform well. Let's see if Malky Mackay can bring the best of out him.

By the way, I'd rather invest that money in coke and women than a tattoo business in Hatfield, but that's just me.
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enfieldargh added 14:11 - Aug 23
as you righlty say, never fulfiled the potential he had. When we signed him I naively thought it was the start of QPR buying young potentail, sadly the only other young players we signed were Alberti, Ledesma and the Real Madrid Guy who was up his own wotsit-the rest names on the way down.

Max Ehmer has certainlt bulked out so maybe Connoly's lack of muscle just could be down to his physical make-up?

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Myke added 15:05 - Aug 23
I agree with you 100% on this article Clive, except on one point where I agree with QPR Legend in that I think Connolly performed very well against Man Utd. Its a crying shame that he's gone. I also think letting Helguson go is an error. He got 9 goals last season that actually only went from October to january. I think he'd be good for the same number again this season and who - with the exception of Cisse can we say that about -certainly not the lumbering disinterested Zamora
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Northernr added 15:13 - Aug 23
I didn't think Connolly had a bad game against Man Utd either, but Wayne Rooney scored after 30 seconds and we lost 2-0, then lost at home to Sunderland in the week with at least two of the goals down to Connors. I'd call that fairly disastrous. Like I say though, totally unfair to just throw him in cold to those games.
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SomersetHoops added 19:12 - Aug 23
It is a shame that Mark Hughes and his team have decided they haven't the time or inclination to work with Matt. It was probably a close call, but after Saturday's debacle I assume it has been decided the we need solid defenders ready to play now. I regret that the young players we have had from around that time have been failed by the club because of the revolving door policy with managers who had no prospect of benefiting from coaching players for medium term improvement.

This is one of the saddest thing to say about any club and I am glad that has changed although apparently too late for Matt Connolly. He suffered by being in and out of the team last season and because of his lack of development by the club is not really yet fully ready for the Premiership. I hope those who call for the manager's head before he has the time necessary to develop things understand the disruptive impact managerial changes have on all levels of the club. I think the set-up we are developing now means we need to stick with MH for as long as possible providing results are not consistently bad. The won't stop me and others from ill-informed criticism when things go wrong, but we all need to support the positive revolution at QPR which I'm sure will yield good, long term results

I guess Matt needs a new start and I can just see us coming up against him in a couple of years time when he's had the benefit of proper coaching and realising what we've missed. I hope that has changed from now and we might see Hogan developing from being a lightweight and our other youngsters improving along their optimum development path. This could even see us develop some home-grown superstars.
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isawqpratwcity added 12:05 - Aug 24
It's a question we have to ask too often: how much do we hold our club/national affiinities against our personal judgements.
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