QPRnet Blogs

It’s disorientating when a momentous event happens while you are away from anything remotely resembling a 24 hours rolling news service. My Parents were in Canada when 9/11 happened and they now equate the epoch making event with a free extra weeks holiday, although a week is long enough to see everything in Vancouver.

Now, in the week Chelsea began the inevitable return to their rightful place, I was left with BBC world to keep me up to date. I’m sure you’ve all experienced the delights of BBC world, in order to maintain a sense of well-being in the world, the BBC have created a channel which takes the dullest most pointless news stories and interviews and repeat them through the day. The point is, I think, to lull you into a pleasant holiday stupor…relax, enjoy yourself, there’s nothing to worry about anywhere else.
Somebody ballsed up, along the strap line at the bottom came the bombshell, Mourinho out at Chelsea!

Whoa!

The evening before I’d been faintly amused by Chelsea being held by Norwegian part-timers, but in truth I’d been more concerned about Plymouth at home and having to wait two days to get a paper and the score. This year I’d steeled myself not to use the phone, the £100 bill for monitoring a nil-nil draw against Tranmere a few years back had been a harsh lesson on the cost of using your WAP abroad.

But now I need to know, could it be true, the last vestige of humanity, humour and entertainment, finally stripped from the Hotel Football team?

Despite the BBC’s attempts to keep me in the dark, I piece the story together and it was true, Chelsea had finally lost patience with their most successful manager ever. The one nagging, annoying sense of approval you felt when Chelsea was mentioned had been removed. I felt a strange elation.

Friday’s (well Thursdays when you are stuck on a mountainside in Italy) papers brought confirmation and detail. Roman had a toy’s out of the pram moment and finally despatched Mourinho, although the words mutual were being used I suspect when you are a Russian Billionaire your dictionary definitions are a little skewed.

Back in blighty and Sunday’s papers bring more to the table, The Observer went to town. I suspect they are one of the papers that Chelsea and John Terry are going to sue, but frankly I like their story and until the truth is revealed its the one I’m going with.

There’s little doubt that Terry and Mourinho had a spat, I’m no fan of Terry, he’s an adequate centre back who’s ability has been inflated by idiot pundits and playing next to proper defenders like Carvalho. I think Mourinho was coming round to my way of thinking. Terry had recently negotiated a ridiculous contract making him the highest paid premiership player and a clause that guaranteed him parity with any superstar that arrived at Chelsea. One of the Observers claims was that he’d also demanded an option to manage at the end of his career and had started his badges…Chelsea are moneydumb, but even they laughed out loud at this one.

The story goes that Mourinho had the temerity to question Terry’s performance and part in their opponents goal during a fractious half time on Tuesday night. Terry like the man he is, whined and then pretended not to listen. Rumours persist that after Mourinho leaves the dressing room, Roman pops in to instruct Essien on where he should be passing the ball! For anyone with even a passing interest in seeing Chelsea in turmoil this is fantastic.

The next part, I believe, is the most disputed. Terry, if we believe these reports, goes running to Roman saying that nasty Jose is going to take his ball away. This is the final straw, despite having won two championships, Fa and Mickey Mouse, sorry Carling cups the Russian is no fool and he’d finally realised that he’d not bought Arsenal…Mourinho must go!

When you have that much money you don’t get your hands dirty, fortunately close at hand is the increasingly toad like gargoyle, Peter Kenyon. Kenyon, to be played by an exhumed Peter Lorre in any future film (the smell is similar I’m told), slimes over to Mourinho and lays down Roman’s law. Then releases a press release that back tracks on virtually everything he’d told the press over the last year or so. Nothing new there then!

I’m savouring every minute of this, next up…the replacement, the man who is going to bring champagne football to the bridge…Avram Grant! Oh lovely, the man who made ‘one nil to the Is-ra-el’ a fact. This must be a temporary measure or is JT pulling the strings?

If your trust of paper reports still holds, there is deep unrest in the ranks, some players, new in, only signed to play for Mourinho, some, despite trying to get out of Chelsea are now openly praising Jose…c’mon Didier get your story straight and some like Frank Lampard have just seen their money-spinning move green lit! So it would appear that Terry has a job on his hands if he is to turn this runaway train around.

They didn’t get off to a particularly auspicious start, a fairly flat trip to Old Trafford; admittedly the ref didn’t help them, but who cares. They booed Roman in and every shot of him framed the Emperor with a succession of international managers, all awaiting his lucrative call. The new Chelsea were defined, I hope, by Joe Cole’s lunge to hack Ronaldo down and the last ten minutes where the increasingly hapless on field ‘leader’ Terry let his thuggish inclinations take over as he tried to intimidate Ronaldo and Rooney in turn. Unless you are a nightclub bouncer with your back to the England captain, I’m not sure it works John. It’s at this moment I realise who Terry has replaced in the national conscious. I’m sure he thought himself the new Bobby Moore when the England captaincy was unwisely bestowed upon him, but I’m convinced that in every possible way, John Terry is the new Martin Keown.

The best thing about these last few days is that It’s been a little light relief from our own little soap opera. It’s also a cautionary tale about the vagaries of money coming into a club. While I hope we never become as desperate, grasping and seedy as Chelsea we should be prepared for a rocky road to a hopefully brighter future.

