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Redknapp ready to take his Rangers back to where it all began — preview
Saturday, 5th Apr 2014 01:30 by Clive Whittingham

Harry Redknapp returns to the club where his managerial career started this Saturday, as QPR head down to in-form Bournemouth.

Bournemouth (10th) v Queens Park Rangers (3rd)

Old First Division, Old Old Second Division >>> Saturday April 5, 2014 >>> Kick Off 15.00 >>> Dean Court, Bournemouth

I remember bed. ‘Twas a fine place of sleep and duvets. Sadly I’ve only actually been in one for six hours (non-consecutive) since Tuesday morning and in that time I’ve done two overnight flights between London and New York, and then finished up in Cannes. Which is where I am now, at two in the morning, writing match previews for Bournemouth v QPR.

The obvious hook for this is Harry Redknapp, seemingly right at the end of his managerial career, going back to the ground where it all began for him as a boss, to face an in-form team managed by a new up and coming star of the gaffer game. It’s a contest that sparked the interest of Nick Ames at FourFourTwo magazine — his feature on the match, and the wider situation of Redknapp at QPR, can be read by http://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/harry-redknapps-last-hurrah>clicking here - who got in touch while I was over the Atlantic and asked for some input about QPR’s current boss.

In the interests of getting some sleep tonight, I’ve lazily (I’m like that) decided to copy his questions and my answers by some way of a preview. Your feedback and comments appreciated as always…

What's the general QPR fans' feeling on Harry? Unanimous that he should go if you don't go up? And even if you do?

To be honest with you, I’d be very surprised to see Harry Redknapp here next season regardless of the outcome. He had a knee operation last summer which first of all meant he didn’t go on our pre-season tour of Austria (Steve McClaren took them and did a wonderful job) and the operation didn’t go well — he was on crutches for the first few months of the season and has been avoiding post match press conferences (because he can’t do stairs) all season, struggling to stand on the touchline etc. So the feeling is, and it’s been reported in several papers, that he’ll retire in the summer with that as the explanation.

I doubt too many tears will be shed. I got the impression that his idea 18 months ago was to sit in the Match of the Day studio waiting for a Premier League job to come up, then if he kept that team up he’d have a Premier League job again and if he didn’t then he’d leave at the end of the season and begin the process again. We had a period in the summer where he seemed to play a lot of golf, and wouldn’t you just know it there would always be a Sky Sports camera there to grab a quick word with him at the eighteenth where he kept baiting the board for not letting him sign Wayne Bridge and stuff like this, almost daring them to sack him. He’s never going to walk away from a lucrative contract like the one he has here, but I thought he was angling for a payoff.

It should be said that since then he has done a fine job. You can talk about money and budget and squad size and whatever but Wolves had all that going for them a year ago and dropped straight through the league. QPR were a total mess last season and could easily have gone the same way. He deserves credit for us being third.

But… A good portion of the credit should go to McClaren, who did a great job in pre-season and was coaching us for an 11 match unbeaten run at the start of the season — which included a club record run of eight clean sheets on the spin. The team hasn’t been nearly as good or as consistent since he left.

It should also be said that injuries have been particularly cruel to us this season. Charlie Austin, Ale Faurlin, Matt Phillips and Danny Simpson out long term all at about the same time took the goals, youth, speed and passing ability out of the side in one fell swoop. There have been eight or nine others on top of that — Onuoha, Johnson, Zamora, Hoilett etc — and I don’t care who you are, no team is going to cope well with losing so much quality all at once.

But… our budget and squad compared to the rest of the league is obscene, and he’s been allowed to add proven internationals in Oguchi Onyewu, Yossi Benayoun, Javier Chevanton, as well as eight Premier League loans (when you can only pick five in a matchday squad) when injuries have occurred. Other teams at this level just have to cope. We’ve got more than enough at our disposal to have done better than we have, and if you constantly insist on signing players in their 30s, long past their best, often with previous injury problems (Austin, Johnson, Zamora etc) then you can’t throw your hands up and talk about how unfair it is when, wouldn’t you just know it, they all get injured again.

The big problem Redknapp has with a lot of fans is, despite the decent results and league position, even when we’ve been winning the football has been terribly dull. We play this weird pseudo Swansea City style without any of their penetration. It’s like we think 20 completed passes on the halfway line counts as a goal. It’s very unlike any of Harry’s previous teams and it’s been a ball ache at times.

