QPR have their man at the second transfer window of asking, signing Ronnie Edwards on a permanent deal from Southampton for a fee reported in the region of £4.5m.

Facts

Ronnie Edwards is a 22-year-old, left-sided defender born in Harlow.

He started his football career at Barnet as a nine-year-old and progressed through the ranks there to captain the under 18 side. He made his debut for the first team aged 16 in a Middlesex Senior Cup tie against Staines in December 2019 and a league debut followed soon after as a late sub in a 4-1 win at Maidenhead. In this Covid-affected season he also came off the bench in a 2-0 play-off win at Yeovil in mid-July.

That was quite enough for supreme non-league talent spotters Peterborough to swoop in and sign the young centre back after a pre-season trial game against Peterborough Sports. He made six league and cup appearances in 2020/21 as Posh won promotion to the Championship, including a full league debut in a 1-1 draw with MK Dons in December.

The 2021/22 season was, infamously, the one where Peterborough beat Mark Warburton’s QPR side three times over despite being relegated. Edwards established himself as a first team regular at London Road at this higher level making 38 appearances, including in all three games against Rangers in which we rated him 6, 7, 7. Edwards swept the board at the club’s end of season awards, winning the main Player of the Year prize as well as the supporters’ player of the year and the Peterborough Telegraph award.

He then did another two seasons in League One. In the first he was part of the side that won the first leg of its play-off semi-final against Sheff Wed 4-0 before losing the away game 5-1 and going out on penalties. In the second Posh won the FA Trophy by beating Wycombe 2-1 at Wembley with Edwards in the team, but again lost out in the play-offs by losing over two legs against Oxford.

Despite playing down the divisions, Edwards picked up 23 caps for England at U19 and U20 level. This and the League One Young Player of the Year prize persuaded Southampton to shell out £3m and take him into the Premier League on a four-year contract. He has subsequently won two caps for the U21 side and was part of the squad that won the European Championships at that level in the summer.

It has, sadly, been a rather trying time at St Mary’s for the young defender since. Southampton infamously only won two games in the whole of last season and conceded 86 goals doing it. Edwards had an uncomfortable debut in a 5-3 League Cup win against Cardiff and then came on as a late sub in a 5-1 home loss to Chelsea. Those were his only chances before a loan to QPR in January when Steve Cook and Liam Morrison were injured simultaneously.

As we know, he absolutely excelled at Loftus Road. In 21 starts and one sub appearance he achieved a win percentage just shy of 40%, scored goals against Derby at home and Oxford away, helped the team to five clean sheets and won LFW star man swards a home to Blackburn, Bristol City and Burnley and away at West Brom. His interactive rating average was 6.4 and his LFW marks were 6, 4, 7, 7, 6, 5, 8, 6, 7, 5, 6, 6, 5, 8, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 6, 5, 8 = 6.22. He won the club’s Young Player of the Year award.

The sad thing was it just felt as though we were preparing him to go back to Southampton and beast us in the Championship in 2025/26 but he has, again, struggled to settle and perform on the south coast. He conceded a penalty on the opening day against Wrexham and has been bumped in and out of the team, and often played at full back when selected, as the pre-season promotion favourites have languished in 15th place and already dismissed big summer appointment Will Still. While he has clocked up 14 appearances he hasn’t played at all, or even been part of the matchday squad, since a late sub appearance in a 3-1 win at home to Birmingham on December 6 and last started on November 1 when he was hooked at half time in a 2-0 home loss against Preston.

QPR, who made a big push to try and sign Edwards permanently at the end of the summer transfer window after the long awaited Ebere Eze sell-on fee finally cleared into the current account, have seized on that opportunity and returned with an offer reported in the region of £4.5m. He joins the club on a contract of REDACTED length.

