With the dust settling on Paulo Sousa's departure from QPR, LFW looks at the effect losing another manager has had on the image of QPR and at the importance of the next appointment.

Come in number six your time is up
Well it’s been more than a fortnight since Paulo Sousa left Queens Park Rangers and only now am I sitting down to write something about it for LFW. That’s partly through time constraints but mainly because I am pretty much at a loss of what to say. What can you say?

Owner Flavio Briatore denies his manager was sacked, simply that his contract was terminated to protect the club’s position after he revealed confidential information. Hair splitting. Many agencies and national news channels reported this as being Sousa’s assertion that Dexter Blackstock was loaned to Nottingham Forest without his knowledge although as Sousa said this to the press in public and has subsequently denied allegations of divulging confidential information it is hard to see that being the case. How can you deny a matter of public record?

It is more likely that the allegations Sousa made certain comments about the ability and fitness of squad members to supporters after the Crystal Palace match have done for him. It is more likely still that Sousa’s position was terminally weakened by poor results and lacklustre performances, albeit with a squad of players he inherited and had bought for him suffering from injuries to its best attacking players, and the supposed breach of trust was simply the final straw or a good enough excuse to give him a shove. I say that because, as I have written about on here before, QPR is and remains a leaky club. Senior officials have been leaking confidential information to certain supporters for years and continue to do so. To suddenly kick off and terminate a contract solely for that while ignoring similar behaviour from others does not quite ring true therefore I think the results and the kind of football played under Sousa at least had some bearing on the decision. If Sousa did indeed say what he said to supporters then he can have few complaints about being chopped, but only if the same rules are applied to everybody else at the club

Paulo Sousa was appointed in the middle of a season. He inherited a squad missing its two best players through injury and quickly lost a third at Derby. Players arriving with the exception of Jordi Lopez were bought for him by somebody else resulting in the farcical situation with Gary Borrowdale. Is it therefore fair to judge him? I would suggest not.

Whatever the reasons behind Sousa’s departure it has certainly had an interesting impact on our chairman. Flavio Briatore, a man who said he would not be told what to do by people who turn up once a week and pay £20, has clearly been stung by the criticism surrounding this decision. On the day it was announced, journalists whose previous interest in QPR stretched only as far as rushing to the Norwich match to see Naomi Campbell in a QPR scarf queued up to criticise Briatore and almost universally describe QPR as “a joke”. Sky Sports reported Briatore’s interference in team affairs, which is still a matter for debate and is consistently denied by the man himself, as a fact. Supporters for the first time started to air grievances with the way the club is being run at the home game with Sheffield Wednesday and only a fine comeback from the team on the pitch, against rank opposition it must be said, prevented the atmosphere at that game turning very ugly. We were denied a streaker protest only by the third goal from Damion Stewart as surreal photographs have since revealed.

All this has spurred the club, and Briatore, into action. From the ball acheingly frustrating policy of announcing every departure with a curt, one line “yeh he’s gone, the club will be making no further comment” suddenly we were bombarded with statements last week. The club lined up Mick Harford and Luigi De Canio to deny they had been sacked in a statement on the official website. That was then read out at the Sheff Wed game to boos from supporters. This was followed at the start of last week by an interview with Briatore on the official website covering a wide range of issues designed to highlight all the positive aspects of his ownership so far. The English used by the Italian in that interview was the best I’ve ever read from him, but perhaps I’m just being cynical in pointing that out.

To be honest having seen the accounts last week and seen how much money has been committed by Briatore and his partners to the club, and the position we were in before it came in, I’d be a little peeved if I were him to be copping abuse at a game we actually won just because another manager has left who didn’t have a particularly great record anyway. I just found it interesting that having gone out of his way to ignore supporters as much as possible over ticket prices, and allowed all departures from the club to be announced with a, frankly rude, one line statement on the official website that suddenly Briatore was proffering is version of events at length here there and everywhere.

The problem supporters and the media have with Sousa’s departure is the time he has been here. Briatore insists it was not a football decision to remove him but due to this leak of information and that he has not sacked all of the managers that have left. He consequently rolled out De Canio and Harford to confirm that but I think he is missing the point that has angered supporters and poured fuel on the media fire. Sacked, resigned or run out of town – whatever, they are no longer here and no club in the country can match our manager turnover since our takeover. Stating that they were all sacked is lazy but the point made last week is valid – it is a joke for a club to go through managers at our current rate, whatever the reasons behind the various departures.

