Having just about swallowed huge ticket price increases this morning, QPR fans discovered in the afternoon that Amit Bhatia and Ishan Saksena would be leaving the club in a move that cannot be seen as anything other than disastrous.
I’ve been familiar with the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine since a very young age. When I was a child it was my mum who was the strict, stressed, shouty one and my dad who was the one who took me to football, put his arm around me and said things like “life’s a serious business with your mother.” A combination of wanting to please my dad, and not upset my mum, kept me on the straight and narrow.
At QPR for the last three years Amit Battia and Lakshmi Mittal have been the good cops, Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone have been the bad cops, and the QPR fans have been the children. We’ve screamed at Flavio and Bernie that we hate them and want to go and live with cool uncle Amit but the problem is, when you’re a kid, if you actually got your way it’s very unlikely that the cool uncle would actually want you full time. There was always that suspicion that Amit Bhatia said and did the right things to maintain his butter-wouldn’t-melt image with the supporters while never actually doing anything to back up his words.
He was there on the board when the season ticket prices were hiked last time. He even met, repeatedly, with supporter groups to discuss them prior to their release and then stood almost silently as every concern and request that had been lodged with him was ignored. Afterwards, Ali Russell was sent out to deliver the message and attend the meetings while Bhatia remained almost unheard from.
Some said, possibly more in hope than expectation, that Bhatia was merely building a favourable position with supporters in preparation for a buy out of the club by the Mittal family who he represented on the board. Others said that he genuinely meant well, but held such little power on the board at Loftus Road that he would take whatever good intentions he had back to the boardroom where he would then be completely ignored. Either way it seemed that Bhatia, and by association Mittal, were very good at talking the talk but either couldn’t or wouldn’t walk the walk.
Then, 18 months ago, Flavio Briatore’s much vaunted five year plan to restore Premiership football to Loftus Road lay in tatters. His egomaniac, meglomaniac, control freak nature had carried him through five permanent managers, each worse than the last, all of whom he’d put in untenable situations by interfering in team selections, signings and just about everything else. Having made their signings for them he then gave managers ten matches before losing faith and around 20 before sacking them, then using different plays on words to deny he’d done anything of the sort. By January 2010 he’d created a situation where the only manager who would touch QPR with a shitty stick was Paul Hart and when that clueless oaf turns up you know rock bottom isn’t too far away. QPR, the club that got billionaire owners and got worse, were heading for League One with Tamas Priskin in pink boots up front.
On the pitch we know what happened next. Neil Warnock was appointed as manager and oversaw a dramatic turnaround in our fortunes on the football field culminating in us collecting the Championship trophy just 14 months after he’d been appointed to the job. QPR were able to attract a manager as good and proven as Warnock because Flavio Briatore, routinely abused at home games by this point, had stepped aside. He sold his shares to Bernie Ecclestone, who has always taken a back seat at QPR, and Bhatia was given greater responsibility to run the club. He promoted a former University friend Ishan Saksena, previously lower down the Loftus Road food chain, into a day to day role in W12 and between them they set to work.
Warnock stated when he came, clearly and repeatedly, that his assurances and brief had come from Bhatia and Saksena. They were his men, and he was very much theirs. The difference that appointing an experienced English manager and leaving him to get on with the job was palpable from the very first minute of his very first match when a QPR team that had looked totally devoid of skill and inspiration a week previously took apart soon to be promoted West Brom at Loftus Road. Safety secured, promotion quickly followed.
But there was still that suggestion that Bhatia was little more than the acceptable face of the heartless rich bastards who’d once said they didn’t care what “people who came once a week and paid £20” thought about QPR. Briatore’s ego and image couldn’t take being heckled by 12,000 drunk Londoners at a home defeat to Scunthorpe United so he’d gone off into the long grass to operate the club from afar through Bhatia who the supporters all liked. The majority shareholding remained with Ecclestone, despite him repeatedly saying he wasn’t that bothered about QPR, rather than the Mittals. So despite the success of the Bhatia, Saksena and Warnock partnership there was always that underlying feeling that they were the kids playing in the back yard while Ecclestone and Briatore watched them closely through the kitchen window.
As we know Warnock has been very successful indeed at QPR, and while that was very enjoyable for us all it fuelled the ego of Ecclestone and Briatore. Having disappeared off the scene altogether for months Flavio suddenly re-appeared in the midst of our record breaking unbeaten start to the season to say that he dreamed of appointing Marcello Lippi to manage QPR in the Premiership. Neil Warnock laughed it off, and said he couldn’t see Lippi wanting to come and manage the reserves, but it had begun.
