Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink seems keen to build from the back in 2016/17, with Joel Lynch, Jake Bidwell and Ariel Borysiuk all added to the rear-guard so far this summer.
The first three signings of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s maiden summer in charge of Queens Park Rangers are Jake Bidwell for £1.3m from Brentford, Joel Lynch for £750,000 from Huddersfield, and Ariel Borysiuk for £800,000 from Legia Warsaw.
Bidwell is a 23-year-old Southport-born product of the academy at Premier League Everton who has gone on to make 211 appearances for Brentford since signing, initially on loan, in November 2011. He missed only one league game for the Bees last season (and has played more than 40 games in each of his last four seasons) and scored three goals from left back. He has captained the Griffin Park side for the last two seasons, leading them into the Championship play-offs in 2014/15 under Mark Warburton’s management. Although primarily a left back, he did spend time playing on the left side of midfield during his early loan spells at Brentford when Pim Balkestein was the regular full back.
While at Everton, where he initially started as an 11-year-old goalkeeper, he broke the club record for youngest ever player when he appeared in a Europa League qualifier against BATE Borisov aged just 16. He was capped by England at U16, 17, 18 and 19 level while at Goodison Park and won the club’s Academy Player of the Year award for the 2010/11 season.
Hasselbaink knows Joel Lynch from his time as a coach at Nottingham Forest where the former Brighton-trainee made 90 appearances between 2008 and 2012. Lynch, a 28-year-old Eastbourne native, has one cap for Wales, as a substitute against Bosnia in 2012. He came through the ranks at Brighton, reaching the FA Youth Cup quarter final while a junior there before making a first team breakthrough in 2004/05.
He made 95 appearances for Albion between October 2004 and July 2009 but became frustrated at falling behind Tommy Elphick and Colin Hawkins in the pecking order there when Micky Adams was the manager and twice submitted transfer requests to force through a move to Forest, initially on loan. He was in and out of the team in his initial months there, often selected at left back or as cover to centre half Wes Morgan. When Morgan left for Leicester he held down a regular spot but chose to move to Huddersfield in 2012 when his contract expired.
Lynch made 128 appearances for the Terriers across four seasons scoring nine, often spectacular, goals. He was Huddersfield’s Player of the Year in 2015/16.
Less is known of Ariel Borysiuk, a 24-year-old Polish central midfielder who has ten full caps for his country. His career to date has run a full circle, starting as a youth team graduate at Legia Warsaw and doing enough in their first team to earn a move to Bundesliga outfit Kaiserslautern. Although he was sent off on his debut for two yellow cards in the first half (alright Diakite calm yourself) he went on to make 14 appearances for the German side.
He has since spent time on loan with VN Novgorod in Russia before a permanent move and 54 appearances at Lechia Gdansk back in his homeland. His performances there saw his first club Legia Warsaw return to buy him back in January this year and he made 13 appearances as they qualified for the Champions League before his switch to QPR this summer.
All three players have signed three year contracts at Loftus Road.
"Jake’s a player we’ve been tracking for a while. I think this is a real statement for us in terms of attracting a really solid, dependable Championship player, who had his pick of other clubs at this level. I want my defenders to defend first and foremost, but I always want them to go both ways and Jake certainly does that. He’s already a very solid and experienced defender, but I firmly believe he can keep improving and I’m confident he will grow as a player here. We’ve now got decent competition at left-back, and it will be a good battle for the shirt between Jake and Jack Robinson.
"Joel is a high calibre centre-half at this level and offers us something a little bit different to the other central defenders we’ve already got. He’s left-sided, which will give us better balance, and has that ability to bring the ball out from the back and play, which will hopefully allow us to control the game from a deeper position.
