The annual QPR Fans Forum took place at Loftus Road on Wednesday night with CEO Christian Nourry, head coach Julien Stephan and captain Jimmy Dunne appearing on the panel.
As if two hours of Fans Forum wasn’t enough, LFW analyst Andy Scherer and I decamped back to the Crown & Sceptre afterwards to record on the whistle thoughts on the key talking points from Wednesday night, and you can listen to that (with Man Utd collapsing in the background) live now on our Patreon – click here.
Win three, draw three, lose just the one against much-fancied Middlesbrough, sit fifth in the fledgling Championship league table… quick, get the Fans Forum booked in while the sun’s shining.
Alright, Victoria Derbyshire. Park your cynicism. Bar last season’s earlier-than-usual effort to draw a line under the acrimony of 24/25, this does almost always land in and around the middle of September and the first international break. Naturally it does plenty to sooth the waters at these things when the team is doing well, and hopefully we don’t see the post-forum collapse in form that has occurred in the past in the wake of this one – who can forget Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink being asked how he would recruit for a Premier League season just a week or so before his team got shown its own arse by Newcastle United to the tune of a 6-0 home defeat?
Captain Jimmy Dunne (JD) was a rare player presence on the panel this year (Christ he’s a big lad in person), furthering his image as club stalwart the leader of this playing group. He appeared alongside the immaculately dressed Julien Stephan (JS) and CEO Christian Nourry (CN). You’re never going to outperform a Frenchman in the fashion stakes, although chairman Lee Hoos was giving it his very best effort at the back of the room.
The evening was split into two. First half was on pitch matters and involved all three panellists, second half was off field stuff/Fans Forum Bingo and was CN on his lonesome playing the hits fielding questions about water pressure, paint jobs and street signs. Needless to say, almost all of the key information and talking points came in part one.
- JS said the start of the season had pleased him for several different reasons. "How the players have worked from the start of the season, they have put the standards very, very high. It’s something important for us and it’s something I want to protect and prioritise. The way they have worked, played and fought on the pitch is something really important. But, it’s only the start of the season. We’ve played seven games. The Championship is a long, long travel. It’s important for us to put the level of demand very high. If we do that we have more chance to be consistent this season.”
- The EFL’s new PSR rules were first up. How they work, how they affect QPR specifically, and whether they had been behind a summer in which Rangers did seemingly very good business, but mostly on loans and free transfers with only one fee paid for Motherwell’s Calum Ward. CN: "For the last two years owners and CEOs have been debating the future of FFP in the Championship and in April landed on trying to have a set of rules more closely aligned to the Premier League. The headline change is the previous rules looked at the profit a club was making on movement of players on a three-year cycle as well as other football related costs, now it’s much more about you can spend 85% of your revenue on an annual basis on player transfers, wages and agent fees. That’s the basic principle. We don’t have the biggest stadium, our revenue base is not as big as some other Championship clubs. The reality is it requires us to be smarter in revenue generation outside of ticketing and filling the stadium. In the end these rules were put through giving you an additional financial allowance each year above the 85% of revenue that you can spend. This season we are a little bit under where we could be in terms of the pure FFP cap, but as everybody is aware we’re trying to run the most sustainable and cost-effective business in a league that is becoming increasingly unsustainable.”
- On that summer recruitment, and specifically the potential impact of AI on data-led transfer plans, CN added: "It’s been an interesting summer because there were two or three other Championship clubs who I think had fairly similar shortlists to us which makes me think that definitely is a thing. The response has to be how we can post-identification do a better job than other teams in terms of pitching the football club. We were fortunate to be in a position this summer where a number of the players we were trying to sign were either on loan or free agents who were able to come in, see our training ground, sit down with the head coach and Andy Belk, and it put us in a position to pitch fairly aggressively. Those players either weren’t under contract or were but the parent club was keen for them to get a loan and permitted us to speak to them. You have to find a way outside of the fact that your lists are the same, or the markers you look for in data or your scouts are looking at in terms of positional profile, by getting in front of those players and trying to convince them QPR is the place to come. We’re acutely aware that if most clubs continue to use the same third party tools you can buy as a football club, the same players could keep turning up on lists. A combination of our specific positional profiles, the work we do to take third party data but build our own algorithms to look at it and the fact it’s developing all the time I think means we can continue to find edges.”
- JS spoke on how he presents the club to potential new signings. JS: "I try to be very honest when I speak to the players and to describe the reality of the club and how it works. How it works in the dressing room, the different relationships between people at the club. I try to speak about the mindset, the desire every day to improve, and I think it’s really important to talk about the ambition. If you don’t have ambition in your life it doesn’t mean anything. We try to be honest. We highlight how playing at Loftus [Road] it’s an incredible atmosphere with the fans and they experience that quickly so they know we don’t lie. Try to be very honest.”
