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In a season with much to complain about it is hard sometimes to think of positives, but I managed to find a little one and that’s the form of our much maligned goalkeeper, Radek Cerny.

We’ve had some disappointing results lately of course and whilst the nil nil home draw with Sheffield United was one of them it marked a small milestone for Cerny when he became one of only twelve Rangers custodians to keep fifteen clean sheets in a season, joining Chris Woods (1979-80) and Charlie Shaw (1907-08).

The last time an R’s goalie did better was seventeen years ago when Jan Stejskal kept sixteen clean sheets in the 1991-92 campaign, a level matched by several others over the years including greats like Phil Parkes (1976-77), Reg Allen (1947-48) and Ron Springett (1967-68). .

Considering the seasons those three were involved in at the time it perhaps makes it even more impressive that Cerny has done this in a time of mediocrity rather than one that will go down in history. .

Radek will have to go some to beat the club record though which is currently shared between Parkes (1971-72) and Shaw (1909-10) and stands at 23 clean sheets and with only nine games left this season he’ll have to not concede again this season to beat that. Get another couple before May though and he’ll shoot up the list. .

For the record Parkes and Shaw are the only two ‘keepers to keep over twenty clean sheets in season with Parkes also achieving the same feat in 1972-73 (22 clean sheets) and 1975-76 (21 clean sheets). Whilst three others have kept exactly twenty clean sheets in a single campaign Peter Springett (1966-67), Peter Hucker (1982-83), and Leonard Hill (1920-21). .

Maybe next year Radek.

The booing of Gavin Mahon has been the hot topic of the week and you won’t find any arguments here, abusing your own players during the game is pretty pointless. However there was something else during Saturday’s game that bothered me even more.

Mahon had a shocker, I’m sure if you asked him he’d be the first to admit it but he wasn’t the only one, Lee Camp was shaky, Fitz Hall unconvincing, Lee Cook ineffective but it was Sousa himself made some strange decisions.

I’ll start with the formation. I like the 4-1-4-1 away from home, it’s solid, does it job and Mahon shines in it on our travels. At Loftus Road though it’s restrictive and doesn’t make use of our best options.

How many times over the last few years have we watched managers force players into wide positions they aren’t suited to simply to employ a 4-4-2. We’ve seen players like Mikele Leigertwood, Martin Rowlands, Kevin Gallen, Stefan Moore and even Matthew Rose employed as wingers because we just didn’t have the personnel to play there.

The most frustrating thing about the current situation is we have two wingers who couldn’t be more suited to playing a straight 4-4-2, surely Cook and Routledge if given license to get wide would cut full backs to pieces at home and those two feeding two strikers should prove deadly no?

Paulo’s changes were also poor, his decision to switch to three at the back so early on cost us in the end, however had we nicked a goal rather than leaked one we’d be hailing his bravery much like the Preston win earlier this season. It’s a funny old game, as someone once said.

To get back to the original paragraph it wasn’t the Mahon booing that annoyed me the most on Saturday.  “You don’t know what you’re doing” rang around Loftus Road as Paulo Sousa refused to remove his skipper from the game. Are we turning on another manager now? Give me strength.

Honestly what was all that about? The guy made a rick or three granted and, like Mahon, I bet he knows it too. He’s a young manager who is learning all the time, the key thing will be does he learn from it? Only time will tell but in the meantime do we really want to start giving him stick now?

So far he’s done a pretty solid job, he’s given us good results and decent performances and the club looks to be slowly heading in the right direction with him at helm.

Frankly we’d have to plummet into freefall for me to want shot of yet another manager right now. Briatore doesn’t need any encouragement to flex his trigger finger and another change at the top would make us a laughing stock.

Sousa has to be given time to do things his way and, like the booing of Mahon, surely getting on his back will help no one in the long run?

“I’m delighted to have been given a second chance at QPR and I’ll be doing everything I can to hang onto the number spot”

That’s what Lee Camp should have said when asked about his future by local Nottingham journalists. Instead it came out as

“If Forest want to do something, fantastic it would certainly interest me, but the ball is in Forest’s court.”