It is my heart-felt desire that we pass Chelsea going the other way!

Rogue Male

Well, it feels like it anyway. The takeover appears to have finally happened, the club saved, I should be delighted.

And I am, for the most part. Beggars can’t be choosers and as beggars I think we’ve been incredibly lucky. I envisioned many scenarios through an increasingly desperate summer, the best of which involved some kind of buy out that left our heads above water and little else. So for they’re to be new owners and a ‘plan’ is more than my wildest imaginings. So why do I keep coming up with questions?

Why Rangers?
For most of us, Rangers are our very lifeblood; we can quote history, style and reputation as perfectly good reasons for taking on the club on. But we view the club with hooped-tinted spectacles, a league cup, a near miss and New Years Day on Manchester is hardly going to attract your average multi-millionaire. The idea that QPR is a ‘great little club’, run well by smashing people is at least twenty years out of date and the last few would have been better run by Barnum and Bailey. They are not fans, so why us.

Premiership Millions are attractive and they have an acknowledged time frame to get back amongst the big boys. Does anyone believe that 10 million is enough to get us back up? It seems to me that this gives us an opportunity to gain parity with about half the championship. There are no guarantees of four years to the Premiership. So why not buy Birmingham or Derby? They are already in the Promised Land; they have bigger infrastructures and bags of potential.

It has to be London…well some of it anyway, obviously Gianni et al must have been doing some sweet-talking, but I can only assume there’s a convenience about the location. This then makes me wonder about the obvious inconvenience about the location.

A ground capacity of 17000…no wait a minute, the capacity now appears to be 15500 if the last game was anything to go by, 17000 isn’t going to be maximising income…unless we’re all paying three times as much and I’m no surveyor but I can’t see where we are going to expand at our current home. As an outsider you’d think I’d look forward to a move to a more convenient location, but walking along the Uxbridge road (…to see ad Queens Park Raaaaaangers) is one of the great joys of my footballing experience. You get it wherever you go, the sense of heightened excitement the moment you spot the first shirt and then it builds and builds before the tribal sensation of being one of many kicks in, but as you go through the familiar side roads and approach the glorious shoe-box that is Loftus Road…well, I can’t see how a walk through a plastic industrial estate off the M25 is going to match it.

I tend to take my lead from the regulars here. If Varc can happily contemplate a move, then who am I to raise objections. I think we should listen very carefully to any plans as they arise mind. New stadia crop up all the time and the reasoning isn’t always as altruistic as it first sounds. Nottingham Forest have recently announced plans to move away from their perfectly adequate stadium to a purpose built arena. Frankly in their current state you’d think a share with Notts County’s tin cowshed would suffice, but that wouldn’t maximise the directors profit and that appears to certainly be a major motive here and with lots of the others I shouldn’t wonder. While a stadium appears to be a big outlay, the peripheral infrastructure, shopping, hotels, road and transport networks appears to offer lots of opportunity for accessing grants and payments from big supermarket and hotel chains. While I’m sure football clubs come out of expansions carrying debt I’m convinced that most directors and other interested parties come out of them smiling.

A future at the B&Q arena out at Heathrow beckons?

Whatever Flavor Flav and Lil’ Bern’s intentions, here we are. Our natural state is one of perpetual annoyance, even though had money to spend, we didn’t spend it on the right person and even though we’ve been taken over it didn’t happen quickly enough and so it goes on. That’s fine; it’s our prerogative as fans. But somewhere along the way we’ve lost perspective.

I think it happened during the long run in the first Division (then Premiership). Somewhere during that time we decided to stop enjoying the dream and start to think it was where we belonged and that one way or another something would happen to make it stay that way. I always find Gerry Francis, Rangers hero that he’ll always be, culpable here. A little unfair maybe, but it was during his tenure that we became a little bit of a laughing stock, a rot that continued to grow unchecked until (hopefully) now. If somebody wasn’t digging up stock footage of his pigeon fancying appearance on Blue Peter they were showing that bloody advert, Gerry and the Honey Monster prancing around the ground. I found it increasingly difficult to take him seriously and even though he left for supposedly better pastures I don’t think he left us in a great position with the team.

There followed a succession of Clowns to take over his crown, Chris Wright, Ned Zelic, Mark Hately, Stewart Huston, Bruce Rioch, Steve Slade, Davies and the incredible missing board, all leading to our current ringmaster Gianni.

I can’t find the thread where it was said, but Ron hit the nail on the head during the most fevered of pre-takeover speculation, hope you allow my paraphrasation here, ‘all I want is a well run club, solvent and professional, anything else is a bonus’. I’m sure there are lots of places on the Internet and beyond where he’d be castigated for such thoughts, but I think it’s bang on. I want to be associated with a club that makes me proud, somewhere that appreciates my support and be surrounded by likeminded individuals who want to see a team try to play decent football. It just doesn’t feel right to talk about Champions League when you can’t get past round one in the League cup.

In some ways it feels unambitious, but a month ago I’d have settled for QPR still being in existence at the start of next season. This is all a bonus, time to start enjoying it…I just hope I can remember how!

Rogue Male