It seems from a letter sent to QPR shareholders this week that the ABC loan is no more. Is it a case of better the devil you know or out of the frying pan and into the fire?

Farewell ABC?
It’s never quite how you expect it to be is it, when you get what you always wanted? Whether it’s that toy you always wanted as a kid, or that girl in the year above that you always wanted to shag at school, or the car you drooled over for months and months while waiting for a pay rise so you could afford it. You always end up playing with the box instead or realising she doesn’t look as good with her kit off as you thought she might or hurtling down the M1 at 95 miles per hour being driven mad by some bloody rattling noise that’s somewhere over your right ear towards the boot but you just can’t figure out where but you know if you leave it you’re going to tear your hair out and if you take it to the garage they’re going to rid your wallet apart.

It may only be nutters like me that worry about QPR at all hours of the day and night but I think most Rangers fans at some point or another have lost sleep over the ABC loan during the past five years. We’ve all been over the circumstances by which the club lumbered itself with a £10m loan from Panama when we didn’t owe £10m, and agreed a rate of interest the club has never ever come close to making in a season therefore effectively coming out of administration in more debt than we went in. The board at the time say the league threatened not to include us in the fixtures and ABC upped the interest at the last minute and, probably quite reasonably, they ask what else they could have done? It’s easy to say years down the line that you would have called the league’s bluff. Would you really?

Anyway it was a thoroughly shit arrangement for the club in the end without a shadow of a doubt and has cost the best part of £20m to get rid of once you take into account interest and an extra bit we took from them this time last year in another dark hour. But it seems that as of this week it’s gone. No fanfare, no announcement, nothing from the club at all really apart from a letter to shareholders explaining the plans for ridding us of it. Here is that letter for those that haven’t seen one.

The company is required to repay an existing loan of £10M to ABC on or before the 31/7/08. ABC currently has an option over the Loftus Road Stadium which becomes exercisable if the company fails to repay the loan in full by 31/7/08.

The company requires financing in order to repay the loan. The company has sought to secure this financing from various financial institutions, but has been unable to do so owing to conditions and requirements of those institutions. As a result Amulya has agreed to advance a loan of £10m to the company in order to allow the company to repay the loan by 31/7/08 and thereby avoid the possibility of ABC exercising their option and acquiring the title to the stadium.

However as a condition to advancing the loan, Amulya requires the company to enter into the option. The option is on substantially similar terms to the ABC option. It grants Amulya an option to buy the stadium for £10M which is exercisable in the event the company fails to repay Amulya when the loan is due. The term of the Amulya loan is two years. The rate is 8.50% compared with ABC's 10 %.

Amulya Property Limited is a company that both Briatore and Amit Bhatia are connected with and also happens to share its name with a large Indian Property Company.

Put simply it appears that Bhatia and Briatore have loaned the club the money themselves, at a better rate of interest, through a company of theirs. If in two years we can’t repay that loan to them then they own the ground as well as the club. If I’ve got that wrong please correct me, but that’s how it seems to me.

Of course as fans of QPR we look at the wealth of our owners and wonder why they can’t just sling ABC £10m, return the ownership of the ground to the club and that be the end of that. Why the need for another loan, more interest etc? However this does appear to be a good deal for us – ABC are gone and the ground and the club is now at least owned by the same people although our reliance on our owners grows by the day it has to be said.

As you can probably tell I’m no expert on the millstone that hung round my club’s neck and kept me awake at night for so long, but it has surprised me at the lack of attention this letter to shareholders has received since it was sent out last week and that’s the reason for this article really. Perhaps if there’s an announcement on the official site still to come then the reaction will kick in. It’s a sign of the times at QPR that something we could simply see no way out of 12 months ago is now simply brushed aside as an irrelevance and it’s probably been seen as such by many fans since the day the new owners arrived. Let’s hope QPR and other clubs have learnt a lesson from the mess we got ourselves into – certainly the lucrative sponsorship deals and ticket sales we’ve attracted this summer seem to be taking us closer to a position of being self sufficient and that really is the only way a club can guarantee it’s own future. We’ve some way to go yet.

QPR wasn’t the only club to take out an ABC loan. You may recall that Derby County borrowed £15m from them under similar terms to ourselves when they found themselves strapped for cash following relegation from the top flight. Derby were in a slightly different position to ourselves when it came to wriggling free of the loan’s clutches because the land their Pride Park ground stands on is relatively worthless when compared to Loftus Road and had push come to shove ABC could have been left with a large white elephant on its hands.

With so many questions still unanswered about this mystery company and its backers that almost killed our club you may wish to follow a trial currently taking place at Northampton Crown Court where five former directors of Derby are on trial for various financial irregularities at the club centred around their ABC loan. The whole case revolves around whether the accused feathered their own nests with the money brought in from ABC – it’s certainly worth following if you have time. link

Three players short
This is yet then. Nine days to go, no turning back now. No asking for more time, no postponing the first few games, no hiding places – next Saturday at 3pm QPR will run out onto the lush surface at Loftus Road once again and be expected to put the rounds of the kitchen through Barnsley as the quest for Championship glory begins.