Briatore wants to build a brand at QPR but the turnover of managers has left that brand open to ridicule. Ideas like the signing of young English players such as Matt Connolly and Hogan Ephraim, near constant progress in league position since he arrived, the eradication of the ABC loan, the improvements to the stadium – are all positive things that could help to build Briatore’s ‘QPR brand’. However QPR have massively hiked ticket prices and gone through a lot of managers and that is not a brand anybody wants to be associated with despite all the other positives, and those are the things being aired most publicly. Whatever the truth behind Sousa’s departure he is seen as a successful football man forced out of a club by an egotistical, inteferring owner. Twice European Cup winner fired by a man who sells clothes and races cars for a living. Briatore protests against this but that is the image being put forward by the media and it is doing irreperable damage to ‘the brand’.

He may not care very much about what we think, but extensive damage to the image of QPR has stung him into action. Briatore can point to league positions as evidence that his three to five year plan is working despite the managerial turn over. However next season we really have to be pushing for the play offs if the plan is to remain on track and we won’t do that with two permanent and two caretaker managers between August and May.

Briatore seems to have weathered the storm for now it seems but it is crucial for his ideas of QPR the brand, and for the success of the team on the pitch, that we get the next appointment of a manager right and give him time to do his job. If we find ourselves without a boss again midway through next season then I’m afraid any hope of a brand or QPR being taken seriously at all in football will be gone. What happens next is absolutely crucial.

Next?
Personally I think the departure of Sousa is very bad news. He wasn’t here long enough to mould a team or get it playing his way, he was working with a hand tied behind his back and his departure so soon after his arrival further dents our chances of attracting a good replacement. If Sousa was removed for football reasons and the divulging of information is just the cover story then judging somebody after 26 games is ridiculous, if he really was ushered out solely because of the release of information then why have certain other club employees who have leaked information not gone the same way?

Having spoken first of all about the damage this episode is doing to the image of Flavio Briatore and the ‘QPR brand’ he talks so much about, let’s now focus on what the supporters actually give a toss about. The team, the club and performances on the pitch. Some of the performances under Sousa have not been good, a lot of the results have been poor, but everybody can see the problem - we have nobody capable of scoring goals. In Sousa’s final few games he had only Sam Di Carmine to select from up front and it was always going to be tough to pose teams a threat with that in mind. Those who campaigned monotonously over several weeks for Sousa to be removed pointed immediately to the thrilling Sheffield Wednesday game as vindication. That ignores so many facts - the Burnley and Wolves game either side of it for example, or the fact that QPR had Helguson, Cook, Routledge and Vine available for that game which is a luxury Sousa never had.

The importance of the next appointment cannot be over stated in my opinion. We are on the very cusp of becoming a standing joke, if we’re not there already. The constant arrival and departure of managers since the takeover, whether they were sacked or not, means many of the people we should now be targeting will not touch the job with a barge pole. We can go one of two ways from this point - either Flavio relaxes and keeps his nose out, a scouting network is put in place, the sporting director system is done away with and we give a proven manager free reign, or we keep the current set up and bring a manager in who will work with it.

Flavio Briatore said when Iain Dowie was appointed and insisted he was the manager that he didn’t get rich giving his money to other people to spend. The problem is that is how football works in this country. You appoint a manager you trust to do the job and then you let him get on with it. If you don’t like it then you fire him. In my opinion Briatore needs to realise this and, difficult as it may be, leave the next manager completely alone. Set him a budget, set him a target and set him a time frame and then judge him at the end. Don’t try and help, don’t interfere, don’t lose patience or nerve too early.

If he can do that, and you may well not agree with me, I would be advocating a big move for Alan Curbishley. He is very experienced, his teams play decent football, he has experience of getting teams out of this division and of consolidating and keeping them in the one above for a long period of time. He is also well liked by other managers in the top flight, he has a great relationship with Alex Ferguson for instance, and that could open up doors in the loan market for players like Fraiser Campbell, for example. One thing not mentioned in amongst all this is while it might not matter what newspapers and journalists are saying about us and think about us it does matter what the rest of football thinks. Inevitably we will be looking for a loan next season and are we going to be trusted with a Campbell or a Ched Evans is the circus continues as it is now? Curbishley is a safe hand and would do great things here in my opinion – in normal circumstances.

I say ‘in normal circumstances’ because these aren’t. Very few clubs in this country operate the system we do where the manager has little or no say in the signing of players. I can think of only one club in the UK, Hearts, where the owner is so hands on and notorious. Flavio defends himself against stories of selecting teams and ringing the bench demanding substitutions that have appeared in the press and I dare say he is right to do so. National newspapers with deep pockets and teams of lawyers often allow themselves to have free reign in circumstances like this and I’ve little doubt that things have been written about Briatore’s running of QPR have come from dubious sources, if they have come from a source at all. Does anybody actually believe that story about picking 13 players for the Man Utd match for instance?