CN added: "The honesty bit is really key. Andy Belk and JS are not afraid in a meeting to tell a player they’re not very good at something, but we’re going to help you. That level of honesty and frankness is increasingly rare in a sport where everyone is trying to make the player feel good and say nice things. The honesty of what we are today, what we are not yet, and what we want to be, has often stood us apart when we speak to players who have four-five options and they decide to come here. Andy and his data team, the work Julien does on the player, the work I’ll try and do around the player – family, agent, everything else – we’re microscopic in the detail we go into to try and understand the human being before they come to see us. All of those things add up to a place that enable us in the last two summers… I can’t think of anyone who, unless there’s a massive financial gap, hasn’t joined when we’ve had an opportunity for them to join. It won’t last, there will be situations we get wrong and don’t work. The support, the crazy history of the club, intrigues people. That combined with one of the last old school English football stadiums, and the training ground thanks to bond holders and our shareholders have turned into an interesting combo that has enabled us to have success. In all humility we know other teams are catching up and we must continue to evolve and be smart with the resources we have to continue on that trajectory.”
- While bringing in good money for the likes of Lyndon Dykes, Sinclair Armstrong, Sam Field, Charlie Kelman and others, the club is yet to achieve the sort of big Morgan Rogers/Hayden Hackney style sales which have allowed Middlesbrough to trade as aggressively as they have this summer. CN said in his summer transfer window summary that players had actively briefed through their agent that they wanted to stay at QPR this season even if there was interest elsewhere. David Buckingham wondered, as I had previously, whether this meant a change in the stated aim of being a development club with a player trading model in favour of ‘we’re going for it’. Something plenty are nervous about given how it went here last time we did that (2021-2023). CN: "It’s a fair question off the back of the players that came in for this season, but the reality is the core objective remains the same. As we continue to grow we need to be in a position where the vast majority of players are able to be resold for profit. We did six first team transfers this window, four permanent, and all four of those were done one with the idea these are good players that can improve our level but two with a clear path to probability for the football club if we need to go in that direction. The development piece remains absolutely at the heart of everything Julien and his team are doing. Look at some of the young players who’ve been around the first team through pre-season. A guy like Phil Sanyaolu who had an incredible pre-season, unbelievable attitude, and becomes the first first year pro to get a loan in the EFL from QPR since… we can’t find another one who’s done that. It’s not a pivot, it’s how can we continue to develop while being as competitive as possible. Those things are not at odds with each other if you make decisions to help both things happen at the same time.”
- QPR are currently top half for xG but bottom five for shot conversion, and have left points on the board in 0-0 draws against Charlton and Bolton. JS: "We’ve had a lot of good chances and that’s really positive. I’m convinced in the mid- to-long term if you continue to attack properly and continue to have big chances we’ll score a lot of goals and have the chance to win games. We have to keep the players confident, work hard in different sessions. We have the youngest team in the league. They work well, they need more time on the pitch to improve and to take confidence in themselves. The last two weeks with the repetition of the games we didn’t have time to work – game, recovery, game, recovery. On set plays we know that to repeat and repeat and repeat the situation is important. In football the most difficult thing is to score but when you’re creating big chances and shooting from the right area you will score goals mid- to long-term. It’s not easy when you have to change four, five, six players in your line-up each game. I think the fans have enjoyed how we’ve played since the start of the season so we will continue to try and find more efficiency in the penalty area and find the right target on set plays.”
- JS said the players are "very ambitious this season” and the question was put to JD exactly how ambitious and what are the aims for this season? The club have traditionally been very reticent to commit to anything at all in this area – focusing on other ‘ambitions’ like reducing the wage bill, reducing the average age of the team, becoming more sustainable, incremental improvements and often quite woolly stuff like this. You can understand this to a certain extent – when Warbs Warburton was brave enough to come out and state the play-offs were the aim for 2021/22 he ended up getting the sack for missing them – but there is a feeling that this has almost become an excuse for mediocrity. Downplay expectations, finish 15th two years in a row and point to bits of progress here or there, and the club hasn’t finished higher than ninth since it came back into this league 11 years ago. Whether they achieve it or not this season I did quite like that JD was willing to take his balls out of the bath and say… "Top six, is our internal target. Top six should be the target. Christian often reminds me it’s now top eight, but call me old fashioned I want that traditional top six spot. That’s what we’re working towards every day. It’s the ideology behind all the hard work we do in training, it’s not for nothing its ultimate purpose is a top six spot.”
- CN said it had been a "frustrating couple of weeks in that regard” when it came to the injuries to Lamptey/Chair/Kone/Dunne/Smyth but that none of the current injuries to first teamers are long term and they’re confident of having the entire group back and fit very soon. JD confirmed his ankle is fine post-Charlton and he would be fit and available for selection this weekend. "I think I was being a little bit dramatic, for effect, and I am available for selection on Saturday.”
Injuries were always going to come up at some point in this after Rangers lost five players in the first half of the last three games. CN: "At the end of last season I said to Julien and his team and the performance/medical team let’s sit down together as departments and figure out training loads, rotations, recovery… what you together feel can work. Julien has a year of experience with our squad and knows our players better. Ultimately it was a positive process, both departments came together and produced something they put to the board and said this is how we’re going to do things. Collaboration between the coaching and performance has been sensational. Sensational. Our medical and sport science team is the most complete and most impressive in terms of quality, professional, smart and also great human beings, since I’ve been here. It’s not a problem to them if it needs another five or ten hours, if they need to work a day off, to put our players in the best possible condition to succeed. I feel positive about the group and that we wouldn’t have pursued the recruitment strategy we did this summer – i.e. taking players with an injury history with the trade-off of Premier League quality – and bringing them into the squad if I didn’t believe the collaboration between coaching, performance and medical was excellent. We’re our own biggest critics, when you’re frustrated about a player not being available then trust me we’re working very hard to learn everything we can from that situation. Unfortunately, some of the injuries we’ve had early doors this season have been part of a wider trend of what the calendar is expecting of some of our players so early in the season.”