"I believe Ariel’s game is built for English football. He likes to get stuck in and stamp his authority on games. He's young, committed and plays with great passion. Most of his good work goes unnoticed, but when he's not playing, you miss him - and that's a good quality for a defensive-minded midfield player. He has experience of playing in different countries and that will help him. I feel he's very equipped to play in this country.” - Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink
"This is a massive opportunity for me to improve as a player. I feel I'm in my prime now and I'm ready to kick on and become an established player at this club. I just want to get going now and meet the lads, repay the faith of the manager and owners who have brought me here, and show what I can do for QPR.” - Joel Lynch
"I just felt now was a good time for me to move on from Brentford — and QPR felt like the right fit. When I spoke to Jimmy and Les about football, we were on the same wavelength straight away. Now it’s down to me to repay the faith of them both and show the QPR fans what I can do for the club. I feel I can go on and improve as a player here and take my game to the next level, so that’s something I’m excited about.” - Jake Bidwell
"I had some options but when I was young I dreamed about playing in England and when there was an option with QPR, I didn’t need much time to think about it. This is a great step forward for me. I am a player who gives 100 per-cent in every game. I think English fans like players like this. I am a big fan of English football. I just can’t wait to join up with the team, the manager and all his staff. I can’t wait to start.” - Ariel Borysiuk
How odd for Queens Park Rangers to have quietly had the perfect week while literally everybody else on the island has gone 64 shades of bat shit crazy.
The national team dumped out of the European Championships by Iceland in a result the manager, who took several injured players and no wingers to France with him, said he didn’t see coming. He should, not only because the Under 21 team that helped furnish his much vaunted "youngest team at the tournament” bombed in similar style when highly fancied to do well in their own championships a couple of years back (and Harry Kane walloped all their set pieces into the stand that summer as well), but also because England have never been very good — one final, and one-semi final in a hundred years of trying. Why exactly do we think it could/should be better than this?
The FA must now look for a new manager to make it so. To do that they have enlisted the help of Stuart Lancaster, a former rugby union player and coach who turned out to be terrible at managing England in the sport in which his expertise is based and will therefore, according to somebody somewhere, be of some assistance in appointing a football manager. Still, in a week where the head of the Football Association repeatedly publicly admitted that he "isn’t a football expert” it’s difficult to know whether we’re jumping the shark or its jumping over us any more.
Back home, things are ticking along nicely. The very far right of the Tory party have completed one of the greatest political and PR feats in history by persuading the very people they hate the most and do the least for — the poor, the working class and the north — to vote for something that will give them more power and freedom to pass horrible policies against the poor, the working class, and the north. They’ve done it all with statements and promises that are easily provable to be false — something they’ve immediately admitted to themselves - and dressed the whole thing up as a chance for the little people to rail against the establishment as if Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farrage, Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch aren’t the establishment.
This has resulted in a total bloody collapse of both the governing Conservative leadership, and the opposition Labour group. Is anybody actually running the place anymore? It all rather feels like that episode of Air Crash Investigation where they become so fixated with whether the bulb is faulty in the landing gear display they fail to notice they’re drifting steadily towards a fiery crash into a swamp.
It’s normally QPR that spend the summer like this, while everybody stands around watching the disintegration and mumbling about somebody maybe going over to check if they’re ok.
But no. Having designed a near faultless new badge for the club, released earlier this summer, Rangers now have a perfect home kit to put it on. Literally perfect, the best for a generation. The less said about the Huddersfield Giants/Bradford City third kit the better I think, but with an eye-catching hooped away ensemble as well one wonders how Nike made it look so difficult when a little known Canadian outfit called Dryworld can do it so well. Now just to deliver it on time…
The team wearing it has been strengthened considerably this week as well.
I’ve come to loathe writing these signing pieces. Partly because new signings make football supporters optimistic, and not all of them succeed. Les Ferdinand estimates it’s one in four, and QPR probably haven’t even made that average in recent years. Even sure-fire things like Julio Cesar, Steven Caulker and more recently Gabrielle Angella have come in and failed — at which point the happy clappy things I wrote when they signed look ridiculous and get bumped back up the message board.
Joel Lynch is a commanding left sided centre half, which is exactly what we needed following the departure of Clint Hill. He is very experienced at this level, was rated as the best defender by Huddersfield supporters who are — to a man — sorry to see him go and also has an eye for a spectacular goal. He looks a reasonably safe bet.
