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At 21? He was nowhere near the first team, and I'll take your word on barnstorming the reserves...but it was the reserves. I saw his earliest league games and he was not there, not until 1990 at least. He's said that himself! Armstrong's been playing in an appalling relegation-haunted team in huge pressure games in front of gnarly crowds. It's a different level. You may say we're guilty of revisionism, but I say you're wearing rose-tinted specs Brian. Les had played a grand total of 3 league games by Armstrong's age. Armstrong has played sixty times.
And actually, Sinclair's still 20 for another week.
Les came back from Turkey when he was pushing 23 and looked a different player (but still wasn't even third choice). He wasn't a regular until he was 24 going on 25. It took him time. He did not arrive from Hayes at 20 (Armstrong's age) ready for regular league football for another three/four years.
Armstrong's a substantially better (if similar) player to Les Ferdinand at 21, far more experienced already, with more than one type of goal in him - as proven last season: compare the goals he got v Leicester, Bournemouth and Millwall. In another 50 games, he'll be putting those together regularly (and perhaps even winning headers). By 24, he'll be an absolute monster. Les didn't become a regular goalscorer until he was 25 in England. Like LF, Armstrong has come to the position later than many of his rivals, but it's all there to grow into. (Ian Wright is another example).
If he escapes serious injury, he'll be playing successfully at a much higher level. It's weird to me that others can't see this in this just turned 21-year-old. Already he changes games and worries defenders at this level. He should sign a two-year extension and kick on.
Having said that, if he doesn't want to stay we have to sell now. I feel the same about the manager too: he belongs at a higher level and will get there too, but if he's ready to go now, so be it. We can't get hung up on staff or players.
You're right. Saka's been brilliant all season - carrying an injury last two weeks but the idea that there's a team in the country who'd rather have Gordon than Saka at any point this season is for the birds. He's the best right-sided player in the country. Last season: 35 games, 16 goals, nine assists from right wing, aged 22. Gordon is a year older (who can forget his birthday?), played same number, scored eleven times. A very good player but not in Saka's class and certainly not "flying over Saka".
If anything, Gordon trailed off a bit and Saka was MOM against Spurs away and Bournemouth (scoring in both), then got injured in penultimate game away at Man U (while playing very well). If anything, he's underrated. As important to the England team as Foden and Bellingham. All three are must-starts, along with Kane: they're our world-class players, not Anthony Gordon, God bless him (nor Eze or Grealish). Then it's whether Southgate wants another attacker or picks a two behind in deeper midfield.
There is a comparison - just not when Les was aged between 23 and 26 (which is what you're doing here) and Armstrong when he's 20. Like LF when 20, we have no idea what SA will be like at 23.
At 20, Ferdinand had been a pro as long as Armstrong but played just two pro games, scoring 0. Meanwhile, a 20 year-old Armstrong has made 40 appearances for QPR this season, scored four times (and made three assists). He's also scored three times in five matches for the Irish U21s.
That's the comparison. There's more tangible potential there in 20 year-old Sinclair Armstrong than in 20 year-old Les Ferdinand. Where it takes him is in his hands, and that of his coaches, and the gods. But he's playing more successfully at a higher level than Les at 20. And they have very similar profiles.
One final thing: he may not have been raised in West London, but he came through playing for the U18s and U23s, so while we are constantly moaning about A) the academy not producing, B) that we need strikers, it seems to me perverse not to follow this investment which is closer to satisfying both criteria than many candidates for a while at least through to maturity. (With the caveat that I don't know any of the agent or club politics)
On Armstrong, everyone is being much too harsh and judgemental of a 20 year-old in his second full pro season for a rubbish team, when he needed a long loan first: four goals and four assists in a relegation battle out of 20 apps is very good. Compare him to Smyth who has had several years as a striker in pro football but is no longer trusted in that role. We've got the best of Smyth, that's it, he's not going to mature at 27 in September. We're nowhere near the best of Sinclair Armstrong.
He's not Clive Allen, Paul Goddard or Kevin Gallen who came through a competitive pro youth system, high natural ability coached properly throughout their teens. He was playing for Cherry Orchard in Dublin as a winger until converted to a striker for RoI at U19 level. He's relatively new to football, certainly to playing as a lone 9 in a bottom six Championship team!