The way the questions were structured and answered it allowed the panel to largely skirt the historic injury problems that have bedevilled this team for the previous two seasons as well as this one and focus specifically on the unique challenges posed by this year’s admittedly ludicrous calendar. That said, I’ve rarely agreed with Christian more than his assessment here on the perfect storm cooked up for professional athletes by their supposed custodians at FIFA, UEFA, The FA, The Premier League, The EFL, The PGMOL and of course our Sky overlords. Christian described it as "insane” and he’s not fucking wrong. I thought this quote was one of two outstanding moments on the night.
CN: "Football today, and I don’t mean this offensively to anybody playing or coaching it, is not like the football that captured me which was a lot more about football IQ and a lot less athletic. The amount of kilometres covered by a footballer now, compared to a Champions League semi-final in 2010, is sometimes 3/4/5km more, which is mental. We have to accept the sport has become increasingly athletic while also requiring players to be intelligent and smart because they have less time to think. It’s as much athletics as a game and a sport. With recruitment we’ve done over the last two seasons, and recruitment done by other Championship teams this summer, there is an increasing focus on pace and power – certainly at full back, centre forward and wide players. All of that is a challenge on its own and the idea of the EFL revisiting whether a 25-man squad is big enough to cope with the demands of a minimum 46 [48]- game season in minimum eight months feels like a sensible place to start.
"The EFL has put Championship teams in a really difficult spot this season. When it became apparent IFAB was going to put these rules through to minimise time wasting on throw ins, goal kicks, goalkeepers holding the ball… the thing we’re all talking about now is ball-in-play is up six-to-eight minutes a game and yet squad size is the same. Everybody is running more. There is an expectation to get on with it as normal. You then add this mentally early double three-game-week when players are just coming out of pre-season. On top of that we have nine/ten players going into an international break with their countries where they’re expected to potentially play 4x90 minutes over a period of two weeks and two days. It’s insane. The rules are probably good for the sport - it’s very frustrating watching an opposition full back take a minute over every throw in after scoring a goal from minute 40 onwards – but it’s got to be met with how are we looking after the players as the demands on them increase?”
I would say the sport has brought this on itself. Every time you’ve sat your goalkeeper down with a pretend injury so you can have a team talk (and JS did that with Joe Walsh several times last season), every time you’ve pretended to have a head injury when you’re fine, pretended you couldn’t find the ball for a throw in or ‘accidentally’ taken it from the wrong place, you have invited the sport to legislate against you. To an extent the sport gets what it deserves. Nevertheless, the calendar this year couldn’t have been more poorly designed if it had been done by a dart throwing monkey equipped with a wall planner, or somebody deliberately trying to stress and injure vast swathes of the Championship squads collectively. QPR are not alone in experiencing big injury problems to start this year. There should be a no excuses culture, and we've had injuries the last two years, but it was nice to hear us speaking out so strongly, publicly, and I’d like more of that as not only our players but also our supporters face ridiculous logistics like Burnley A then Lincoln A back-to-back immediately after the Christmas period and FA Cup in January. Get mad. Get mad on our behalf.
- Dave McIntyre knows only too well the perils of questioning whether JS gets final say on who’s available to play, so we’ll tread carefully on season ticket holder Phil Long’s question on whether the head coach or head of performance gets final say on who’s available this Saturday and for how long. JS: "The process here is very simple…” *narrator - it is the farthest thing from simple* …We have a meeting at the beginning of the week between the medical/performance staff and my staff members to assess the situation from the last game and start to think about the next one. They give me information. We continue to collect information throughout the week. The players have tests every day to collect information. When we are close to the last session, -1, based on all the information we have with my staff and the technical staff we decide the 11. It’s really simple. The only time it’s not is when you have a player a little bit in between. Today we have good news- Jimmy should probably have been out for two weeks, but he’s now available on Saturday. Sometimes we have to define whether it’s a low risk, medium risk, or big risk to involve him. I will never take a big risk with a player just for one game. I have a year of experience in the Championship and I know it’s a very long travel and it’s better sometimes to let a player sit out for a game if afterwards we keep him for 1/2/3 months. I won’t take a big risk for one game and then maybe lose him for four months after. I want to develop a mindset where each difficulty is an opportunity. In the last run of five games we needed to change a lot of things and the players did an amazing job – sometimes changing the back four three times in the same game.” Very simple, in fact.