And with that sentence his QPR career should be over, ring Forest see what they’ll pay, ship him out there, done deal.  

If a player wants away that much, let him go, it’ll do nothing but harm to keep him hanging around. Especially as this all came out after he spent half of Saturday’s game waving at the Forest fans as if he’d found his parents in the crowd.

Clearly Camp is unhappy with not being first choice anymore as he makes obvious with these comments, which rather than highlight his problems to the people that matter will only ensure Cerny comes straight back into the side at the first opportunity.

“I went back and I trained with the youth team. I was left out of squads and the reason I have been brought back in is because Radek`s injured. I played today, I played the last couple but Radek`s still injured so we`ll see what happens when Radek`s fit and available for selection.”

It seems that he simply does not like competition. It happened at Derby and now it’s happened at Rangers. He wants to be an undisputed number one goalkeeper at the football club. That can be achieved easily enough but he won’t have much of a career because he’ll end up having to go and play in Leagues One or Two. No major side from the top two divisions is going to leave them themselves in that position.

I don’t know why he’s been training with the youth team but if he’s that fed up and prepared to kick up this much of a fuss maybe it’s simple, keep him away from the pro’s, don’t let his negativity spread.

At 24 years old and some six years off your peak as a ‘keeper I guess there’s two ways you can go. You can look at the situation and decide - right I’m going to stay here and fight for my place and whilst I’m here I’m going to learn everything I can off this seasoned international I’ve got ahead of me and when I do come back into the side I’ll be the better player for it.

Or you can sulk and demand to leave.

So Camp will doubtless move on soon, he’ll get his move and I’ve no doubt he’ll do very well. He’ll look fantastic, make great saves and the fans will love him. Then in a year or two he’ll get injured, or run a little off form. His new club will have the temerity to bring in another goalkeeper and this whole saga will start again. Before you know it he’ll be the number one choice at Southend or such like.

Flooding the midfield

No sooner has the transfer window slammed shut (copyright Sky Sports News) than Rangers go and make a signing, the free transfer of Italian international Damiano Tommasi.

On the face of it he might turn out to be a decent acquisition but Christ how midfielders do we need?

Even Iain Dowie seemed underwhelmed about his capture. Actually maybe underwhelmed is too strong a word, he certainly wasn’t overwhelmed. Can he be just whelmed? Let’s go with that.

Even Iain Dowie seemed whelmed about his capture, telling the official website “He’ll complement what Gavin Mahon and Martin Rowlands provide in that area.” Or in other words, what in the hell am I going to do with another one?

Earlier in the week when the Newcastle saga broke I said something on the message board along the lines of at Newcastle Keegan would ask for a left back and get given a striker whilst at Rangers it seems Dowie asks for a left back and gets given options to choose from by the board. I start to wonder if that is actually the case now.

I just cant see Iain Dowie banging down Flav’s door saying, “yes I know we only have one left back at the club, I know from our first choice centre back pairing we’ve one constantly injured and one who’s not been up to much yet and yes I know Blackstock is playing on his own upfront because we’ve not got much to put alongside him but if you’re going to strengthen one area can you please scour the globe and bring me a 34 year old midfielder.”

One person surely screaming from the sidelines must be Adam Bolder, in fact he’s probably screaming so high now only dogs can hear him.

As if the Tommasi wasn’t a kick in the teeth enough this week Dowie made it clear where he saw Captain Craps future, telling the Kilburn Times how important it was for the kids to play alongside experienced pros like Bolder in the reserves.

One thing the flood of midfielders and lack of strikers has bought us though is our new formation and personally, I’m sold.

There’s been the odd occasion where Blackstock finds himself nodding the ball down to Johnny X but overall I think it’s worked out well and I hope the suspension of Ledesma on Sunday doesn’t tempt Dowie to revert back to 4-4-2.

Teams just can’t seem to handle our attacking quartet and even without Ledesma a simple swap for Rowlands or Buzsaky will keep things ticking over.