Les Ferdinand signed for QPR at 19. He didn't play for the 1st team until he was 20, was immediately sent on two loans, one for a season, and slowly eased into the QPR team when he was 22. I saw all those early games and the comparison is so valid: LF had power, pace, terrified defences but could only score instinctively too. He missed sitters and scored worldies. He got dog's abuse. Don Howe - who knew a thing about footballers - didn't rate him, wanted to sell him to Millwall for £250k. It took a whole season of G Francis coaching him and Wilkins (and Sinton) mentoring/feeding him to become that player he became. It takes time with players like that.
But whether it's with us or someone else, 23/24-year Sinclair Armstrong will be in with a very good chance of being a big player. The goals and assists were all distinct and high quality. Time will knit them together into one package. When that happens, he's a proper player. Having him here already is the best chance we have of ever signing a striker like that.
Disagree strongly: I'd want a new agent if he told me that. McKenna would be insane to go to Brighton (or stay at Ipswich) if in with a shot at Man United next season.
Rooney to Plymouth and Frank to Chelsea the mad pair of the four, though Kompany will be landing on his feet too. The other two are obvious.
Maresca will last about three months at Leicester. Had the best squad in Champ by light years and still made quite heavy weather of it in the run-in. He's a coach, not a manager. Poch a manager more than coach - Chelsea need a yes man coach, so Maresca looks a good fit. And when it goes tits up, he has a ready made "basket case club" excuse, off to some middle ranking Serie A club with a fat pay-out.
I wouldn't go to Brighton if I was McKenna, a club in constant regeneration for whom PSR is a natural ceiling now. Potter and De Zerbi took them as high as possible without the new regulations. These new financial rules, the anchoring as well, is going to severely fck clubs in the middle and upper middle of the PL. It's protectionism for the top six(ish). (But in time will kill the "best league in the world" when that league is no longer able to pay the best players).
McKenna to Man U: it's now or probably never. Hottest, best coach in EFL. Stock never higher. An amazing PL season at Ipswich gets them to, what, 10th? Even then the shine comes off him a bit. More realistically, they're in a battle in the bottom six. He no doubt believes he's a brilliant coach - he definitely seems like one. United need him to be a brilliant coach and he - unlike the previous three United managers - will get the very best management structure behind him courtesy of Eneos: Ashworth and Wilcox on recruitment, Berrada as a new CEO, Brailsford running the show, money clearly needed to be spent - and they can because PSR is designed for them. United are in a pitiful state currently, even if they win the FA Cup. Any good coach would pick that job over Brighton (or Ipswich) because the only way is up. Small improvements will guarantee him time.
Poch and Tuchel will both get really good jobs again soon (especially Poch: he may well be bad news for McKenna).
Sorry, don't know why I wrote so much. I don't care what any of these cnts do (other than fail, hopefully). Bit hungover.
There are currently three English managers in the PL who didn't see their team relegated this season: Eddie Howe, top-placed at seven with the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia behind him, Gary O'Neil doing a good at Wolves at 14th and Shaun Dyche getting up and at 'em with Everton at 15th.
Three English managers out of 17 (unless you fancy Rob Edwards or Chris Wilder?)
There are three Spanish managers of teams in the top four, all in very different circumstances doing remarkable work.
There are no English managers in the top Spanish, Italian or German leagues, one in France.
So far, the two managers promoted from the Championship are not English. The third could be, but could also be German. Imagine Russell Martin as England manager.
We have built the richest league in the world, with (mostly, for now, until PSR lures them to higher wages elsewhere) the best players, the best managers - none of which are English.
There are no Englishman to choose from. It's thirty years too late for jingoism: for that to work, PL clubs needed to be in majority-owned British hands, with a forced % of British coaches at each. Unworkable, and let's face it, a bit crap. No Marti, no party.
Instead, England has dozens of technically world class players the like we've rarely had before, yet no Englishmen to get the most of them. Every level of football in England is already corrupted by money:it's too late to make the England manager's that one last place holding out with principles that also weaken it. Just get the best manager for the players available.
I think the camp and two friendlies will decide it - he genuinely sounded like he didn't have a clue beyond 18 places at the presser. And I reckon Wharton and Eze should come in in flying club form and ease out Jones and Maddison who are not in good form. But who knows? Wharton looks a proper player, better than Jones or Gallagher. I wonder if in years to come we'll be saying "can't believe we took Curtis Jones to Euro 24 over Wharton" - or the other way round?
They're really different managers in terms of the way they play(ed), and I believe that their characters are vastly different too. Everyone loves Ancelotti for starters. And unlike Capello, he's managed in England: won the league and FA cup at Chelsea. Which is better than all English managers combined since the 1980s.
It would be great to have an English or even British manager, I agree. But until some of them are good enough to be hired by an elite club (and actually compete for a trophy) that's going to be self-defeating. McKenna may turn out to buck that. Let's see.
