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Reply | Wham tickets
at 13:02 5 Oct 2026
Yeh apparently this is at West Ham's behest, they don't want multiple tickets on one phone.
Mine has arrived, just got to check the other ten in our group now... |
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Reply | WLS podcast
at 12:42 5 Oct 2026
Totally fair points, and I think there were people working in our academy who’d got a bit comfy and it was time for a change but with somebody like that with his history at the club there is a way to go about handling a departure like his and that wasn’t it, in my opinion. |
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Reply | Gerrem Onside! - Super League/NRL 2026 thread
at 20:50 3 Oct 2026
Value of good club culture, good backroom, good performance team, good coaching versus the opposite. Three of those players - Trueman, Pitts, Scott - were outstanding for Wakefield tonight. All of them played for Hull and were out of shape, injured, mediocre and disappointing. |
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Reply | Man City - GUILTY
at 15:30 3 Oct 2026
If you punish this football club that we absolutely do not own and run then we will withdraw our investments into your country for some reason. |
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Reply | WLS podcast
at 12:27 3 Oct 2026
Well I've just had a very pleasant hour or so pottering around the garden with the three of them in my ears and I couldn't believe it finished when it did because I was waiting all the way through for this supposed grilling of poor Ben to begin and it never materialised. I thought it was a very mature, adult conversation with different views expressed respectfully, some minds changed on some points, and some points of agreement.
Unfortunately, and I've experienced this myself and seen it first hand at recent supporter group/sites meetings with the club, anybody who dares to deviate from the line that everything in the QPR garden is rosy and the sun is shining and the grass is green (except when the pitch dies obviously), even if it's just to the extent of asking questions, can expect to be set upon in that manner by accounts like that, particularly on Twitter. Independent comment, coverage and journalism of the club is not welcomed by some and you see people like Dave, Ian Mc, sites like this one or things like Finney's podcast outright attacked. It's a really insidious part of supporting/following/covering QPR online at the moment and has left me feeling very cold about the club and my job running this site.
I think Ben said it brilliantly himself at the end of the podcast - this weird generational divide that seems to exist in at least our online support atm would be a lot less pronounced if a lot more conversations like this were happening. I didn't agree with a lot of what he said but he spoke well, expressed his views thoughtfully, and it led to a great discussion. I thought it was a really interesting hour of radio that I'll be thinking about a lot over the coming days.
More like this please. |
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Reply | WLS podcast
at 10:13 3 Oct 2026
The lack of respect Kev gets is unreal. |
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Reply | WLS podcast
at 18:38 2 Oct 2026
Absolutely. Said as much above. Great move that they long made excuses about. Big plus. |
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Reply | WLS podcast
at 17:47 2 Oct 2026
The second bit is nothing new though like I say. Our U16s are always brilliant. It’s the perfect PR promise because it’s 4 years before anyone knows if it’s true and by then everyone has forgotten you said it. In my time with the club it’s been true twice - the Darnell Furlong team that won that New York tournament, and the Gallen/Dichio team. Let’s see. Maybe it’s true again. I desperately hope so. But forgive my jadedness.
When we talk about “elite”, it is still an academy where the owner’s son gets the occasional game, so again… let’s just steady down, wait, and see. |
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Reply | WLS podcast
at 16:55 2 Oct 2026
He should, literally, be the poster boy for the whole thing. |
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Reply | Wham tickets
at 16:30 2 Oct 2026
By end of play on Monday. |
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Reply | WLS podcast
at 15:47 2 Oct 2026
Was intending to listen on my run tomorrow so may come back with some more thoughts after this but one thing Dave says all the time which is right is QPR, for decades, have been absolutely desperate to tell you how good the academy is, how focused on the academy we are, how our U16s are the best crop you've ever seen etc.
Tony Fernandes always said he was "all about the academy" while letting Harry sit people like Chevanton and Onyewu on his bench at colossal expense. This has been going on right the way back to Chris Wright when they had Richard Graham and Mario Lusardi and people like this on ridiculous contracts that helped drive us to admin. Les Ferdinand spoke about 'pathways', and Mark Warburton was hired in part on the back of his work with the Next Gen series. When it came down to it Warbs rarely even entertained the academy players training with the firsts, and would rather name a short bench than take one of them with him, because he said none of them were good enough (a little bit stubborn on his part, but not wrong - only Armstrong emerged from that crop for a career in full time football).
