The presence of Steve McLaren and Sam Allardyce at the Hull game struck fear into the hearts of QPR fans and gave the Sunday tabloids an easy two plus two story.

We asked 100 people, name the one man you would not want to see as the next QPR manager...

Frightening image isn't it? It only gets worse as well, just out of shot is Sam Allardyce. After spotting the pair of them sitting near Briatore at Hull The News of the World did a quick two and two sum to link the pair of them with QPR for next season coming up with the usual stuff about Luigi De Canio being homesick and unsettled and players moaning that he can't speak the language etc etc.

These claims have been refuted time and again by the club, and there was another denial at the AGM on Monday when the board insisted De Canio is happy, staying, and doesn't really have many family members in Italy to miss anyway.

De Canio's record since taking over is impressive, particularly since the squad strengthening in January, and it's now only our abysmal start to the season or propensity to concede goals in stoppage time keeping us out of the top six or even top two. Since Christmas Rangers have lost four games out of 19 in the league. They have played six of the top eight without losing, beating three of them scoring ten goals in the process, and with West Brom still to come that could improve still further. Make that seven of the top nine if we avoid defeat to Charlton on Saturday. Before Christmas he showed incredible coaching ability to turn Malcolm, Stewart, Rehman and Barker, without question the worst back four ever to set foot onto a pitch in a blue and white hooped shirt, into a reasonably solid unit capable of keeping clean sheets against Burnley and Wolves.

He's far from perfect, and our attitude to second halves away from home when we're leading is reprehensible and costing us many points, but he's certainly done enough for me to deserve a crack next season when he'll be without the handicap that the first 15 matches of this season has provided him with since he took over. People point at Warnock at Palace as an example of where we could have been but as I said last week he took over a Palace side far superior to the one De Canio inherited, in a better league position with more points, and with a plethora of talented youngsters waiting to come from an academy system we're not part of. I'm not saying it was easy, but De Canio would have to be some sort of miracle worker to keep pace with the Selhurst Park outfit all things considered.

That doesn't stop speculation though, both in the papers and on the message boards.

There's been some innocent explanations for the presence of Allardyce and the Brolly Wally at our game with Hull - McLaren used to play for the Tigers and still lives in the north east while Allardyce has worked for years with current Hull manager Phil Brown and could have been there as his guest. Admit it though, you're terrified aren't you?

Apart from a return to the club from Ray Wilkins or Alan Mullery you'd be hard pushed to find two more unpopular appointments as the next QPR manager than McLaren and Allardyce.

Lets take Big Sam first of all shall we. He did a fantastic job with Bolton, taking them from this division to the Premiership, keeping them there and then leading them to Europe. There were promotions and achievements at Notts County and Blackpool during his time there as well. On the face of it, looking at his record, he'd be an ideal appointment for a team looking to get out of this division - which of course we are.

However, appoint Allardyce and you can kiss good bye to the good football. Only Man Utd have scored more than us in the Football League since Christmas and some of the stuff we've played at Loftus Road has been sumptuous. Forget all that. Forget the emphasis on promising young talent as well. Expect old experienced heads in a five man midfield formation pumping balls at the head of whatever Kevin Davies equivalent Allardyce can lay his hands on. Steve Howard maybe. Urgh it doesn't bear thinking about.

In a week where Flavio Briatore has spoken about building the QPR brand and making us known around the world I can't see how Big Sam would fit into that. Bolton were universally detested - renowned as a God awful football team scrapping out results playing a style of play more suited to the dark ages and boasting a terrible disciplinary record. Not much of a brand builder that - nor is Sam's appearance in a BBC Panorama programme on football dealings between Allardyce's Bolton club and his son Craig, a football agent. Allardyce was furious, refused to speak to the Match of the Day interviewers after that and told the corporation that he'd see them in court.

On a number of transfers involving Bolton while Allardyce was manager Lord Stevens' Quest Inquiry stated: "We remain concerned at the conflict of interest that we believe existed between Craig Allardyce, his father Sam Allardyce [when manager at Bolton] and the club itself." Allardyce has never explained why he didn't follow through his threat to sue the BBC, the "full internal report" conducted at Bolton that cleared everybody at the club of any wrong doing has never been published and no further explanation other than "private reasons" have ever been given for Allardyce's departure from Bolton.

Then there was his time with Newcastle where he spent millions on some poor players and was kicked out after 24 matches. And since then Sam has been on our television screens, just about every week, with a hang dog expression on his face and a determination to turn absolutely every conversation to just how harshly done to he was at Newcastle. Penalty decisions, offside goals, bad calls, balls bouncing off posts - all sorts of things have copped it from Sam.