- Another inevitable thorny topic was the non-involvement of Rayan Kolli to whom ridiculous amounts of air time and column inches have been committed commensurate to his experience and role, but whose presence in away ends like Charlton while we’re watching Alfie Lloyd and Justin Obikwu toil in a 0-0 draw is inevitably going to lead to questions from a fan base he likes to sit among and clearly has many prominent online supporters. I expected a straight "can’t talk about individual player circumstance” bat here but in fact CN and JS were as open and at times passionate as they had been all night about their feelings on this one. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen JS as animated as this. So…
CN: "The situation is really simple. In our meeting with Rayan in May he expressed frustration with the amount of playing time he’d received during the 25/26 campaign and made it clear if it wasn’t possible to guarantee more playing time in 26/27 then that may mean he needs to consider his options in the summer. Off the back of that we sat with his representatives and agreed we would look at loan opportunities for him over the summer transfer window. His agents worked on it, so did I and our football transaction guys. Whenever a player expresses an interest in that we’re looking to utilise our relationships in the UK and other markets in Europe and further afield. Rayan had six or seven different opportunities, some in England and some not, to explore. In the end he decided none of those opportunities were ones he wanted to take at this time. The last market he was interested in looking at closed last week. That’s the situation from my side.”
JS: "My door is always open. I love the players. I spend more time with the players than my own children. It’s impossible for me to guarantee anything. The only thing I can guarantee is to love them, support them and give everything for them. The reality for us is how we reduce the gap between the best team and us. The last three or four years the best position we’ve finished is 15th – I think it’s a bit frustrating for you and frustrating for us as well, the players and the dressing room. The only answer is to put the standards here, the level of demand here. This is the only way to reduce the gap. If we have full involvement, full commitment, players able to work up every day we will increase the chance to reduce the gap between the best team and us. This is the only thing I want to see on the pitch because the pitch never lies. It’s never a coincidence when you have good results, or bad results. How do you think these players found a way to collect a point against the leaders on Saturday without Jimmy, Lamptey, Chair, Kone, Dembele, Smyth after a couple of minutes, Kamara/Madsen sharing 45 minutes? How did they find a way to collect a point? Because of the last two months. They gave a lot, a lot, a lot on the pitch every day, every day, every day. This is the only way to reduce the gap. How did they find a way to lose only one game, against Middlesbrough who lost the play-off final in May? Who spend £50m in the transfer window and we lose 1-0 and deserved more? They have talent of course, but they work hard, they are fully committed every day, they give everything every day. This is the only way. My door is open to all the players. But some things are non-negotiable. Hard work, commitment. This is the only message I want to send. That and the door is always, always, always open. If they deserve something, they will get the opportunity to play. Why in the last two games did I pick Leon Scarlett? Because he deserves it. He showed in all the training sessions it was the right moment for him. Never a coincidence. Always logical.”
In a subsequent, more general, question, JD added...
JD: "I can use two examples of two players – Alfie Lloyd and Kealey Adamson. Alfie came in pre-season and did absolutely everything he can to be involved in this group. Such a good attitude and work rate is impossible to ignore. As captain I’m looking for those traits in other players to promote. Kealey Adamson is the exact same. He’ll block a shot with his face, he’ll get his body in the way, he’ll do anything he can to dig his nails in and be involved. Those traits that require no talent but get you a long way is what this group is built on.”
God, am I sick of this Rayan Kolli thing. His look, background, history with the club and ability should make him the poster boy for a so-called ‘development club’. That successive managers (and Cifuentes felt much the same) reach this same conclusion about him is not good. Everybody watching him says the same thing about his conditioning, ability to do 90 minutes, and subsequent injury proneness – not where it needs to be. The noise, the online chat, the social media feast upon anybody who dares to criticise is hideously unhelpful to player and club. Everything JS said here is spot on, it was nice to see our head coach like this. Standards.
And yet it feels like there’s a piece missing. There are two sides to every story. I doubt we’ll wait long for Rayan’s riposte. Who were these six or seven opportunities with? Cos if it’s another Championship team, or someone in Ligue 1, I don’t see him turning that down, but if it’s League One or Saudi Arabia I kind of get it. Usually someone backing himself, desperate to play for QPR, is a positive.
It’s putting Alfie Lloyd in a difficult spot quietly setting them against each other. Alfie, to his credit, did hard yards on loan last year that Rayan is seemingly reluctant to do, but he is not the same player in any regard and comparing the two might not end well for the former.
I find it tough to believe someone so desperate to play for QPR is simultaneously sacking it off in training and not fit, but it’s a strange world and sport.
Overall, this is a farce and it’s a shame on all sides it’s dragged on through the close of another transfer window.
- On now to Richard Kone who has so far followed Steven Caulker and Jordan Cousins into the online Davy Jones's Locker that claims any player LFW spends the summer talking up as this next season’s breakout hit. Apologies, Rich. JS: "Rich scored a lot of goals for us last season, an amazing first season in the Championship. He had a couple of not bad moments, but not top moments, during the pre-season. Started the season and played a couple of games. After three-or-four games we thought the fitness level was not top, top, top. We took a decision with Rich after Middlesbrough that we needed to do some extra work. That’s why he was not involved the last two games. We want to help him to be at his best quickly because we need him in his best form and it’s a big strength for us. We have to help and support him in this situation. Rich worked very hard now, he worked hard before but he continues to work very hard and will probably be in his best position after the international break to help us.” You see, when I talk about there being more to it than we’re being told with Kolli, here, in the very next answer, one of the other strikers has also apparently come back out of shape and unfit, but the rhetoric is very different.