Reaction

“I’m buzzing and can’t wait to get going. When I came here last January, I had an amazing time. I felt like I was at home straight away, I loved everything about it; the boys, the staff, the fans - so it was a no-brainer for me. I thought my loan probably couldn't have gone any better. It's like a different mentality now, knowing that I'm here permanently. It feels amazing. The fans welcomed me so quickly - for some reason they loved what they saw. When you go out on the pitch, you're going to give it 100%, whether it's good enough or not. That's what every player tries to do. That's what I've done in the QPR shirt. My dad’s over the moon – all of the family is. They see how much I enjoyed it last time. They just want me to have a smile back on my face, working hard and playing at a place that I love.” - Ronnie Edwards

“It’s great to welcome Ronnie and his family back to the club on a permanent basis. His talent and mentality are not up for debate - both are first rate. We hope that together we can strive for better things.” - Christian Nourry

Opinion

Watching Ronnie Edwards glide about in Hoops last season was an absolute pleasure. Rolls Royce Ronnie, making it look easy, a gifted footballer ready to head to the U21 European Championships that summer and surely a glittering career beyond that. Borderline player of the season despite only being here for half of it, turns out he can also play central midfield if you need him to (against soon-to-be-promoted Leeds no less) and excel there as well. Talented bastard.

And yet, with every drop of the shoulder, every sashay into midfield, every progressive pass out from the back, grew a sadness that this wasn’t really for us at all. This was just another player we’d missed out on when playing local lower league football, hoovered up by a Premier League side instead and bunged on the shelf with the others, now getting fit and up to Championship speed ready to play against us for a financially doped parachute payment team the season after. Like winning a date with Jennifer Lawrence in a charity auction. Christ, look at him having dinner with Jennifer Lawrence, he’s punching. But it’s not really a date, and she’s definitely not going to shag you mate. At the end of the night she goes home to the bigger, richer man she’s actually going out with – the one with all the boats.

Totally out of our league in every sense, but particularly financially, and destined to enter the annuls of QPR borrowed stars we adored but had no chance of ever keeping – Mark Kennedy, Kyle Walker etc. They say never fall in love with a loan player, but that is tricky when they look like this.

To be able to take advantage of what looks like chronic mismanagement at Southampton – 15th in the league and already onto a second manager of the campaign – and swoop in with a successful permanent bid for the player looks like a terrific coup and an absolute no brainer for QPR.

As a centre back at 22, Edwards is really just getting started. Players in that position often don’t hit their prime until their late 20s or even early 30s. It’s a position the trendy ‘proprietary data model’ clubs seem to love to hoard as well – this time last year Brighton paid Derby £10m for Eiran Cashin. Our team always looks a million times better when it has that player on the left side of defence who can advance past the first opposition press and play the ball out to that flank with good, early, accuracy. If Jake Clarke-Salter transforms this team, what does Ronnie Edwards do to it? And it’s a good sign that somebody who was here before is keen to come back.

So, what’s wrong with him? Because if he was as perfect, then he wouldn’t be available to QPR for £4.5m, would he? We’ve described QPR signings as “failsafe” before and it turned out to be Steven bloody Caulker. Perhaps it might be prudent to hang about the Grosvenor Casino for a bit this weekend, see if any familiar hairbands are hovering around the gaff at 3am. We’ve got very excited about players when they make a big initial impact previously too, only for them to fall away and not be able to maintain that level when we get into the monotonous dog days of Championship football.

We’ve been burned before, and if it’s to happen again then perhaps it’ll be one of the following concerns that we look back on in a couple of years and think we probably should have thought more about that…

It does niggle me slightly just how poorly he’s done at Southampton this year. I watched him on opening day against Wrexham and he was, frankly, all over the show – giving away a penalty in a poor performance. A far cry from the confident, swaggering centre back who’d played for us. More recently he hasn’t even been making their bench and, listen, a team picking Nathan Wood and Jack Stephens at centre back is not one blessed with a lot of brilliant options in that position.

