QPR fans who treat themselves to televised football as well have probably seen more of Derby County than Rangers this week – and it might not be a bad thing if Flavio Briatore has done likewise.

Exactly how not to do it
Do you remember Lewis Price? Promising young keeper at Ipswich, got a couple of full Welsh caps while at Portman Road. How about Eddie Lewis? Remember the little American with the sweet left foot impressing against us for Preston and then again for Leeds? Two years ago QPR fans probably would have walked over hot coals to see him at Loftus Road. Claude Davis? A bigger, more powerful, stronger and better version of Damion Stewart at Preston and then Sheff Utd in the Premiership. He gets added kudos for once threatening Ade Akinbiyi with a cut throat razor – an enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. Dean Leacock? Best centre half in this league the season before last, we were all furious that Waddock had signed Rehman from Fulham instead of him.

Whatever happened to these players? Where are they now? Well if those of you at Pride Park last week would like to go and fish your match programme out of the glove box and turn to the back cover you’ll find out that they are all now part of Derby County’s squad. Them and 34 others. Bloody Darren Powell the old Brentford and Southampton lad is in there as well look, Christ I have only just noticed his name myself and I’m a football nerd that works in Derby. The Rams’ squad is so overly inflated it is possible to find a new name in it every time you look. A vast collection of overpaid players on an 18 month losing run that none of them really seem to be too bothered about it.

Less than 18 months ago Derby County were going into the Premiership as the third best team in this division. Now, three managers later, they could quite easily be heading out of it the other way.

This has more relevance to us than simply being a recipe for our second away win of the season last Saturday. You see Derby’s troubles all began with the often talked about, seldom seen through “three year plan” that every club seems to have including our own. Flavio Briatore has been rightly praised since coming to QPR for talking consistently about a slow building job, about wanting to go to the Premiership to stay not to get thrashed every week and come straight back. The Italian says he wants solid foundations on and off the pitch at QPR so that when (and I think it is still when rather than if in his eyes) we reach the Premiership we are able to make a decent fist of it and not simply wind up back here again within 12 months saddled with a big wage bill and a poor squad.

Derby wanted the same when the appointed Billy Davies as manager. They had struggled the season before under the inexperienced Phil Brown but that was nothing new. Since the heady days of the late 1990s when Jim Smith was the manager and Paulo Wanchope and Dean Sturridge were hot property in the Premiership Derby had been in almost permanent decline – financially stricken off the pitch and limp as a wet lettuce leaf on it.

Despite numerous flirtations with the play offs there seems to be a feeling at Preston that they are now, and were then, as high as they are ever likely to be able to sustain which means that managers like David Moyes, Davies and who knows in time maybe Alan Irvine always look for a better equipped vehicle for their own ambitions.

In the summer of 2006 Davies thought Derby was that vehicle and breezed into Pride Park promising that a run of seven relegation battles in eight years was about to come to an end. There would be a three year plan during which time the team and club would be rebuilt, its position in the Championship consolidated and then finally its place in the Premiership restored on a sound footing. Ultimately Davies did rather better than that. The Rams won just one of their first six league matches but then embarked on a run of three defeats in 18 matches and were right in amongst it come January. Davies was allowed to add extensively to his squad – spending the thick end of £4m on David Jones, Craig Fagan, Gary Teale, James McEveley and Stephen Pearson and loaning Tyrone Mears from West Ham. They joined Davies’ January signings like Steve Howard and Bob Malcolm – good steady Championship players but a long way from Premiership class.

Somehow, through a combination of luck, determination and Davies’ expert management, they won promotion to the Premiership through the play offs at the end of his first full season in charge. Two years ahead of schedule. Two years too soon.

Davies layered another load of players onto the squad. Kenny Miller arrived, Rob Earnshaw too and Claude Davis – again far from good enough for the top flight. The Rams infamously won just once all season, and came down with a record low total of 11 points. Davies was sacked 14 games in and replaced by Paul Jewell who rightly realised quickly that the team wasn’t good enough, promptly made it even worse some cataclysmically bad signings in January (Robbie Savage, Danny Mills, Laurent Robert) and then spent the remainder of the season slating them all in post match interviews, normally after heavy defeats.

Jewell said it would all be alright the following season once he had his players there and indeed he bought an entire new team prior to the start of the 2008/09 Championship campaign – that was the team that rolled over so limply for us last Saturday, now of course under the guidance of Nigel Clough who has come from a Burton Albion squad half the size and almost as good despite being three divisions lower. The disadvantage of constantly sacking managers, giving out lengthy contracts to mediocre players and rising too far too quickly was laid bare for all to see at Pride Park last Saturday. Derby were rank, easily beaten by QPR.

Some QPR fans still speak of the play offs this season, encouraged by the victory at Derby last weekend. We are only three points away from the top six but lets be honest with just two away wins all season and performances of a very average level throughout the Christmas period it would be a bit of a joke if we did make it and I don’t think we will. The away form would need to improve but with trips to struggling Blackpool, Barnsley, Doncaster and Southampton to come it’s not unfeasible that it might and in Wayne Routledge we have one of the division’s outstanding players who could well make the difference. Other QPR fans moan that we haven’t done enough this transfer window and should go all out for a Lita or a Nugent or somebody like that to try and push on and win promotion this season.

Not only do I not think we will manage it, I’m not sure I want us to either. Far from encourage me about the possibility of making the top six the thoroughly enjoyable win at Pride Park has simply highlighted the problems of rising too high too soon. Briatore betrays his own plan by sacking managers and handing out long contracts on big money to mediocre Championship players just as Derby did. I do hope that we stick to his stated plan and try to go into the Premiership on a sound footing, rather than as Derby did simply with a decent run of form at the end of the season.