However Briatore himself admits that he fell out with Iain Dowie when the manager wanted to pick Lee Camp ahead of Radek Cerny. Briatore also admits himself that he asked/told Paulo Sousa to play attractive football in a 442 formation. Now he uses this as his defence, and many fans may say good on him because they may think Cerny is better than Camp and 442 is a good formation to play. People may also look at the accounts, see the state we were in when Briatore arrived and the money he has put in since and think that gives him some rights to ask questions and have a say. That’s all fine, although I don’t necessarily agree myself, but it is still not the done thing in this country. In English football the chairman is not somebody who comes up with formations or picks who should play in goal.Managers hate it and because Briatore not only thinks it is acceptable but actually uses it as a defence I think we can pretty much write off Curbishley or any English manager worth his salt this time. I think Neil Warnock and possibly even Roy Keane could do a good job here but I just cannot see how they would agree to work under the conditions imposed here.

Unless Briatore can do as I suggest above and set a budget, target and time frame and then butt out completely I think only the desperados from the English management bargain bucket (is that Peter Reid I can see in there?) or those who quite fancy a big pay off in six months time would come near us. Curbishley fits neither category, and neither do many others. Only ego – “it’ll be alright, things will change when I get there, I can make it work” – would drive a proven manager into this role and I have a feeling Iain Dowie got his fingers burnt doing just that – if you can call a large pay off for three months work burnt.

If Briatore is not going to change I think the club would be better admitting the situation here rather than flat denying it. Admit that Flavio, while not picking the team from one to eleven, is going to be around, is going to be having a say and is going to be a hard man to please. Admit that Gianni Paladini is involved in the buying of the players. Then appoint a manager with his eyes wide open, somebody who has worked in a similar situation before. That almost certainly means we’re looking abroad again and is why I think the link with Antonio Tapia at Malaga may hold some water. He promoted Malaga to La Liga and they are currently seventh after a weekend win at Osasuna.

All the noise at the moment however, and by noise I mean local press and message boards, seems to be pointing towards a return for Luigi De Canio. One wonders just who is leaking this confidential information to supporters and whether they will have their contract terminated but perhaps that’s a debate for another time. If it is to be De Canio then I would say we must approach with some caution. Think of Luigi De Canio’s reign at QPR and what do you see? Buzsaky, Vine and Agyemang scoring for fun? Thumping home wins against Bristol City and Stoke? Good football? Yeh, me too. Last season was a lot of fun, and the football played was at times not only better than anything we have done this season but better than anything we’ve played in more than a decade.

The thing is there was another side to the Luigi De Canio reign that many are choosing to forget. A goalless draw against a dire Barnsley side for example – a game we set out to draw and never showed any intention of winning. The same could be said of a terrible game at Coventry, and at Ipswich. We’ve been dull this year, but those three games were every bit as awful and we had Buzsaky, Rowlands and Vine in the team for them - players Paulo Sousa was rarely able to call on. There was a 3-0 defeat at Norwich where an early sending off brought about an abject tactical collapse and a 2-1 defeat at Sheff Wed where two first half subs from Sheff Wed brought to an end half an hour of total QPR dominance and resulted in a defeat because we couldn’t orchestrate a change in tactics ourselves.

There were leads blown all over the place – 16 times in total. We conceded last minute goals at a frightening rate and the fitness of the team was clearly not up to scratch. That could be helped by John Harbin who I think has done a magnificent job this season but I do believe he will be off as soon as Iain Dowie gets another manager position. Stories about players not understanding the training, about Ainsworth and Rowlands doing most of the running of things, and about language problems all henced forth.

Now I’ve gone over the top there, but I’ve done it to make my point. I wouldn’t be totally against De Canio coming back – look at the league position when he took over compared to when he left. Impressive stuff, especially considering the team he took over. I just think that some people who seem very keen on him coming back are perhaps blinded to his failings by some of the home performances and his propensity to go and have a drink with supporters after the match. It would also safeguard the sporting director system and therefore keep Gianni Paladini at the club which may explain the enthusiastic hawking of him as the best option in some quarters.

He does however fit my ideal of a manager coming in eyes open, who has worked under these circumstances before - whether it’s De Canio or somebody else that is the crucial aspect for me.

Photo: Action Images

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