Jamie Mackie has today returned to Loftus Road on a free transfer from Nottingham Forest, correcting one of the worst bits of business QPR have done in recent times.
He signed the summer before that campaign from Plymouth Argyle — Warnock’s Devon and Cornwall connections tipping him off that there may be a rough diamond to be salvaged from the wreckage of a relegation season at Home Park.
Mackie had been a trainee at the old Wimbledon club and, briefly, MK Dons after the controversial move north, but he’d had to drop into non-league with Exeter City to make his breakthrough. He scored 20 goals in 62 starts and 35 sub appearances while at St James’ Park, sparking a £145,000 move down the road to Championship side Plymouth. There, in a struggling team, he scored 16 times in 84 starts and 18 sub appearances.
Rangers fans were told to expect hard work and commitment from a raw player with a lot to learn. What they got, initially, was a prolific scorer of goals. He notched from close range on his debut against Barnsley in a 4-0 win, then again in the second game as the R’s won 3-0 at Sheff Utd, and once more in the third — memorably equalising deep into stoppage time at Derby. In fact he scored eight in his first seven league games for the R’s, including doubles in big wins at Ipswich and Leicester.
The goals, by and large, dried up but Mackie’s work rate and terrorising of full backs endeared him to the QPR faithful. He was a vital cog in a machine built to get Adel Taarabt into dangerous positions. Sadly, his first season was cut short in January after 30 appearances for Rangers and Scotland (including his first international goal against the Faroe Islands) when he broke his leg at Blackburn in the FA Cup.
Mackie scored eight times in his first ever Premier League season too, including memorable strikes against Liverpool and on the final day at Manchester City. He was used extensively by Neil Warnock and his replacement Mark Hughes, despite an influx of bigger name, higher paid, supposedly better players.
Harry Redknapp, however, saw things differently. Mackie made 37 appearances in 2012/13 as Rangers were relegated in hapless fashion, but increasingly his football came as a late substitute in lost games. He was told he wouldn’t be first choice in 2013/14 and elected to leave, signing a big-money deal at Nottingham Forest where he would go onto make 49 appearances and score five times in an unhappy spell. He enjoyed something of a re-awakening at Reading last year, starring in the Royals’ run to the FA Cup semi-final.
Mackie, who now has nine caps and two goals for Scotland, has today returned to QPR on a free transfer, signing a two year deal.
He has a golf handicap of nine.
"I made the decision to leave a couple of years ago and pretty much since I did that I’ve missed it here. I loved my first spell at the club, I made the decision to leave with my family, it wasn’t easy but the way the place was at the time I felt like it was right to seek new challenges. Things don’t always work out, you can’t always tell how it’s going to go, maybe it takes moving away to make you realise how much you miss something.” — Jamie Mackie
"I’ve always admired Jamie — his qualities as a player, combined with his energy and commitment, are just what we’re looking for. His desire to come back here and be a success again, second time around, says everything you need to know about him. I’m hoping now he’s a little bit older and wiser, that he’ll bring some experience and maturity to the dressing room.” — Chris Ramsey
"It’s not for me to comment on why Jamie left when he did, but what I do know is how much QPR means to him. It’s important we have people like him, with the right attitude, who want to help us progress."We want a front-line that can rotate, that can be progressive and Jamie ticks those boxes. He can come and get it, go in behind, run the channels — he’s got great versatility. -Les Ferdinand
What Mackie does for the team is allow them to play further up the pitch because he really is the first line of defence. Not the greatest footballer in the world and he would probably be the first to admit this, but there are not many who would match his work rate. Rather him than the many, 'Premiership quality' players we have had in the last few years who were really here to fleece the club for twelve months before pissing off for their next big payday. Pleased with his signing and he will be a good foil for JET. - DWQPR
Not sure about this. Didn’t rate him very high the first time around. Too much headless and pointless running around. Yes can score occasionally but otherwise nothing else than a mediocre Championship player at most. Didn’t really set the world on fire at Nottingham nor at Reading.
These second comings tend to be useless. -Corse
He isn' t the most skilful in the world, but I love his passion for the game and the way he hassles and makes defenders nervous, like a terrier, biting at their heels, they make mistakes and opportunities happen. - RickyDicky
If he can produce the form he generally did in his first stint with us then it is a decent signing, my concern is how little impact he has made elsewhere. I wonder if he can keep up his impressive workrate now he is a little older. -WestonSuperR
Hughes’ replacement, Harry Redknapp, eventually agreed with them. After initially saying he wished he had "eleven Jamie Mackies” to choose from, Redknapp increasingly consigned him to the substitutes bench, preferring instead to pick a patently injured Bobby Zamora in attack, and Andros Townsend on loan from Spurs on the wing. Townsend wasn’t QPR’s player, and was never likely to be so three months further down the line, but then long-term thinking and strategy is to Harry Redknapp what honesty and integrity is to Sepp Blatter.