Soon Ecclestone was talking about “a lot of work to do” at Loftus Road. He and Briatore became regular attenders at Loftus Road again but because the team was doing well, nobody seemed to care. In fact, incredibly, the supporters who invaded the field after the Hull match actually sang Briatore’s name while crowding around underneath the director’s box on the pitch. I mean as if invading the pitch after a drawn match that confirmed nothing on the league table didn’t highlight the lack of intelligence (or beer consumption) enough pouring another load of fuel into Briatore’s ego tank really put the tin hat on it all.
The natural progression if Briatore was indeed keen to move away from the club, Ecclestone was as non-plussed about it as he always claimed to be in interview and Bhatia and Saksena were indeed running the joint would be for a takeover this summer by the Indians. Noises to that end were made at the end of last week but Ecclestone laughed them off at the Spanish grand prix at the weekend when he said that Mittal and Bhatia were making the same mistake as News Corporation in its pursuit of F1 in believing that the shares were for sale at all. He also said that were he to sell his 60-odd% stake in Rangers Briatore had the first option to buy it back.
Then, this afternoon, after the release of the season ticket prices which are not unreasonable, and the walk up prices which most certainly are, the news came through that not only had Saksena been relieved of his duties (some time ago it seems) but Bhatia was now resigning as well in protest at that, and the policy on ticket pricing. A new representative will now be chosen by the Mittal’s to oversee their 33% stake in the club.
Bhatia said: “It is with a heavy heart that I tender my resignation as vice chairman of Queen’s Park Rangers Football Club. It has been the greatest honour to have served this club as an owner and board member for the past three years. Although there have been challenges, the last 15 months have been a period of stability and success and it gives me immense pleasure to see QPR back in the Premier League where I feel the club belongs. However, it is clear to me from recent board meetings that my vision, strategy and direction for the club is very different from that of the other shareholders and board members. The recent decisions to sack club CEO and Chairman Ishan Saksena and significantly increase season ticket prices are just two of the decisions I disagree with.
“While it saddens me to leave QPR after such a successful season and at the beginning of an exciting new phase, I do not wish to be associated with or take responsibility for decisions made by the board and with which I disagree so strongly. The Mittal family had been in discussions concerning the possible acquisition of the club. However we have been unable to reach agreement on this matter and therefore those discussions have now come to an end. Although no longer a decision-maker at QPR, I shall continue to be a 33% owner and a 100% fan of the club. In due course, we will appoint a board representative to monitor my family’s investment in the club. I shall look forward to supporting the club as a fan next season and would like to thank Neil Warnock for his leadership and friendship over the past 14 months. It has been my pleasure to work with him and be part of the club’s recent success and wish the club every success in the Premiership.”
This can be taken any one of several ways. Perhaps Bhatia generally is just pissed off, that after picking the club up from one of its lowest ebbs and rebuilding it in such a short period of time he and his old friend Saksena have just been tossed aside by Briatore and Ecclestone who have seen the Premiership gravy train approaching and are now suddenly interested again.
Maybe this is a personal thing. Bhatia and Saksena go back a long way and having seen him removed from the club maybe Bhatia decided he had to go as well through personal loyalty, but just threw the line in about ticket price rises and club policy in there as a final boost to his ever growing popularity at Loftus Road.
Or perhaps the theory about Bhatia was right all along – that he was merely cultivating public opinion in his family’s favour with an eye on an eventual takeover. Such a deal was said to be in the offing last week but rebuffed by Ecclestone, perhaps the big rise in ticket prices today presented Bhatia with an opportunity to step things up a level – to apply fan pressure to the board and ease a Mittal takeover through. Mittal was very keen, even going so far as to ensure it was mentioned in the official club statement about his departure, to state that he wholeheartedly disagreed with the board’s policy on ticket price rises. Is he just doing that to remain popular, or for more tangible reasons? Hopefully it’s the latter and hopefully it will happen soon.
If he is gone for good, or intending to be involved in an out and out takeover that subsequently fails, then where does this leave Neil Warnock? Bhatia told the BBC after the final match against Leeds that Warnock would be the manager at QPR “as long as we are involved with the club”. Bernie Ecclestone has since also reiterated, in not quite such strong terms, that Warnock will remain as manager at Loftus Road. But with Bhatia and Saksena gone, and stories of the other board members hankering after a high profile appointment in the Claudio Ranieri/Marcello Lippi mould, Warnock suddenly looks very vulnerable indeed. What odds on him being this year’s Chris Hughton – inevitably replaced regardless of overall performance at the first chance the board gets?
Whatever his reasons I think the departure of Amit Bhatia from Loftus Road is extremely bad news. It leaves us at the mercy of Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore who have consistently shown contempt towards the supporters who Bhatia worked so hard to please. While most QPR fans were hoping for more control and involvement from Bhatia and Mittal, it now seems that we’re going to get less. Bhatia certainly knows how to boost his personal PR, but he has shown today and over the last 14 months that he has been able to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
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