Amusing to read that "Pep and Southgate play the same way". I mean, in the same way that i can make a pasta dish a bit like they do in Milan.
Southgate plays a very conservative version of Pep's City 2018 to 2020ish. Three attackers, fast attacking full backs, two solid CBs.
Southgate then goes for two holding CBs (Henderson/Mainoo and a misused Rice) and a 10, whereas Pep played two tens, or a ten and 8.
But Pep doesn't play that now. He hasn't for a while. He started moving full backs and CBs into midfield. When everyone was copying that to nullify him, he played four CBs! How do you imagine Marti came up with Dunne at right back (and Fox at LB at Swansea)? By watching Pep do it first.
They are not remotely comparable. Southgate would be embarrassed by the idea, I imagine, being a decent and humble man. Pep is a genius who finds surprising lateral answers to a fresh problem posed by rivals every season. He has won four titles in a row. I don't believe another manager could do that with his City squad, and certainly not Southgate.
And the idea of International players coming from working with him at City, or Ancelotti at Madrid, or Klopp and Arteta, to be coached at tournaments by...Lee Carsley, Gary O'Neil, Graham Potter. It's not serious. We're not taking it seriously! That is partly the problem.
For the first time in a long while, England have genuinely world class players in several positions due largely to the world class coaching they get at their clubs. Eddie Howe seems a good club manager, but he's hit his ceiling and he's won nothing. None of these names have. The players are too good for them, wasted on the Potter/Copper/Howes of this world.
I think, for example, Ancelloti would be a brilliant England tournament coach, if not a long-term thing. He's great with players, pragmatic, a serial winner. He'd find a solution to having two injured left backs. There are better candidates than the ghosts of Roy Hodgson and Graham Taylor out there for these players.
Gonna have to go some to beat Pizanti's goal against West Ham in '88: (0ver) full house, his first and only significant touches of the ball in front of the Loft from 30+ yards. On debut, barely to be seen again...
The news about Dunne's extension reminded me of this small bit of message-board grit that has been grinding my gears since February.
I know it's petty to bump it. I know that.
But that double-hit of ITK wink-wink "I really know what's going on inside the club" coupled with a weary condescension towards fans who were looking at the team/squad/matches + the three point gap to safety and seeing something different still niggles, so congratulations on that at least.
Because in the end, "putting those 7/8 wins on the board" wasn't really a madcap dream of the hopeless, blind romantic. We put nine more wins on the board. And instead of the far-fetched 26 more points needed that we'd never manage, we actually added 32 points. It wasn't "a miracle", as was repeatedly suggested. Turns out it was a pretty "realistic" expectation, after all.
From a pure pissing-on-the-corner-flags, wearing the same pants, waving bunches of sage down Ellerslie Road superstitious juju point of view, I think changing the home kit you've just won one must-win home game wearing to put something totally new and untested on the players so a betting firm can get their logo on telly early strikes me as thumbing our nose unduly and provocatively at fate. Not that I believe any of that, of course. But, still. New kits on their first outing: risky, for all kinds of reasons. Save it for a meaningless game. Two bad results and we'll be wearing it in L1.
I watched the podcast. He didn't bring it up, Neville asked him about it and Rio was saying he realised he was physically washed up, he should've either retired or gone abroad after Man U. He moved to London to be nearer his wife's family. He just couldn't believe what he'd found at QPR. Who can blame him? That's arguably the most dysfunctional club in Prem history. We're still paying for it. Neville said in the previous episode it's the least professional team he's seen at that level.
That team and club was beyond one player fixing it, beyond five players fixing it, ten. Remember the official site made a special video of Rio's first drive to training, it was like we'd signed Prince Charles. It was embarrassing, humiliating. Gerry Francis captained England playing for QPR.
It wasn't on Rio Ferdinand to come and cure a dressing room and culture that sick and revolting. It was on Tony Fernandes, Phil Beard and Harry Redkanpp: three genuine clowns who were in it for themselves as much any of the players in the dressing room they'd hired on those ludicrous wages. RF said that when Redknapp signed him he told him to train when he fancied it. I mean...
And then Redknapp bailed when he'd really fcked it all up for good, with our dynamic leaders leaving the mess for Les Ferdinand to clear up, which he mostly did and then ten years later we stuck up pictures of Les as a clown and sang songs about him fcking off.
We can pick scapegoats from a flammed together Daily Mail piece. Or we can remember history as actually happened in front of us.