Redknapp told Mackie he wouldn’t be first choice the following season, Mackie asked to leave, Nottingham Forest offered him an excessively large financial package to do so and off he went. Redknapp shrugged and said the player wanted to go. He promised to sign the "right sort” in place of Mackie and all the rest who vanished through the exit door before adding Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Ravel Morrison, Yossi Benayoun, Mobido Maiga, Will Keane…
Whether Mackie was actually any good or not at that point was largely irrelevant. His departure summed up everything that was wrong with QPR, and with Redknapp. Just when the dressing room really did need the right sorts, who would work hard for the club, see it as a privilege to play for the shirt, do the hard yards in a long Championship season, show pride in their work and enforce standards of behaviour in others they got rid of the one person who epitomised all of that. Even if Mackie was blind in one eye with a club foot, he should have been retained for his attitude and application. After all, Maiga played like he had that and more wrong with him and offered bugger all else off the field. It was a disgraceful episode.
The argument about Mackie’s footballing ability is more valid now the club has made the decision to bring him back. Returning players later on in their careers may be romantic, and a short term PR winner, but it often doesn’t work out on the field. Danny Shittu and Richard Langley were incredibly popular players at Loftus Road, and enjoyed wonderful spells first time around. Both had their moments after they returned, but they were never quite as good, and history, particularly at QPR, is littered with similar cases. There is, of course, always Mark Lazarus to cling to.
Personally I always thought Mackie was unfairly maligned. He improved his technique, particularly his first touch, immeasurably over his time with Rangers while also recovering well from a serious injury. He gave certain Premier League defenders some exceptionally difficult afternoons — Assou-Ekotto, Patrice Evra, Thomas Vermaelen, all found themselves caught out by his directness and incessant nature. Only Stoke’s Robert Huth, to my recollection, killed him stone dead. Even on his worst day, he was a pest, a nuisance, difficult to play against,, whole-hearted and positive - not something you can really say about anybody QPR have spent millions trying to replace him with since.
But there are certainly a long list of technical faults you can point to — principally his goal scoring record which is poor for a forward come winger.
Why I think it’s a shrewd signing from QPR’s head, as well as a gigantic pick-me-up for the fans straight from the club’s heart, is the last two years of watching Harry Redknapp’s staid, one-paced, one-dimensional, kick-it-to-Charlie-and-hope-for-the-best, dull-as-hell team bore its way to one promotion spending more than anybody else and then get meekly relegated straight back.
QPR have no pace, no athleticism, no legs and no stamina. They start off away games defending deep, like everybody else - including the champions - in the Premier League, and then find they have nobody capable of getting them out of there. It was no fluke that we lost 16 of 19 away games last year, nor that Redknapp failed to win any of his dozen despite trying all manner of shapes, systems and players. We just didn’t have the legs for it; we couldn’t get down the field and stay there. Add in the age and lack of fitness and you start giving up positions late in games against younger, fitter, quicker, more athletic teams. When Jamie Mackie played for QPR before it was Rangers, and quite often him, who knifed teams in the heart just as the bath waters were being readied, now we sit there while Liverpool, Hull, Swansea, Southampton, Chelsea and others do it to us.
At Leicester on the final day, when the home side ran riot, the introduction of Brandon Comley highlighted the problem once more. Comley, a raw teenager promoted way before his time, played like a gnat on some bad acid for a quarter of an hour, charging about and flinging himself into the action. The difference it made, having an athletic presence who could get about the pitch, even one so naïve and green, rather than the ageing and ineffective pairing of Karl Henry and Joey Barton, was there for all to see.
The problem has been particularly acute in the wide areas, where the full backs were exposed by wingers unable/unwilling to come back and help and didn't possessthe legs and engine themselves to get up and down the flank. Mauricio Isla, while hamstrung by Redknapp’s early abandonment of his wing backs idea, was a particular disappointment.
In attack, Charlie Austin plundered 18 goals for himself while often chasing left and right, down to the corner flag, even back to his own goal line to execute a clearance on one occasion because there was nobody there to do his leg work. Imagine the total if he’d been able to stay between the posts, with a Jamie Vardy-type to do the donkey work for him.
Even Mackie’s biggest critics would surely recognise these deficiencies in the QPR team — legs, stamina, mobility, lack of support for the centre forward, lack of help for the full backs from the wingers — read like a list of his strengths.
It’s a wonderful move by the club for all the heart, badge, pride, cold Tuesday night in Rotherham stuff. But it’s an even better one by Chris Ramsey and Les Ferdinand from the team’s point of view.
Links >>> Message Board debate >>> Does Mackie sale tally with right sort rhetoric?
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