The bookies have us down as favourites, the papers say we’re the richest club in the world, the fans’ expectations have been driven sky high by members of the board talking about the “exciting players” we’re talking to and promising to plough the money from our greatly inflated season ticket prices back into the team. The natives are restless after two pre-season defeats this week just imagine what it’s going to be like if we slip up against Barnsley or Doncaster at Loftus Road in week one.

Let’s get a bit of perspective first of all. The board say it’s a three year plan to get into the Premier League, on the face of it they’re not expecting or demanding promotion this season although who knows whether that tallies with what they’re saying off camera. This time last year the team and the club was in a mess – on the brink of administration, about to lose the stadium, trumpeting the signing of John Curtis and just nine days away from failing to win their first 12 games of the season. We may not have been splashing the cash too much so far this summer but we spent big in January and our form with that new team in the second half of the campaign suggests a tilt at the play offs may be possible. And who ever read anything into pre-season results anyway? They’re just a fitness exercise aren’t they? Nobody cares really, after all we beat Fulham this time last season and then didn’t win again until October.

Convinced and reassured? No, me neither.

It is true that we were in a right mess 12 months ago, and have basically been a very, very poor football team since 1995 and therefore it does seem churlish on the face of it to be moaning about our lot now the club is on the up, the ground is being worked on, the team is improving and we’ve apparently got rid of the ABC. However times have changed and expectations have shifted. We cannot allow ourselves to meander along doing not very much and being grateful for it for years to come simply because we’ve been crap for the last decade. A lot of people have paid a lot of money they can’t afford to watch QPR this season and they’ll expect results. Rightly so.

As for pre-season results – I read something into them. There you go I admitted my dirty little secret. I know it’s fashionable to laugh off a July defeat at Barnet or a draw with a Gravesend and Northfleet XI and say it doesn’t matter and while I admit it’s not greatly important it’s certainly not completely irrelevant. Take Barnsley for example – beaten 6-0 at home by Wigan on Tuesday night and by all accounts it could have been twice that. The Latics hit the post, the bar and missed a penalty as well as their six goals. Now are you telling me that there aren’t alarm bells ringing at Oakwell this morning? That people aren’t worried?

In the past week we’ve faced Northampton, Falkirk and Kilmarnock and scored one goal. Is this irrelevant? Are our strikers suddenly going to click into gear on day one and go to town on Barnsley like Wigan did? Is Patrick Agyemang going to be full of confidence because even though he went through on the goalkeeper three times at Kilmarnock and failed to score once he can laugh that off because it’s only pre-season and when the real thing comes round he’ll be banging them in? I’m not a believer I’m afraid.

As well as fitness and experimentation pre-season is about playing your way into form and at the moment our team has none. We’re conceding sloppy goals by our own admission and not scoring any of our own. Now we may put Chievo to the sword on Saturday and go into the opening day brimming with confidence and all will be right in the world and I’ll be as delighted as anybody but for me we are still three players short of a really good, competitive team at this level.

Assuming Kaspars Gorkss has actually signed today, the club have been pretty quiet after saying on Tuesday night that the deal would be concluded on Wednesday, then the defence is at least looking like a good decent unit. Fitz Hall and Gorkss is a good strong centre half partnership with experience at this level and a good eye for headed goals at the other end. We know all about Delaney although he lacks cover with Chris Barker surely serving as tea maker and little else this season and hopefully moving on shortly. On the right Ramage has struggled for form and fitness this summer but Connolly is a really classy player, our best defender for my money, and with all fingers crossed regarding his ankle injury he’s a decent option there as well. Fine. We have a back four and two excellent keepers.

In midfield we need another central player in my opinion. We have plenty of quantity there but not enough numbers. Rowlands is the first name on the team sheet but alongside him it’s between Mahon, Leigertwood and Walton and while they’re all decent players I’d love to see Ben Watson in there. It looks like Birmingham are going to pip us to him but I’ve still got my fingers crossed. We have the added problem of Leigertwood and Mahon’s disastrous record as a partnership – Burnley at home, Wolves away and again this week. Mahon + Leigertwood = goals against. Lots of them.

We also need another wide player. Reports on Alberti and Ledesma have been encouraging so far but we cannot rely on young, unproven lads from abroad to just come straight in and consistently do a job for us. By the sounds of it Ledesma likes a stop, drop and roll manoeuvre whenever he can so we may see an orderly queue of Championship full backs waiting to kick him up in the air. Reading on the BBC today that Dowie’s first choice remains Adam Johnson from Middlesbrough is fantastic news – he’d be a superb signing for us although he seems less than keen to drop a level at the moment.

Most of all though we’re short in attack. Agyemang has never been a prolific striker in his entire career and tales of his sitters parade at Rugby Park confirm my belief that this isn’t about to change despite his purple patch last season. Blackstock has had one good and one bad season with us so far, again I’m left wondering if he’ll ever be prolific- especially if we don’t correct the problem of the wide man I mentioned previously, his good season saw 12 of his 14 goals coming from Lee Cook crosses of course.