QPR are a long way from being good enough to challenge at the top end of this league, two full backs and a striker at least, and may well drop out of the race altogether with three tough games this week but the play off system is such that a decent run of form over the next few months could see our under prepared, inconsistent and obviously unfinished team trying to cope with the 19 best teams in the country come August. While I’ll be cheering as loudly as anybody if it happens I will be terrified all the same.

Is a 1-0 defeat ever a good result – part two
And at the risk of turning this site into RamZone.net, not a Welsh singles site I hasten to add, I am going to stick with a Derby theme if you’ll allow me the chance. As I said many QPR fans will have seen more of Derby this week than our own team because following our win there last week they have had two televised cup ties while we have been, I pray to God, working on throw ins and corners on the training ground.

Shortly after embarrassing themselves against us Derby took a one goal lead to Old Trafford in the League Cup – a challenge we faced ourselves earlier in the competition. Now after QPR’s performance at United, that basically consisted of sticking everybody in a line across the edge of or own penalty box and crossing our fingers, there was a fair bit of criticism from supporters. People asked just what the point was in effectively trying to keep it nil nil for 120 minutes on the off chance that we have learnt how to take penalties?

I disagreed, as you may recall. Personally I thought with the quality of the side Man Utd had out there and the fact that our strength lies in the heart of our defence and our weakness clearly lies in the middle of the attack it was reasonable to try and keep them scoreless for as long as possible and either try to sneak on late or play for penalties. We don’t score very often away from home, seven in total this season, against the likes of Plymouth and Sheffield Wednesday so to suddenly expect us to come out all guns blazing and put Man Utd to the sword was naïve. We were still in the game in stoppage time and went within about a foot of an equaliser.

Nevertheless supporters maintained their criticism, many saying they had travelled to Manchester to see us score and despite us only being beaten by the traditional late Old Trafford penalty the trip had been wasted.

I bring this up again now because Derby, like Blackburn before them, went and played an expansive game at Old Trafford in the League Cup and conceded eight goals between them. The goals they got themselves came in the last few minutes with the game already won and United already metaphorically in the showers. Derby were three down at half time the other night. We on the other hand were still in the game with a minute to go and nearly did it – only Ledesma’s poor finish denied us our moment and I’d rather be celebrating a genuine equalising goal in the last minute than some charity, sympathy consolation strike as Derby and Blackburn had to do.

I asked on the message board and people still said that even though Derby and Blackburn had shipped four, and I challenge you to think of a worse experience than sitting inside Old Trafford while the Bishop Stortford reds celebrate four goals, it would have been worth us doing the same to celebrate a couple of consolation strikes of our own. Whether we would have got those consolation strikes with our attack is highly debatable, certainly a lot more debatable than the idea that United would have scored a sack full against us had we played a more open style.

So I thought I would throw it open again. Would you rather us have gone to Old Trafford and attacked and possibly conceded four goals or more or done what we did and kept it as tight as possible for as long as possible in the hope we could sneak one on the break or near the end? You can comment below, or e-mail loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk.

Armbands must be worn at all times
One negative consequence of our win at Pride Park is a premature end to Martin Rowlands’ season – he tore ligaments after ten minutes and will be out for the majority of 2009 as a result. It is a big blow for Rowlands who, while never recapturing his form of last season, has been a key player for us this season and will be hard to replace both as a player and a captain. In fact he’s almost impossible to replace as a captain because looking down our squad list just who on earth would you pick?

Gavin Mahon will, in all likelihood, get the nod. He has done the job before and is the most experienced player. The problem I have with this is despite Mahon’s excellent display at Derby I would not have him in my team every week. Away from home in certain circumstances he can do a good job, as he did at Derby, but at home he often has the same affect on the team that Steve Palmer did when Holloway played him in midfield. His possession retaining but negative sideways and backwards passes are a good thing away from home but at Loftus Road then can slow the tempo of a game to the visitors’ advantage and stop QPR breaking out at pace which should be a strength with Cook on the left and Routledge on the right. We know through long and bitter experience that when the central two in a 442 formation is Mahon and Leigertwood QPR are more often than not an abysmal side. So should he be the captain when he should not be in the team every week? And would we, by making him captain, create a situation where he is picked in games he should be left out for just because he is the one that wears the armband?

Sadly though there are few other options and it really highlights the lack of natural leaders at Rangers at the moment. Fitz Hall would probably be second choice but like Mahon he probably should not be in the team for every match. Gorkss and Stewart are playing better than he is at centre half and Connolly was far better at right back at Derby than Hall had been at Burnley. Stewart is a player that has always needed to be led rather then lead himself and Gorkss is an unlikely choice you would think. Many people on the message board suggested Connolly but he is still very young and despite a good performance at Derby he has struggled to come to terms to playing full back when asked to do so and the captaincy may be an added worry he could do without while learning a new position.

Leigertwood has also been suggested – he has been excellent in the last three games and pledged his future to the club recently after speculation linked him with Wolves. Leigertwood though is an inconsistent performer and does not seem like much of a shouter or leader on the pitch either. Lee Cook is a QPR fan and a long serving player over three spells but wingers rarely captain sides and Cook, with his hair gel and gloves and fear of strong tackles, is a proper winger in every sense of the word. Another that does not immediately strike you as captain material.

The English make a bigger deal out of who captains a side than any other country in the world and as long as they are able to understand what the referee is saying to them it should not really matter who is given the job. However we are English and we do like to make a big deal of it, and we are really short of leaders capable of doing the job – on a cold and wet Tuesday night in Blackpool you need a few leaders to get you through tough moments and we don’t seem to have any. Anyway, it will probably be Gavin Mahon but I welcome your thoughts on alternatives.

Photo: Action Images

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