- On the development squad CN said: "Over the past two seasons the development squad has seen players develop and win things. Back-to-back titles for the U21s having won nothing in that age category for the previous decade. A combination of that and being aggressive in periods of the season when we want to stretch players has so far allowed us to get development and get these young lads confident. Leon Scarlett two or three months into being a first-year scholar was playing a lot of U21s football which puts him in a position where Julien and his staff have an interest in the player. We’ll stick to the core tenant and build a winning culture in the U21 and U18 age groups. Where we need to go, and our application for category one status will further enhance this, is really continue to augment the focus there is on youth recruitment right from U9s up to scholars 15/16 year olds. What’s happened in the last 2.5 years more and more is we’re able to make cases to parents whose kids may have three or four offers, some from Premier League teams, at 15/16 that this is the place to come because you have a genuine, realistic, meritocratic…” *surely inserted as a bet?* "…chance of playing in and around the first team. It kicked off with Kieren Morgan and Leon is the latest example of somebody with that opportunity having come from Arsenal.”
- I said this the other day on the message board and I’ll repeat it here, I do think under hype and over deliver needs to be the strategy with kids like Leon Scarlett and the academy overall. QPR have invested lots of money into the youth set up over many years, under the leadership of Steve Gallen, then Chris Ramsey and now Alex Carroll. They have talked a good game on this front repeatedly. I’ve been coming to this forum for many years, and our U16s are always the best thing you’ve ever seen and we just can’t wait, just you wait and see, two years from now. The club, and us the fanbase, are repeatedly guilty of overrating and overhyping our players at youth level. There’s a line between supporting our boys, and overhyping them for ulterior motives that actually applies pressure, attention and makes their task of breaking through to the first team even more difficult. I much prefer us winning trophies at that level to getting done 8-0, 9-0 etc at Fleetwood and Stevenage and being told results don’t matter as previous, I loved hearing the words "winning culture”, but a couple of trophies at development squad level means nothing unless three or four of them supplement your first team squad which, from the team that beat Brentford for example, nobody will this season as it stands.
Gab Sutton asked me a few weeks ago what I thought of Sanyaolu, who'd I'd seen in Austria and felt looked miles off it, then saw at Bromley and was more impressed. I said I'd compare him to Sinclair Armstrong - we all remember the kid at school who had a moustache at 12 and was the best footballer because he was the most physically developed footballer, but what happens when he starts playing with actual men? Straight away I got a couple of replies - "he's way better than Armstrong" "no comparison with Armstrong". Whatever we think of Sincs, he's played semi-regular Championship football for QPR and Bristol City and got a move to Turkey. That's a very good outcome relative to almost everything else that's come through our academy in the last 20 years, and yet we're already saying Sanyaolu is going to be miles better than this, is already better than this etc. Maybe he is, I obviously hope he is, and an EFL loan at his stage is good going. But we should probably stop doing this to ourselves - and to the kids.
Let me turn off my miserable bastard mode for a moment and add that JD did say: "No disrespect to players that have come up to the first team in the past but sometimes you might get frustrated with young lads not being at the level and potentially slowing up the session. We’ve now got players coming up to the first team who are potentially making the sessions better, and more exciting. Just watching Leon Scarlett today he’s so impressive, so bright, and so positive. You want to see him do well and thrive. We’ve got loads of exciting players like that. I was here at the U21 game the other day and they were fabulous.” A great sign as well that the club captain is attending games like that. "I try to stay relatable. I don’t want to be this old football player giving you loads of advice and you’re not really taking it on board. I want people to have fun at our training ground. I wish I’d had more fun 16-23. I want them to really enjoy it. There is pressure when training with the first team but I want them to leave with a smile on their face, it’s important.”
- Category One status for the academy has been a topic at these forums for many years. The club, under Les Ferdinand as DOF and Lee Hoos as CEO, frequently said it wasn’t necessary while at the same time bleeding a lot of Alfie Gilchrist, Harvey Elliott types out to nearby rivals for minimal compensation. CN is aggressively pushing the other way and has received substantial praise for this, but the move requires infrastructure investment into indoor playing facilities and artificial pitches. So… how’s that going? CN: "It’s been an immensely positive couple of weeks for the football club. When we announced to fans and our staff that we would be attempting to become a category one academy this season the overwhelming number of messages our academy director was getting from members of staff asking how they could help and support was really awesome. Big respect and appreciation to our academy staff who have prepared and uploaded the thousands of documents that needed to be added to the system ahead of the audit. Last week we had our in-person standards audit, the auditors came in to interview a bunch of people, Julien and I sat down with them and then all different parts of the academy. This is quite a stressful thing if you’re not used to having to speak about the club’s ambitions and strategies. An enormous amount of preparation went into it. Our feeling is it’s been a really positive week but at the same time I think we’ve taken some valuable learnings from what the auditors have fed us back. We still have to be audited for our infrastructure and we’re in the middle of phase two of a building project which will allow us to have an indoor and outdoor astroturf facility. Those two audits have to happen still, and will happen in the new year. But it’s been awesome to see everyone rally around the academy and it was a really good start, so we’ll have to wait and see.” That felt like a long winded "a long way still to go” to me.