I assuage myself of these worries to a certain extent by looking at the overall picture at Southampton, a club where nobody is playing up to their level. Look at the players they’ve got, the talent available, the money spent, and they’re 15th in a league where Preston North End are fourth. It’s one of those situations like we’ve had a QPR down the years where it really doesn’t matter how good any individual player is, they’re not going to succeed in that environment – Dani Parejo, Esteban Granero, Andros Townsend and others all went on to have excellent careers having played in some of the worst QPR teams of our time. Southampton have had him in and out of the side under two different managers, they’ve stuck him out at full back, he’s been mismanaged, and he's unhappy there. He mad a pointed remark in his signing piece about his family wanting him to be happy and playing with a smile on his face again at a place he loves. Still, I thought he'd do better there than he has.

Which makes me think back to last season and second guess myself. QPR were pretty poor through the spring. The relationship with Marti Cifuentes was disintegrating, the team picked up a boatload of injuries, results fell away, most people were playing quite poorly come the end of March and beginning of April. In the land of the bald, the man with hair spilling down his shoulders is king. Did Edwards look so good because everybody else was so rotten? We know what a difference it makes having even a moderately good ball playing centre back on the left side of our defence makes, it’s why we persist with the mythological ideal of Jake Clarke-Salter. Edwards came into a poor side, desperate to play, and had no pressure on him. A free hit and chance to get some game time for a club a lot of his family support. It’s different when you’re there permanently, and there’s a price tag on your head, and now seriously high expectations of how good he is.

There’s a couple of comparisons with Koki Saito that are gnawing away at me. Saito also impressed on loan in the second half of last season and was very popular with the fans, but hasn’t been able to maintain that this year. Saito was a crowd-pleasing signing at a time, post Coventry, when the club were coming in for a fair amount of criticism. Edwards comes in immediately after a poor Christmas, and an injury update that has basically ruled out half our first team for at least a January of seven games and the next three months in the case of top scorer Rumarn Burrell. Questions are being asked about the state of the pitch, the fitness of the squad,, what exactly this army of “performance” staff are doing with their time and the truthfulness of the injury updates. The latest was met with a string of Tweets telling Rangers to “get in the fucking market” and “open the chequebook” and lo, a day later, here’s Ronnie, look, you like Ronnie, don’t you? Is this one of those heart-over-head things? Exciting players for the fans? Like Saito he’s costing a significant amount of money by our standards, and like Saito it’s not in a position we’re in particular need of strengthening relative to other parts of the team.

Now, worrying about signing Ronnie Edwards because you’ve already got a permanently injured Clarke-Salter who plays there, or the inconsistent and fragile Liam Morrison, or ageing Steve Cook, is a bit like turning your nose up at Kyle Walker because he’d keep Bradley Orr out of the team. But, still, QPR have significant wage committed at centre half already, and in Akindileni and Tylon Smith have two of our supposedly best development squad prospects in that position as well. Meanwhile the team remains completely deficient at full back and in central midfield where one injury to Nicolas Madsen really would cause us some issues. If we’ve spent £7m+ on a centre back and another tiny ten, however much we love them, you can’t help but think that might have been better on a commanding, ball-playing eight. Boro have picked up Leo Castledine while we’re busy doing this.

Listen, to a large degree this is me catastrophising because it’s me, and it’s QPR. Of course I’m happy. You have a chance to sign Ronnie Edwards, you do it. None of our other central defenders, bar Jimmy Dunne, can really be relied upon, and it gives us a chance to get some good loans into the younger prospects. After six different centre back combinations already this year, give me 20-straight games of Dunne and Edwards together please.

I just wonder if we’ve been blinded by the cheekbones a little bit. Would it not be better to look for ‘the next Ronnie Edwards’, as Millwall did paying a few hundred k for Crama and picking up Tanganga for free, both of whom are quickly going to be shifted for huge profit, than going in all hot and heavy for the actual thing because he had a good loan spell?