He said it became toxic, which it clearly did. Can't believe there's someone else rolling their eyes about that on this thread. Not sure how else you could describe people singing 'fck off Les Ferdinand' at games and sticking up pictures of him, Hoos and Bhatia as clowns on the way to and all over the ground. All three have left, all family men. Probably a coincidence.
Interesting that he says he doesn't have social media but was clearly aware of ex-players (Kevin G) slagging him off. I still think he did far more good for the club than bad, and those figures he cited convince me even more. Yes, a poor final 18 months, but I think we treated him - our greatest number 9 and a decent, hardworking servant of the club subsequently - shamefully. But hey ho. I'm sure we'll never do that again to someone else.
I always really enjoy Stick To Football, easily the best football pod, but wish they'd done a tiny bit of research before this week so they could've asked some better questions of him. Everything he said was news to them (but not to us).
Pretty sure he was talking about Sanderson, who came in in January on an absolute packet and then shat the bed for eleven games while we sent Masterson out on loan in the same window. Gray and Hendrick also pathetic, expensive path blockers. I'd have fallen out with Warbs over all three too.
He's the number 9 who's scored four goals (one a penalty) in 30 league games this season and eight (two penalties) in 39 last season. Some very gentle piss-taking on a messageboard by those who spend huge sums up and down the country watching him underwhelm is more than fair enough. Got another two years on that contract.
Let's assume (hope) that Nourry and Cifuentes are really successful. At the end of 2024/25 season QPR make the play-offs but fall short of promotion: beaten by bigger ex-Prem clubs en route, no shame in that etc.
Success of both is noted and they are highly coveted. They are snatched by ambitious PL or European clubs (we don't know anything about their own length of contracts of course).
So we have a great 24/25 season, but lose excellent coach and wily CEO, both of whom are young and extremely ambitious.
What would be the legacy? A load of players on contracts fans don't know the length of and ready made excuse for the next CEO for financial woe. (And what if some of that near-miss success in 23/24 is built upon pushing the FFP bill, betting on a few players to take us up as we have done a decade earlier?)
Another good conspiracy theory is that as Nourry has a history of working on multi-club deals, his arrival is tied into that and not revealing contract lengths is a vital part of clubs that are to be part of a multi-club group moving players between clubs.
I mean, these are both batshit, I agree. But they still seem more logical than anything suggested for not sharing contract lengths by CEO.
Not knowing the length of the youth contracts handed out by Clive Berlin under Chris Wright - ludicrous multi-million pound deals on multi-year contracts to players who barely kicked a ball professionally - was a crucial part of QPR going into admin. Couldn't throw the expensive ballast over board quick enough.
I'm just going to say that *I* *am* on the offensive with any new CEO. It's not personal. But he's middle management. We are the custodians. We remain. We're QPR, he's Linkedn. They come and go. And our trust should not be guaranteed. It has to be earned, properly, over time.
(This is not directed to you Dave, but generally just my feelings)
Please direct me to the chairman or CEO who didn't arrive at the club in a flurry of "we're lucky to have him; he really cares; he's got really innovative ideas; he's passionate; he's exactly what we need after the last guy" messages and then left a few years later in either shame, embarrassment, apologetic retreat or against a backdrop of unrest, disdain and protest. Remember that song about Flavio and Bernie? That was a good one.
We're QPR. They're passing through. They don't get to keep secrets (that aren't really secrets) from us, or divide fans into some animals are more equal than others sections. Want the best for the club? Prove it, Chris.
Thirty-three minutes into Thursday's The Game Podcast by The Times, there's a lovely tribute to Stan by first Martin Samuel and then Tony Cascarino.
Cascarino went for a trial at QPR when he was 15, last 70s. Tells a story about watching reserves Clive Allen and Paul Goddard - a year or two older - doing an amazing finishing drill, being blown away by their sharpness. Stan wanders over and says to him, 'That's the standard, son. Think you're up to it?' Later he was up against Stan in a small game (he was a CB then) and just thinking, 'stand up!' because he couldn't get near him. They describe him as partly Zola, partly Aguero.
Anyway, Samuel talks about the brilliant Michael Nyman Concerto for Stan that's at the centre of his After Extra Time record. Been mentioned on here before, I know, but it was filmed largely during our 4-1 victory over Spurs on 3/10/91 (orchestrated magnificently by Wilkins) with a flashback to the 75/76 season with Stan at its centre.
It made me think: if we were to change the run music, this bit of it, the Concerto For Stan section would be very fitting this year.
It's here, after 7 and a half minutes (whole half hour well worth a watch, of course). It would work!
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