- God bless the gentleman who was afforded one of two floor questions in part one who put the club’s shambolic cup record to the panel without mincing words. "I wonder if the panel is truly aware of our abysmal record…” You spoke for a lot of us in the audience, sir. CN’s attempt to acknowledge "one of” the worst cup records in the country quickly, rightly, corrected as "the worst”. Jimmy Dunne, a competitive animal, face a study.
CN: "We are aware. I don’t think you can say the coaching staff and players didn’t put absolutely everything into that game against West Ham. It was an incredible game to see so many thousands of you there and see us fall at the final hurdle having gone the entire distance of the game. I thought we were the better team over 90 minutes against Millwall as well and deserved to win that game, a couple of decisions didn’t go our way. I hope you can see over the last two games we’ve been very close and given as much as we have.”
JS: "The West Ham game the players did an unbelievable game against a Premier League team away from home, drew 1-1 and went to extra time. We lost, but we gave everything, a very good game. Millwall, our first game in competition this season, very dominant throughout the game, we concede a goal from not even the first action or situation of the opponent. We found a way to come back and could have had a different question with the penalty we deserved in the last minute. A clear penalty. Sometimes it’s difficult to explain everything in football. We tried to do everything. The last two games in cups the players gave everything. Probably my bad for the Plymouth game last season - we took a decision based on the situation of the team and the position between two league games to give more minutes to young lads. We want to develop young players and if you don’t give them an opportunity to play in competition it’s difficult to know what they are able to do. Sometimes we have to use this moment to develop young players and give them experience for the future. We did our best the last two games. We accept the result. The Millwall game started us off well and we have seen the consequences with the results from the first seven games in the league. Sometimes you get a win that is more than the game. I think we won the trust, belief that we could compete this season against Millwall.”
- I think sometimes you just have to doff your cap and admire game. There was an update given on the women’s team from CN which went a little something like this: "Exciting times for the women’s team. The squad is the most complete it’s been since the club took charge of the team from the Community Trust. We’ve had one full season under the club banner. There’s great energy amongst the girls, it’s a very positive place to be for training on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, there’s a togetherness about the group we probably didn’t get quite right last season. They have four wins in a row, four clean sheets, we beat Fulham in the cup from the division above which is a nice little West London derby W for us. Really very positive and hopeful we can ultimately try to achieve the main first aim of this project which is to get promoted to the third tier - we’re one point off the top at the moment with a couple of important games coming up they have a big game at Chatham on Sunday and would welcome your support.” That is a one-minute summary of the women’s team’s season so far that succeeds in never once mentioning the fact the manager, hired with some mild fanfare in the summer after building his previous club up over the best part of a decade, departed after just four games following a loss at Actonians – something the club only got around to announcing on the eve of the forum, some four games after it happened. Excellent, no notes.
JS and JD departed at the interval which at least spared us the slightly embarrassing fans forum staple of a professional football player and manager sitting there quietly while we get into the weeds of how many coaches we’re running to Fleetwood in the cup and how they’re being stewarded.
LFW does - and shortly will again (clue’s in the badge) - take the piss out of a lot of this. I refuse to believe there wasn’t a better question submitted for this forum than "can we get another Loftus Road street sign at the junction with Uxbridge Road”, for example.
I apologise if that was your question. I agree London clubs like Charlton and Crystal Palace ‘own’ their areas with paint schemes, signage etc way better than we do. You could walk down Uxbridge Road without ever knowing we’re there, in a way our local rivals have tackled more successfully than we have. I’m amazed we’re allowing a bus route called the "Super Loop” to trundle past our stadium (and one of a near Premier League rival) six times an hour without bunging some money their way for a bit of a cheeky rebrand.
But, honestly, I was bored. The bloke behind me at one stage was genuinely snoring. Christian fielded the questions as they came in a professional manner. I thought overall on the night there was less grandstanding and less "all about me” than previously – almost like experience in the role has proved beneficial. This was his best performance at one of these by far. But this isn’t where his interest lies and, as much as we rip the piss out of this bit, it is important.
When you’re QPR there are lots of things you can’t do and that makes the things you can do so much more vital. Treating people well, treating your supporters well, paying due respect to long standing members of the fanbase, giving them a pleasant matchday environment… You only need to look at some of the operational difficulties around the Fiorentina friendly (not covered), to those poor lads with their attempt at an anthem (not covered), or kit sponsors of many years and thousands of pounds standing having their players stuck on an auction site at a couple of hours’ notice (not covered) to know we’re not great at this stuff at the moment. Hell, just the general state of the place tells you everything you need to know.
Loftus Road is dirty, it’s expensive, it’s unkempt, it’s falling apart in places. It is poorly stewarded and poorly catered. It is a ground that asks you, the customer, to go to the well to use it. All while people are now being charged sometimes north of £40 to watch QPR v Cardiff on a Wednesday night. We’re stuck here for the foreseeable, that is clear. The repeat themes here around water pressure, toilets, beer… we joke about them, but they do matter.