It’s rather a crowded house at centre half at the moment though. Lynch, one would think, will partner Grant Hall but Steven Caulker has apparently returned to pre-season training in the shape of his life, with a new-found focus and determination to succeed at something other than being the biggest twat in his group’s night out at the casino. Celtic are loitering, and his wages dictate he’ll probably leave, but he’d be some centre half at this level if he stayed and kept his brain under control.
And what of Nedum Onuoha? Unlikely to be captain again this season, but is he fighting with Hall to play alongside Lynch, or are they eyeing him up for the right back slot that he’s struggled to play previously? Onuoha did do better in that right sided role in the second half of last season than he ever has before, and maybe Hasselbaink thinks he can get some more out of him there, but he will never be that overlapping full back capable of delivering a cross and with James Perch seemingly the first choice there and Darnell Furlong fresh from two outstanding loan spells at high-flying League Two sides last year you wonder what the future holds for Nedum.
Jake Bidwell, similar to Lynch, looks like a secure option in a position QPR struggled in last season. Paul Konchesky was woeful both with and without the ball during his one year loan spell and Bidwell will really have to go some to not be an improvement on him. As pointed out in our end of term report Konchesky finished the season with zero goals and zero assists from 34 appearances, which in an era where the full backs are so key to both the defensive shape and attacking patterns of teams is frankly laughable. Junior Hoilett only managed one assist from the left wing berth ahead of him while Bidwell, according to Opta’s resident QPR fan Jack Supple only one Championship defender has managed more assists than Bidwell’s eight for Brentford during the past two season. Hopefully a prime example of identifying a specific problem and correcting it.
Only one defender (Cyrus Christie, 9) has made more assists in the Championship in the last two seasons than Jake Bidwell (8). #QPR– Jack Supple (@Jack_Supple) June 30, 2016
Like Lynch, the arrival does raise questions about existing squad members. I like Jack Robinson a lot, and was rather hoping he would get a prolonged run at left back this season. Does the Bidwell arrival mean they’re still concerned about the Scouser’s ongoing fitness issues following his horror injury at Huddersfield? Or does Hasselbaink simply not rate him? Be interesting to see what happens to him. He strikes me as the sort of player that’s going to make a wonderful signing for one of our Championship rivals fairly shortly.
It’s also a concern to see Brentford part with one of their supposed better players for a relatively low amount of money, and swiftly go out and make three very eye-catching signings of their own for the same price. Defender John Egan, just 23, signs on a free from Gillingham having made the League One team of the year last season. Dan Bentley, the hugely impressive Southend keeper QPR tried and failed to land for £2m last summer, joins with the fee subject to a tribunal. Romanie Sawyers was a maverick member of a technically proficient Walsall side last season — inconsistent but with an eye for a spectacular goal. There’s a couple more left in that Walsall team — Tom Bradshaw and Rico Henry — worth more than a second look. Brentford have also replaced Bidwell with youth teamer Tom Field who they believe can step up immediately. Will they look back on the Bidwell departure as the best bit of business they did all summer, and QPR look back and think why didn’t we just do that?
Again, time will tell.
Likewise with Polish midfielder Ariel Borysiuk for £800,000 from Legia Warsaw. Other than him being a good age — 24 — with experience at the top level in Poland and Germany all we can really say about him is he plays in the central midfield position that was the key problem in the QPR team last season.
Plenty of work still to be done, as the threadbare squad the club has announced for the pre-season tour of Holland highlights, but these three represent a very decent start to the summer business and with two very decent goalkeepers already in place the defence looks a whole lot more solid than it did previously.
And it’s all been done for less than the money QPR are apparently going to make by shipping Leroy Fer, and his weekly salary, off down the M4 to Swansea in return for just shy of £5m. Maybe Lee Hoos and Les Ferdinand should have their remits widened? They’d certainly be a whole lot more use than Stuart fucking Lancaster.
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