One of the more interesting aspects of this deal is where the money has come from. At £4.5m+ Edwards is Rangers’ most expensive recruit in a decade. There are some pretty obvious, standard answers about why we’ve been able to do a deal of this size – we’ve got a bigger television deal than we had before, we have an FFP ‘cost of living’ increase on the permitted losses of £2.5m for the 24/25 season which increases to £3.5m for subsequent seasons, we sold Charlie Kelman for actual money and that long discussed Ebere Eze sell-on fee finally landed this summer. We’ve got a lot savvier with “disallowable costs” and workarounds like owners sponsoring stands and stadiums under Christian Nourry than we were before – a £24m loss has rolled out of our three-year calculations, and the last reported loss was only £13.5m.

I think the thing we’re going to be talking about a lot more over the coming seasons, however, is amortization. Now, I know, I know, but do try and stay awake through this bit because it’s going to be important to QPR in the years to come.

Amortization is tremendously dull and complicated but put as simply and rudimentarily as I can is treated by clubs like Chelsea as something of a magic trick to help them beat the restraints of FFP/PSR. As I understand it, it works sort of something a little like this – if you sell Charlie Kelman to Charlton for £3m then that whole £3m goes straight onto your FFP calculation all at once, if you buy Richard Kone from Wycombe for the same £3m then that loss is spread out across your FFP losses for the length of the player’s contract. It’s much more complex than that, but in a nutshell… (There’s some much more in-depth debate and analysis of all this going on through pages four and five of the message board thread on this signing.) Now, in my opinion, one of the reasons they’re now refusing to tell you the length of the contracts they’re signing is because they’re likely to be very long indeed (Chelsea have been giving out eight year contracts), and people will start getting jumpy about signing unproven players on five year deals, particularly if they start life at Rangers like Zan Celar and Nicolas Madsen did. There are players in our squad contracted to 2030, and now beyond.

QPR have spent, by our standards, some serious money in the last two summers on the likes of Celar, Madsen, Karamoko Dembele, Kwame Poku, Koki Saito, Rumarn Burrell, Richard Kone and so on. Serious money. They’ve been able to do that partly because, I believe, they’re spreading it out over some very long contracts. We saw this summer the odd spectacle of Michael Frey getting one contract extension, and then another one a couple of months later. Again, we believe that’s because they renewed him at his quite handsome rate of 24/25 as Kelman and Celar left him as our only senior forward, then when Kone and Burrell arrived they offered him a longer deal on similar/same money to spread that out longer and make it better for our FFP calculations.

In the short term this is all smart stuff. It’s loopholes and workarounds to help provide us with better players on a completely uneven playing field in the Championship where we have to compete against parachute payment sides. Christian Nourry has had the finger puppets out and explained things like this and “you know we can just call it the Bhatia stand, right?” since he got here.

But it is a gamble with the future of the club because it relies on one of two things happening. Either QPR win promotion, in which case all financial bets are off, or some of these players we’ve signed start getting sold. We’ve done quite well in this regard so far with very little to go on – money for Dykes, Armstrong and Kelman, some of the ropiest strikers we’ve ever had at our club – and of course Ebere Eze has saved us all over again. But that Eze sale we talked about for so long is done now, and the money is spent. From really this summer onwards you need to be selling a Varane, a Madsen, a Kone, a Poku, an Edwards type every other transfer window for good fees. It is damaging that so many of the players we have spent money on are out of form and/or injured, because selling them at a loss is kryptonite to this approach. The news St Etienne might be willing to give you £5m+ for Varane in his current form is to be politely welcomed like an alligator politely welcomes a human arm.

If you don’t sell pretty frequently for pretty good figures you find yourself back where Gareth Ainsworth was – a squad of stale, underperforming players on chunky contracts nobody wants to buy, and no room on FFP/PSR to do anything about it.

Still, if there is somebody you’d gamble on, it is probably Ronnie Edwards. He’s here, and he’s beautiful, etc.

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

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