Christian is clearly doing well with the team. The first team, the development squad, the recruitment, all looks well ahead of where it was. He also speaks very well on the big picture stuff around training ground, council, stadium, academy facilities. Watching him go through the motions on some of this menial shit, I did wonder whether a COO should be brought in to do all of this other admin. Should the guy in charge of recruiting a centre forward also be answering to the quality of the carpets in the lobby? My humble opinion is he should have been retiring for a nice well earned glass of red with Julien and a Diet Coke for Jimmy while a dedicated operations expert stepped in for this bit.
Nobody cares when the team is fifth in the league, we could play on the Scrubs and people would be happy, but the state of our home and the lack of any real coherent plan to even improve the quality of the food a bit shone through in what was a really rather tedious second half. Forgive me for the brevity of some of what follows. Eyes down, look in for…
- Do we market the stadium tours well enough? CN: "Alan is an unsung hero, super knowledgeable and we’re lucky to have him doing those tours for us. We currently have this running three times a week, twice midweek and in the morning ahead of a home matchday. They’re not selling out but it’s a fair point do we market it well enough. It’s on us to rectify and think about.”
- The pitch. CN: "Another area last year we didn’t deliver the way we wanted to. None of us wanted it to be in that condition in December/January/February. We’ve done a few things differently and made a few off-season changes. The first is ending the post season commercial events on the pitch to generate revenue a few days earlier to try and give it more breathing space and grow time. Secondly we’ve had a reshuffle and appointed a new senior pitch manager who has been amazing, laser focused on getting the max out of this pitch this season. We’ve spoken a lot about lighting and not having enough grow lights because we don’t have space to store them. We’ve acquired some more collapsable lights. We’re using every nook and cranny in Loftus Road, cupboards and rooms I didn’t know existed, to find a way to store more lights. That strip closest to Stanley Bowles Stand is going to be an issue for as long as that stand is in that configuration because of the lack of light that bit of the pitch gets even on a beautiful sunny day. We feel we have learned lessons, configured the pitch in the best way possible, and it’s unlikely we’ll get the combination of weather events we had in November/December where we had three weeks of rain followed by sub-zero temperatures that made the pitch look a bit naked and weird. Fingers crossed, the guys are working hard with the structural limitations that will always be there.” Some tacit admission there, for the first time, that commercial activities may have played a role in what happened.
- The club is running ticket initiatives in the locality of the stadium and training ground to try and introduce new fans to the club. CN says this gave them the confidence to give the Lower School End over to home fans where there are still season tickets available and it’s the "cheapest season ticket in the EFL Championship”. CN: "The energy there is really cool. It’s different – you see a lot of families down there, a population of people who have moved to London and looking for a team to support. It’s a fantastic part of the ground and it’s growing. We’ve been a bit smarter in our geo-targeting of ads to certain populations we think want to support a London team but are priced out of supporting Premier League teams, or their primary team is not a London team but they live here and want to have a team to support.”
- Middlesbrough and Cardiff fans were both recently charged north of £40 to stand in the Upper School End – by most metrics one of the worst away ends in the division and at this point borderline unsafe. The prices led to widespread calls for QPR fans to be charged the same in the reciprocal fixtures, as if we’ve got anything to do with it. CN: "It’s a really difficult one. Nothing I will tell you today will make any of us feel better about the situation. The reality is the size of our stadium plus running a matchday in London versus anywhere else in the UK is about 20% more. We have to take measures to ensure we’re not losing money in matchday expenses and struggling with that part of the business getting less and less able to support and prop up the football club which, sadly, in the last 3/4 years has definitely been the case. Costs of running a matchday have far, far, far exceeded the increases we’ve put on, be that away ticket pricing or other ticket pricing. I appreciate the sentiment. It’s one of many horrible and difficult decisions we have to make. I would say there are a number of other teams pricing in the 40s who do not have the same economic difficulties we have being in London but are doing it anyway. It doesn’t make it better, fairer, more ethical but my job is to try and ensure the business is as sustainable as possible.” Sheff Wed, Ipswich and Leeds, at a stab, the clubs he’s talking about there who have charged us £40+ in the Championship. Grim all round. A sick division of a profoundly poorly sport.
- New ground klaxon. CN: "There are two ways to transform revenues of the football club. First is increase the capacity of our stadium, second is by selling players for a significant amount of money. We’ve worked really hard to get ourselves in a position where we’re able to embark upon executing an infrastructure project and get category one status on the academy side. My focus is now making progress on that bigger question – what does the future look like in terms of where we’re playing and matchday revenues we’re able to generate.”
- Water pressure klaxon. CN: "The water pressure issues we’re having in The Stanley Bowles Stand are really complicated to deal with. Sadly, if we were to be able to address them effectively there would be quite a root and branch operation that would need to happen in terms of work to the stand which at the moment with the current lay of the land is not financially possible for us. We’re doing the best we can by finding short term fixes, fixes on the day, other bits and pieces but the very unique, awesome nature of Loftus Road and that stand backing onto houses and other bits and pieces means that undertaking would be incredibly expensive for us to do. We are trying to make the best of a bad situation, we refurbed the toilets in that space, but I fully take on board the water pressure situation is difficult. We don’t have a definitive fix we will be able to execute in the next 12 months.”
- Faulty public address system for the hat trick? Sadly not, but can I interest you in an emergency cash float for the refreshment kiosks next time the card machines go down? Don’t be nice to me, tell me how much I’m sweating.