In that time, since we exited the Prem, we've home grown what, genuine talent? Richard Langley, Marcus Bean and Darnell Furlong. You've had others who we've picked up from elsewhere in late teens (Eze, Chair, Manning, Armstrong, Dieng) which I think is probably a more productive path for us and you've had others that have gone on to do reasonable FL careers elsewhere (Laurent, Monthe, Kakay, Lumley) but we don't have a productive youth system and haven't for 30 years now.
One thing we are very good at is jumping up and down and getting enormously excited about players that simply aren't good enough. I find some of the stuff around our development team at the moment a bit cringe, to be honest. Harry Murphy's a good example. He's not an EFL player playing Isthmian League football for want of a better loan, that's just how good he is. We've seen this over and over again - Kieren St Aimee, Dennis Oli, Charley Kendall, Peter Skapetis, Tom Hitchcock. Partly because the club are desperate to spin that we're some massively academy focused, youth driven organisation, and partly because fans are desperate for one of their own to come through. Emmerson Sutton risks being this. Two years ago we were shouting about him from the rooftops, since then he's had two poor loans at Morecambe and Harrogate, is now out in non-league again and seems to have slipped behind Scarlett now. We must under hype and over deliver, it's not fair on the boys.
The things I really like that Nourry and Alex Carroll have done with the current set up are
- improving the facilities and moving to Cat A. For all the excuses the club have made down the years, if you are going to do it you should do it properly.
- trying to get them playing more competitive football (London Senior Cup, prestigious friendlies, international tours etc).
- much better loan deals this year. Even if they're not playing (which most of them aren't) that in itself is much more useful information for us than them playing 25 games for Whitehawk.
- trying to introduce a winning mentality. I was never comfortable with the Les Ferdinand/Chris Ramsey philosophy that it didn't matter if the U18s were bottom of the league and losing 9-0 to Stevenage as long as the right winger fulfilled his aim for the day of getting nine crosses into the box. Good teams with good players in don't lose like that, and good players don't want to join and be part of teams that do.
- dragging the average age down so we don't have Shodipo, Hamalainen and Owens types hanging round to their mid 20s.
(On the minus side it’s still my opinion the treatment of Paul Furlong was abysmal and worthy of far greater criticism and coverage)
These are all great steps, and will take time to bear fruit. But in the end they will be judged by the fruit they bear. Of the team that beat Brentford in that much hyped cup final Esquerdinha has been bombed out, Morgan and Bennie are having difficult loans elsewhere, and basically everyone else has been released - and even those three were all imported from elsewhere as late teens again. The only Championship standard player that system has produced is Rayan Kolli, and we seem absolutely desperate not to use him. Ben himself last month was Tweeting he would tell academy prospects to "run a mile" from QPR over the way Kolli was being treated. Winning pots and pans at that level is only useful to a point - if none of the players ever make it, who cares?
So if it really is better this time, I'd be expecting to see three or four players graduate into first team over the next five years, and another three or four go on and play EFL football elsewhere down the divisions in that time as well.
This post has been edited by an administrator |
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Reply | Man City - GUILTY
at 15:02 2 Oct 2026
I miss when the FA Cup was drawn from Bert Millichip's ball bag. |
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Reply | Dembele
at 14:23 2 Oct 2026
First and foremost we've got to see how he comes back from this injury, and then he's got to stay injury free. He's had a nightmare run.
He has shown, in flashes (Leicester H, Sheff Utd A, Preston H) the potential to be absolutely electrifying.
He wasn't suited to the 4-4-2 Stephan used more often than not last season, culminating in a dreadful display and him throwing his toys out the pram in the home game against Sheff Wed, because he can't/won't defend which left our full backs very exposed. But the big name players Stephan has developed in the past have often been attackers and wingers so he should be prime fodder in that regard, and we're playing a different shape this year where he can occupy any role behind Burrell - you'd think Stephan wanting his wingers to invert and drive into the box would really play to his strengths.
I do wonder if he's too small, and/or if he'd be better off in the French league where he was, or a league like that, rather than the Championship where his physicality has at times been a real issue for me. And it really doesn't help that he hasn't got a single defensive bone in his body because we're not good enough to carry a player like that unless they're absolutely Taarabt-levels of exceptional - which is the point they're repeatedly making to and about Kolli. |
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Reply | Man City - GUILTY
at 11:09 2 Oct 2026
I'd be surprised if that quote is real. Fake quotes are the latest great trend on that wonderful site. |
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Reply | Burrell Scores
at 15:58 1 Oct 2026
There's a lad with some big hair scoring for them at the moment, maybe he'll make it. |
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