So in Allardyce we have a man with a proven track record for making his teams play ugly football, a history of making his team's universally disliked and fall outs with the media, a man specifically named by the Quest Inquiry and a man keen to apportion blame elsewhere whenever possible. None of this really fits in very well with "Brand QPR" that Briatore spoke about last week, unless Flav has just come into the possession of a job lot of "No one likes us" t-shirts from Millwall that he wants to shift.

Just about the only thing counting in Sam's favour is the results that his ugly style brought him at Bolton. If De Canio was indeed brought in solely to keep QPR in the Championship, as his previous record suggested he would be able to do better than most, then it may make sense to bring a manager in solely to get us promoted and although it might not be pretty Sam Allardyce may be able to do that.

Steve McLaren doesn't even have that in his favour and his presence at the KC Stadium is even more terrifying than Sam's - not only because his 'innocent reason' for being there is even more tenuous than the former Bolton boss' but because he can't even boast the promotions and results that may be attracting our club to Sam Allardyce.

McLaren lives off a League Cup success and run to the UEFA Cup Final with Middlesborough. A run built on local boys produced for McLaren by the Boro academy coaches, and amazing come backs from hefty aggregate disadvantages in the knockout stages. It was amazing to watch at times, but the goal gluts and dramatic late winners didn't really mask the fact that in just about every tie Boro looked well beaten and escaped by the skin of their teeth only by throwing on every striker they had on the bench in the last 20 minutes. It doesn't take much of a tactician to know that if you need three goals in a quarter of an hour you shouldn't really have Italian international strikers stretching their hamstrings by the corner flags.

When he came up against Ramos and his Sevilla team in the final, a Sevilla team that cost less than the Boro one, McLaren was shown up and soundly thrashed. Boro finished 14th in the league that year as well, about as far away from re-qualifying for Europe as they could have got without paying us a visit in the Championship the following season. He did get them a 7th placed finish one season, and a League Cup win as well of course, but he spent the thick end of £50m on players to accomplish that.

He has no experience of the Championship either as a player, coach or manager and to return to Briatore's aim for "brand QPR" he is a national laughing stock after his time as England manager. Again not exactly the image Flav is probably going for.

Whether either manager would tolerate the current system where the board at QPR goes out and buys the players for the manager who is solely there to coach them I'm not sure. I can't see it myself.

Perversely, having said all of that, I'd still back QPR for a promotion with either in charge. But I'm backing us for a good tilt at that anyway with our current manager and I really don't see any need to change. His results are excellent, the football we're playing is attractive, his English is getting better all the time with more lessons planned for the summer, the players know him and he knows the players. He will be under tremendous pressure next season, with more money to spend in the summer and some fans are already getting arsey that we're "only" drawing with Wolves (7th) Ipswich (8th) and Hull (4th) away from home despite everything that's happened this season.

If we're still dropping deep, giving the ball away, losing our shape, conceding goals late in games and blowing winning positions with the frequency we are doing at the moment next season then I'll be asking questions but for now I'm very happy with the job De Canio is doing and hope to see him in charge again next season. I hope this weekend's stories were a one off rather than the start of silly season.

Drive for show, putt for dough
Ahhhh the Masters. If I have to look at one more Azalea plant I will scream. Still the golf was excellent all weekend and my only regret is I got dragged off into the middle of Scunthorpe and missed the Saturday night coverage while up to my elbows in chavs.

Earlier in the day I'd been to Hull to see our latest entry in the "100 hilarious ways not to win from a winning position" competition and I when one of the crusty old BBC golf commentators came out with that classic old line about how to play the world's most frustrating game it got me thinking about the comparisons between Hull and QPR.

I mean it may pain us to admit it but we're a little jealous of the Tigers at the moment and would dearly love to be second in the league with three to play next season. Although we drew and could/should have won at the KC Stadium on Saturday we still have a long way to go to get ourselves into a top six position next season. Just like putting in golf ultimately your success in football is based on goals scored - West Brom have conceded 53 goals this year which is only eight less than us but they've scored 83 which is more than anybody else in the league and consequently they are top.

On Saturday Hull started with Windass and Campbell up front with Garcia and Pederson wide and later added Fagan, Folan and Bryan Hughes. We lost Blackstock and Agyemang and replaced them with a defensive midfielder and a youth teamer. Here lies the difference.