I think it’s important to persevere with a system, aside from the fact this one seems to work for us and makes the best use of our squad it’s also good for players to get used to a style of play. On top of that I’d hate for us get a couple of results with a 4-4-2 and end up with a Mahon-Leigertwood midfield and see players like Parejo and Ledesma marginalised as wide men. The pair of them can do so much damage when given the freedom and watching them play in that way has been the highlight of the season for me.

Briatore – sense one minute, boutique the next

If you scrape around for a justification of the crazy season ticket prices we’ve been lumbered with this year perhaps the only one you can make is that the board are trying to make the club self financing. For years we’ve balanced on the brink of collapse and for years we’ve had cheap season tickets. There is a chance that they looked at the revenue coming in and decided the only way to balance the account year on year was if we put more into it.

I don’t agree it’s the best tactic but if you look for the silver lining then maybe it is that if our collection of millionaires and billionaires bugger off one day we might still have a solvent club for someone else to take over rather than one living hand to mouth and desperate for another tycoon to keep it going.

Briatore’s interview this week with Sky Sports seems to back up this prudency somewhat.

“We are following a sensible business model because the Championship is a dangerous league in which it is very easy to see large amounts of money leave the club unless it is invested wisely,” he said. “In the short time myself and my partners have been involved in English football we have realised that we must be very careful about our financial responsibilities.”

Frankly this is good to hear, I’d much prefer our mega rich owners to play the game sensibly and move the club forward step by step. As much fun as it is for Manchester City fans right now, I’m only 32 and with Flav and Mittal knocking on 60 and Bernie nearly an octogenarian I’d like to think I’d outlast them all and more importantly I hope QPR will as well.

Mind you he then he goes and ruins it all by gibbering some nonsense about making us a boutique club. These days boutique basically means something that’s niche and expensive. Not to worry Flav, I’d say we’re pretty much there on that front already.

Two weeks ago I was going to write a blog about a various subjects, we changed our badge and made a right cock up of presenting it, the kids won their league again, we signed two players and let five go. Hardly groundbreaking news but all noteworthy stuff.

Then Luigi De Canio left.

So instead I wrote about my disappointment with that and hoped things wouldn’t get worse with the board making a poor appointment. Earlier this week I was going to sit down and revisit the lost blog and round things up for the end of the season.

Then we appointed Iain Dowie.

So instead I had to write about that, whilst it’s not a total disaster it certainly wasn’t the most exciting move the club has ever made and it didn’t exactly make me relish my season ticket renewal coming through.

Then I got my season ticket renewal through.

I think everyone was expecting a rise, we are paying high wages to attract players and the owners constantly stress that whilst they are rich the club isn’t. We all understand how close we came to administration and I’m sure we all accept that for the club to be a viable business they need to bring more money into it but nobody expected prices to rise to this level.

QPR have always had a small to medium loyal following, they are there rain or shine, come what may, they have supported the club through thin and thin and would be happy to dig a little deeper in order to see it move onto a level we all thought impossible but to hit people as hard as they have is heartbreaking.

Only a few weeks back QPR’s Deputy Managing Director Ali Russell was telling the AGM that they wouldn’t over the top with rises and that whilst there would be rises in all areas they would be “reasonable”. His idea of reasonable seems to be making us one of the most expensive clubs in the division.

To rub salt in the wounds the club are busy posting stories on the website about “unprecedented demand” whilst the phone lines ring off the hook with angry fans trying to make their point. Either they really believe this has been well received or they really don’t care. Either way it’s been the new owners first massive blunder and they could well pay for it for years to come.

We are all grateful for the new owners coming in and saving the club, we are surely excited about the potential they bring with them but it looks like they have seriously misjudged just how much our gratitude is worth.

Expectations for next season were already sky high, possibly too high and I believe we were already heading for disappointment. The club are at fault on this, they put out countless sound bites about new eras, global brands, don’t miss out etc etc. Add these crazy prices to this and you are going to be left with a pissed off, pent up fanbase who won’t just want success they will demand it. If we are going to be charged Premiership prices then we will expect Premiership quality.