Balanta is hugely promising but very young, Di Carmine is unproven and while people have praised his hold up play and movement so far this summer he hasn’t scored and he’s injured already. Again we can’t rely on him. The Ched Evans story seems to have died a death and my choice Michael Mifsud suddenly seems to be ‘don’t touch with a barge pole’ material after his Bristol City move fell through this week. I still rate him higher than anything we have at the moment.

Even if you don’t read anything into pre-season friendlies you have to admit that the lack of goals in Scotland is a concern. With a month of the transfer window left let’s hope that Gorkss isn’t the last of the arrivals.

Deal of the summer
I’m warming to Blackpool Chairman Karl Oyston. We’ve heard from him more than our own board this summer and mostly it’s been rants aimed in our direction while stamping his feet. He said our conduct over the Kaspars Gorkss transfer was the worst he’s known in football, he’s reported us to the Football League, he’s said that he’d rather Gorkss go anywhere else other than Loftus Road and has taken great delight in refuting every statement our official website has made on the matter within about ten minutes of it being published.

That’s his job of course as chairman of Blackpool, he feels wronged and he’s got every right to say so. From a QPR point of view, he’s been a bit of a pain though. I’m sick of writing about Karl Oyston and Kaspars Gorkss this summer and it seems that it will all be coming to an end this week as the defender made his first appearance for the R’s at Kilmarnock on Tuesday ahead of confirming his signing any time now.

Assuming all goes swimmingly and Gorkss slots into our team nicely, which I think he will do by the way, very few of us will remember how much of a mess we made of this simple transfer during the summer of 2008. Remember that Gorkss has a clause in his contract allowing him to be bought for £250k whether Blackpool want to sell or not and while you may think that would mean it’s simple for a club in QPR’s position to pick him up relatively quickly it seems you’d be wrong. Blackpool claim we went to the player before them and reported us to the league and that enabled them to string it out for a long time while Gorkss has struggled to come to a settlement with them over the remainder of his contract causing further delays.

In the end QPR have been forced to offer players to Blackpool in exchange to ease the deal through and of course on the face of it that makes Karl Oyston look very good – he had a player he had to sell for £250k and he’s managed to get a couple of players on top of that. However QPR fans who have watched the pair of players who are heading north this week, Danny Nardiello and Zesh Rehman, may have other ideas.

It’s fair to say that both players have endured difficult times at QPR. Rehman signed for £250k from Fulham when Gary Waddock was in charge and had the unenviable task of replacing Danny Shittu in the middle of the defence. He started well enough but the team around him was poor and soon mistakes started to creep into his game – most notably in a game at Plymouth where he cost us a goal and then, after Waddock’s departure, a 3-3 draw at home to Norwich where his performance still has me waking with a start in the night. Gregory loaned him out to Brighton, played him out of position at full and wing back and by autumn 2007 a player who, to be fair, isn’t the most talented at the best of times had absolutely no confidence whatsoever and that lack of ability and lack of faith in yourself is a lethal combination for a footballer.

De Canio’s appointment and a switch back to centre half seemed to suit Rehman and he was actually one of our top performers when selected over the closing weeks of last season and excelled against West Brom on the final day. However with Dowie’s history with Fitz Hall well known, Gorkss coming in, Matt Connolly wowing the fans and the likes of Damion Stewart and Simon Walton around Rehman was always likely to be surplus to requirements this summer and the only difficulty would be trying to find a taker. Without wishing to sound too harsh there will be few tears shed in W12 that Blackpool have stepped up to the plate and taken him on loan for six months with a view to a permanent. Even if he returns to Rangers at the end of that spell his contract is up this time next season and he’s unlikely to be retained regardless. Expect to see him mentioned, possibly a little unfairly, alongside the likes of Gus Ceaser in the years to come.

Nardiello has only been with us 12 months. In that time he’s appeared eight times without scoring, and had a poor loan spell back at Barnsley in the second half of last season. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of Nardiello through his career and it’s hard to tell whether the laid back nature of his play is lack of effort or just the way he is but on the rare occasions I did see him play for QPR he looked like he’d rather have been anywhere else in the world. At least you could never accuse Zesh Rehman of not trying, sadly for Nardiello his half hearted approach to chasing loose balls and sniffing out chances in the box always inhibited his chances of being a hit at Loftus Road and those unlucky enough to see his last match for us at Windsor last week have been pretty scathing in their assessment – again referring o body language and approach to the game. He joins Blackpool on a two year deal.

So although to the casual observer this may look like a triumph and shrewd bit of business by Blackpool, I have to say I’m absolutely delighted with the way things have turned out. I keep saying ‘assuming Gorkss does sign’ because the way things have gone it could all fall apart again at any moment but assuming it doesn’t we’ve got our man for the money we wanted to pay for him, and we’ve got rid of some dead wood that would otherwise have hung around taking wages from us for the next 12 months. Somehow despite appearing for several months now to be on the verge of making a mess of a simple transfer it’s QPR that come out of this with the better end of the deal for me.

Save a link of this article for when Rehman and Nardiello star in Blackpool’s win against us on September 30.

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