How well do his 'bare bones' excuses wash? Injuries obviously extensive but then so's the squad and the budget…

Yes Harry’s Friday pre-match press conferences are fairly legendary on our message board. A favourite trick this season is to make out that the team we’re about to play is actually Bayern Munich in another guise — Brighton will be difficult because they get so many fans at home, Birmingham will be difficult because they were in the Premier League sort of recently, Huddersfield will be difficult because they were one of the famous old names of English football. And Saturday Tuesday Saturday Tuesday Saturday Tuesday is very ‘ard apparently — we get told that a lot.

One of the most irritating thing is Sky Sports send some lobotomised gibbon down to our training ground every Friday to get Harry’s thoughts on whatever they think is the issue of the day. So QPR fans tuning in get treated to prolonged discussions about Gareth Bale, Tottenham, homosexuality in football, Tottenham, diving in football, Tottenham, Tim Sherwood, the missing Malaysian plane and so on.

Harry has stopped doing the post-match press conferences now and leaves it mostly to Kevin ‘Bondy’ Bond who’s very quick on the M3 up from Sandbanks but not exactly going to win any prizes for personality.

Overall, it’s been hard to shake the feeling that Redknapp isn’t really that bothered, and was left a bit broken and forlorn for not getting the England job.

Litany of financial mistakes at QPR in last few years, but to what extent is Redknapp held responsible?

I know it looks bad, given that Harry often leaves a club destitute, but I don’t think much of it is down to him this time, and a lot of the damage was done before he got here. The club’s owners seem to like to throw money around on big name players — QPR are, after all, an advertising vehicle for Air Asia and the Tune Group. So we sign Ji-Sung Park and Granero and Cesar and Zamora and Johnson and Chris Samba and so on and so forth, but the only reason people like that would come to QPR — 18,000 capacity home ground and a training ground borrowed from a college — is money, so we pay massively over the odds to get them here. And if they could get a better club, they would, so there must be something wrong with them — usually age, injuries, attitude or a combination of all three — to get them here. The policy of the board has meant we’ve bought ageing players for massive money, and it obviously hasn’t worked which has resulted in big financial losses.

Redknapp has spent plenty, last season and this, and a big complaint is that he’ll always make another loan signing, or another free transfer outside the windows, rather than giving some of our younger players a go — we have Michael Harriman and Max Ehmer well capable of playing at Championship level, but we brought in Aaron Hughes a 34 year old centre back from Fulham to play right back when Simpson got injured and Onyewu, who never played a single minute, to cover us at centre back.

But what interest does Redknapp have in the long term? He’s not going to be here, and at QPR you’re only ever four defeats away from the sack anyway, so he can hardly be blamed for concentrating very short term can he?

Basically I thought he was the right man to try and rescue us last season, but when that didn’t happen we should have cut our losses in the summer and made an appointment focused on a long term rebuild. We’ve essentially chased our losses this season — loads of short term moves trying to get straight back up. Might work, might not.

Links >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/34640/moss-gets-sec >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/34642/high-scoring- >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/34644/the-invisible >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/34650/he-scores-whe >>> http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/34652/howe%E2%80%99 Profile

Saturday

Team News: Of course the big news this weekend is the potential return of Charlie ustin to the QPR line up after three months out with a shoulder problem. Eddie Howe took Austin to Burnley having previously been thwarted in an attempt to sign him for Bournemouth from Poole so there’s plenty of connection there — and Austin scored in the first meeting between these sides this season. The R’s were in the automatic promotion places when he was injured but are now almost certainly destined for a play off place.

Danny Simpson will push for a start after an impressive substitute run out last week and Yossi Benayoun is back from a one match suspension. Jermaine Jenas is also fit again but as quickly as they return, others get ruled out and both Aaron Hughes (calf) and Nedum Onuoha (head) are ruled out with the knocks they suffered against Blackpool. Joey Barton also remains sidelined along with the long term absentees Ale Faurlin and Andy Johnson.

Bournemouth midfielder Andrew Surman has recovered from a back injury and could return to the starting line-up. Striker Tokelo Rantie is likely to be involved, while left-back Charlie Daniels is back in full training and will be assessed.

Elsewhere:

Friday Result — Leicester 2 Sheffield Wednesday 1

Saturday games:

Wigan v Leeds

Barnsley v Brighton

Blackburn v Ipswich

Blackpool v Yeovil

Charlton v Reading

Doncaster v Birmingham

Huddersfield v Bolton

Middlesbrough v Derby

Forest v Millwall

Watford v Burnley

Referee: Premier League official Jon Moss drops down a division for this one. Although Moss has only refereed five of his 31 appointments in the Championship this season, he has already taken charge of QPR and Bournemouth once, though R’s fans will be hoping for a better display than he produced in the 2-1 victory against Derby before Christmas. For more details on that, and his full QPR case history, please http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/34640/moss-gets-sec here.