- Some light relief for the room as QPR Report asked what happened if Ruben Gnanalingam "fell under the proverbial bus” now Amit Bhatia has taken his smooth chat and father-in-law’s money up to Liverpool with Jamie Redknapp. Happy 50th birthday Ruben, please don’t die. CN: "The board position is clear – it’s open to working with new investors if they support the existing vision of Ruben, Rich and Lee. And crucially can they bring some expertise and knowledge that is complimentary and different to the skills and knowledge currently on the board today. That’s the position before Amit left and is now.” The Bhatia Stand will be renamed for next season.
- Several good questions all at once about Hammersmith & Fulham Borough Council to which CN professionally passed up the opportunity to press the Lee Hoos Rant button and (mostly) politely declined to comment. CN: "I’m fortunate to have been promoted to the H&F Economic Advisory Board which has allowed me to spend a lot more time with some of the councillors and the leader, who had the greatest margin of victory of any Labour council leader in the country at the last election. It’s good we’re continuing to build relationships with the same people in local government and they haven’t changed off the back of the elections. Cllr Cowan is passionate about QPR being in a position to do well. We’re at the heart of White City which is at the heart of his ambition for this borough to be the home of tech and VC. We’ll continue to have positive conversations about the future of this borough and where QPR fit into that.”
- Central Coast Mariners. CN: "Ruben, just as Rich does, has investment across multiple different sport teams. Ruben is one of the single largest shareholders in LA FC. Very similar to his decision to invest in CCM there is no direct relationship between those clubs. We’ve discussed how in the future we might all be able to learn from each other but it has no impact on the strategy or running of QPR. That could change but it’s not a focus at the moment.”
- Paint the stadium. CN: "We’ll put it on the agenda for the next cap-ex meeting next summer.”
- Add another Loftus Road street sign at the junction with Uxbridge Road. CN: "Ask the council.”
- Offensive chanting. Now this might be quite interesting, relative to the prior few minutes, given the away end at West Brom decided to herald the arrival of Denis Cirkin into our lives with a ditty about Posh Spice having a stinky minge – lads, 1996 called, they want their song back.
This coincides with recent efforts to stop the "West London is wonderful” number and the punishments facing the club if people keep singing "Chelsea Rent Boys”. CN: "There is one song involving Chelsea that has taken up most of the discussion of these challenges internally. We’ve tried to be as strong as possible I reminders to supporters travelling away, on websites and working with local police. We’d encourage supporters to check themselves when trying to sing that song. Ultimately, we want the best possible atmosphere but also look after our supporters and the reality is that song is a criminal offence. Singing that puts you in a situation with the police I assume you don’t want to be in. There was a song at Millwall last season that was then re-posted by a QPR fan channel which also got the interest of the authorities. It’s 2026, in the UK, there are certain things that aren’t acceptable. Fans need to be aware. Have fun, sing super loud, and try not to offend to the point of law enforcement involvement.”
I have huge sympathy for Christian here. He has to be seen to be taking a stand and it’s right that you keep drip feeding the message out to try and change behaviour gradually but, unfortunately, if you tell a football crowd not to do something it makes them only more likely to do exactly that in defiance. I also think, speaking generally, if you come to a football game and get offended by the songs, the chanting, the swearing… that’s on you. Probably makes me a dinosaur, but it’s a football game not soft play. I’m obviously not advocating the racist chants of the past, nor supporting some of the revolting rubbish our wholly unoriginal song sheet produces now, but being among the swearing and the anger and the blue songs was part of the excitement for me as a kid and a bit of a rite of passage for all of us – don’t tell your mum, what goes on at the football stays at the football.
I was on the tram back from Sheff Wed last season and a group of QPR fans were very aggressively, repetitively, singing the Chelsea Rent Boys song. Several remarks were made by Wednesday fans on the same tram about it, which only provoked them to sing it louder and invite further challenge. I guess it’s on other QPR fans to try and self-police that but… do you fancy getting your head stoved in by somebody who’s done All The Cocaine? I don’t. So, I shut up, went four more stops, walked quietly to the pub, and thought about what a shame that was. This is the country we live in.
I don’t think the people doing that care it’s a criminal offence - in fact it will act as encouragement. I don’t think they’d respond positively to me saying "leave it out lads” on the Sheffield SuperTram. But they might respond to money. They’re probably the sort of people that dedicate a lot of their time telling the club to "sign a fucking striker”. The simple fact is if that song keeps getting sung, we’re going to get fined, and eventually down the line we’re going to get reduced ticket allocations. That comes out of our budget, which is challenged enough as it is, and it means fewer of us will be able to go to games just as the team feels like it’s getting quite good. So… maybe… sing something else? I don’t know, radical.
- Safe standing. CN: "Huge fan. I was able to go incognito into The Loft and experience it, including that mental Stoke game. It’s an awesome experience. Love it. I thought the atmosphere against Boro at home was amazing and what we’re hoping it facilitates is different chants from two-or three-different parts of the ground that are really noisy. Where there is the possibility to do so we’ll keep looking and where it’s financially viable and doable.”
Thank you good night it’s finish.
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