You can all talk about Lee Cook, Martin Cranie, Danny Shittu, Peter Halmosi and whoever else we've been linked with this week and I agree we do need to strengthen in all departments. But the most important area is up front - we won't win a title with Agyemang and Blackstock as our main strikers and this summer we need to move heaven and earth to make sure we get at least two more forwards in capable of getting us a big total of goals next season. If we're going to be promoted our forwards need to be hitting and passing 30 goals between them. Minimum.

Rumours linking us with Scunthorpe's Martin Paterson don't fill me with great confidence in this department although he is undoubtedly a promising player. We may need to push the boat out a bit, but it's the strikers that win you promotions and it's strikers we're lacking the most.

See you all next year?
You've got to laugh at us QPR fans sometimes. A throwaway comment on Sky's Big League Weekend programme that we are the only club in the league that can neither be promoted nor relegated this season had Rangers fans everywhere logging onto the league calculator to prove them wrong. They are wrong of course, but only a run of results so incredible I'd be demanding a stewards' inquiry can do it now. The fact remains that teams don't go down with more than 52 points, never have and never will, and consequently we've been safe for quite some time.

Things finally seem to be a little clearer in the Championship this morning after wins for West Brom and Hull in their games in hand last night. Everybody now has three games left to play apart from Wolves and Cardiff who meet next week The results last night move the Baggies and Tigers into first and second and that's how I expect them to stay. Hull have tough games against Sheff Utd, Palace and Ipswich and played poorly against us on Saturday but were back on form at Barnsley and have just about everybody fit for the run in. They've come good at the right time and have enough to take second spot I think.

West Brom have a relatively easy run in with Norwich and QPR having nothing to play for and the worst Southampton team in living memory still to come to the Hawthorns. Expect at least two wins and top spot for them - they've been the best team in the league all season for me so it would be only right for them to finish top. Stoke face Bristol City this weekend so they'll be taking points off each other which will play into the hands of the teams above them.

I don't think either Stoke or Bristol City will do particularly well in the play offs either. It always seems to be the way that teams battling away at the top of the league all season often miss out in the play offs if they end up there. The play offs are all about momentum and with identical two wins from nine games records Stoke and Bristol City certainly don't have a lot of that about them. Nor really do Watford who've been in relegation form since Christmas and have just one win from 11 games.

That leaves the chasing pack which really only consists of Palace, Ipswich and Wolves despite mathematical possibilities for other teams. I can't see Ipswich making it, sorry love, so that leaves Palace and Wolves for the final spot and I think the winner of the end of season knock out will come from those two clubs. They're both in decent touch and have impressed me in recent weeks when I've seen them play.

Down at the bottom we've lost Colchester and Scunthorpe already and with the U's falling into the Coventry trap of building a new ground in the middle of nowhere with no pubs, no way to get there other than car and £26 tickets for poor football it's a 'good bye and don't hurry back' message from me. That leaves Blackpool, Southampton, Sheff Wed, Coventry and Leicester fighting over the final spot with the Foxes the current men in possession. At times it's been like watching five bald men fight over a comb with none of them really possessing the necessary ability to drag themselves away from trouble.

I've said Southampton since January but I reckon they only need to win one of their three games to secure a place in this division for next season with Sheff Wed and Leicester still to play each other. The Saints have Burnley and Sheff Utd to come at home and I'd back them to take at least three points from those games, if not four or even six. It looks like they're going to survive by the skin of their teeth. Likewise Blackpool whose run of eight games without a win has dropped them into trouble - they can make themselves safe with a game against Sheff Wed this weekend before a difficult trip to Plymouth and home game with Watford. If they happen to lose to Wednesday they could be in trouble but I think they'll make it.

Of all those down there Sheff Wed have the scariest run in, because they have to play two of the teams around them - defeat to Blackpool and or Leicester could be very costly. They are nine unbeaten would you believe, but have drawn their last seven. A league record eighth straight stalemate at Blackpool would be helpful as long as they avoid defeat to Leicester as well. If they can do that they should be there, but if not Norwich at home on the final day looks like a nice one to have.

Coventry's season rests on this weekend's trip to Colchester. They have Wolves and Charlton to come after that and I don't see more than a point in that for them so they simply have to win at Layer Road.

That just leaves Leicester. Poor old Leicester. If only Ian Holloway had known the plot to King Lear before coming out with that ridiculous comment earlier in the season. Barnsley away is a big game for them this weekend - they'll certainly beat the Tykes if the home side plays anything like it did against Hull on Tuesday. Assuming Coventry win at Colchester then it could well be down to the Leicester Sheff Wed game to decide it. Head on the block, I think it's going to be Leicester to leave us.

Next week I'll take a look at the teams joining us from above and below - basically a lets all laugh at Fulham exercise.

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