Form

Bournemouth: The Cherries have won six of their last eight games, drawing one and losing one. They have kept five clean sheets in their last eight games, after keeping only one in their previous 26 games in all competitions. Bournemouth have lost only one of their last nine home games in the Championship. Their only league defeat at home since mid-December was 1-0 against Leicester on 1 February.

QPR: Rangers are unbeaten in their last three games, winning two. They have kept 17 clean sheets in the league so far this season - the joint-most in the Championship with Brighton. The R’s have won two of their last six away games, losing the other four.

Betting: Professional odds compiler Owen Goulding says…
Well my decision making on last week’s selection was on a par with Harry's team selection. I have read (albeit only a few) defences of his choices last week on various forums but for me it was inexcusable. It was a completely unnecessary unbalancing of the team and I just can’t fathom his thought process. Yet again it resulted in wholesale changes to make us look more threatening against a very poor side but Rangers got what they deserved overall.

I’ve said it before but it needs saying again, I’m hesitant to predict anything with regards QPR a few days before kick off as team selections have been, and continue to be, bizarre at best since McLaren left. That said, the price on QPR currently available looks interesting. Yes they aren’t playing great, and yes Bournemouth are in a decent vein of form as they chase an unlikely play-off place, but as the game at Loftus Road showed, there is a bit of a gulf between the sides if both are on their game. I wouldn’t put anyone off backing QPR at 9/4 to win the match, especially with Charlie Austin an outside chance of a cameo in the last ten minutes. Bournemouth have won their last three, scoring nine goals in the process, but they have been against crisis clubs Birmingham, Leeds and Barnsley. This game should be open with Bournemouth needing to go for it and QPR still with a slim chance of taking advantage of Burnley's current injury crisis.

Recommended bet: Over 2.5 goals at 6/5 with Paddy Power.

Prediction: Reigning Prediction League champion Mase says…

“The weather's turning good again, isn't it? Nice time of year to visit the elderly relatives in the retirements resort on the coast, stock up on sherry at the local Oddbins and sneak off to enjoy what I am too lazy to look up but will assume is our first visit here in a jolly long time. Bournemouth is Harry's local team and something of a home match, by far the best performing of the newly-promoted teams this season and still with a faint sniff of the playoffs in their nostrils (or is that Saharan Dust?)

“The ever-impressive and 'can't believe he's playing there now' Andrew Surman may be back for the home team, who have been racking up big victories of late to all but wipe out their negative goal difference. That could be important come the final reckoning, but lose here on Saturday and they can all but rule out any involvement in the promotion picture for this season. Not the same at Rangers, for whom Charlie Austin will probably not be risked even from the bench. Thoughts are already on the playoffs and who we want to avoid (as though there were any choice). I think this will be a season of "if only's", as in "if only" Burnley's injuries had come five games earlier. I think this will be an away win and keep warm, if not hot, the embers of automatic promotion hope for QPR.”

Mase’s Prediction: Bournemouth 1-2 QPR First scorer — Morrison

LFW Prediction: Bournemouth 2-2 QPR First scorer — Morrison

The Twitter @loftforwords

Pictures — Action Images

Photo: Action Images



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Northernr added 01:38 - Apr 5
Excuse the cut and shuts and lifts from the BBC site - it's been one of those weeks. Back on form for Forest hopefully.
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Kaos_Agent added 06:30 - Apr 5
Thanks Clive - I'm amazed you got anything done at all given your work schedule. Looking forward to seeing Charlie and Ravel together.
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Spiritof67 added 08:00 - Apr 5
Well done Clive amazing stamina to keep this site going! Maybe there's an opportunity for you as a fitness coach at the training ground!
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tsbains64 added 09:28 - Apr 5
thansk for the updates -always an amusing and informative read
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tsbains64 added 09:28 - Apr 5
thansk for the updates -always an amusing and informative read
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TacticalR added 12:48 - Apr 5
It all began very badly for Redknapp - he lost his first game in charge 9-0 to Lincoln.

I am guessing this game will be a lot more difficult than the home match against Bournemouth earlier in the season, as we don't have Austin to break the deadlock, and Bournemouth now have some wind in their sails.
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