As if to add insult to injury you have to pay £4.50 to have the book sent to you! Another nice little earner on Royal Mail prices there.

The first line of the season ticket story on the official site continues in the propaganda vein

“The 2008/09 Coca Cola Championship campaign promises to be one to remember for Queens Park Rangers Football Club”

At these prices it better be, it’s just such a pity so many will have to enjoy it via Soccer Saturday on Sky Sports.

The rumour mill is already kicking into gear and we have been linked with three players this week alone.

Apparently we are interested in both of Plymouth’s Hungarians, Peter Halmosi and Krisztian Timar as well as Wolves striker Sylvan Ebanks-Blake.

Any of these would be good signings but I expect to see us linked with almost everyone in the Championship and half of the Premiership before the summer is out so right now none of them are worth discussing in depth.

What we need by position for next season is worth a few thoughts though and personally I think we’ll be looking for at least five first team players.

Goalkeeper
The club needs quality cover for Lee Camp in case of injury and Campy himself can only benefit from much needed competition.

Right back
Assuming Michael Mancienne is not still here in August we will need to replace him, in fact we probably need two right backs!

Centre back
With Damion Stewart reduced to cover and Fitz Hall as fragile as an egg we need another solid centre half in the ranks.

Left winger
We have no natural player for this position and whilst Rowan Vine has done a fine job playing there we really need to get a left side expert in as soon as possible.

Striker
The missing piece of the jigsaw, the famed 25 goal a season front man, easy said, but not easily found.

What, and who do you think we should sign in the summer? You can leave your comments below.

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Many congratulations to Aldershot on winning promotion to the Football League.

When the new club was formed out of the ashes of the old, the guy who lived next door to me was their first manager and got them their first promotions before moving onto league football so from a personal point of view it’s nice to see them complete what he started.

From the Rangers side of things it’s also fantastic to see them do so well under the guidance of Gary Waddock. Waddo was a legend as a player and I feel bad for him that things didn’t work out well in his short spell in charge of the club. He’s a fantastic, determined fella and it’s good to see him get a second chance in football and showing what he can do.

I had a feeling he would resurface again, when he was written off with the injury that temporarily finished his career he was determined to prove everyone wrong and play professional football again. He had quite a journey in doing so but he did exactly that and now he might just be doing the same in management.

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What a brilliant atmosphere the Rangers fans created at Hull on Saturday. That new De Canio is song is infectious and was sung almost non stop for over twenty minutes!

It reminded me of when Forest came to Loftus Road the season they were relegated from the Premier League and their fans sung “Brian Clough’s Red Army” for the entire second half.

Fantastic stuff!

It was a terrible shame to hear about the injury suffered by Rowan Vine last week and I wish him well with his recovery.

We certainly felt his loss at the weekend’s game against Preston, not having a player of his quality in your side makes you realise just how good he is. He is someone that can suddenly make an impact, a rare breed of footballer that can have you on the edge of your seat in excitement and his absence was felt heavily on Saturday.

He gets his fair share of stick, I’ve heard him called lazy or unproductive, I prefer to think of him as mercurial! He is a classy player though and a real joy to watch and it’s a great pity we’ll be without him for the remaining games.

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Talking of the Preston game what a hilarious result that was! How often have we sat there and watched Rangers throw away leads over the years knowing exactly what’s coming? It’s happened time after time after time and it was brilliant to actually be on the other end of it for once.

As soon as that board went up for four minutes injury time I just knew we would equalise and when we did I couldn’t stop laughing! It was a travesty of justice for Preston, a thoroughly underserved point for us but good lord it made my night!

It’s a great sign as well that this team just will not give up no matter how poor they are playing. They always say the sign of a good side is to pull results out when you don’t deserve them. Based on that performance we’re on our way to being a bloody good side!

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So we move onto face Hull City this weekend, one of the season’s unlikely trio of promotion chasers. I’m a big fan of small clubs doing well but Jesus what an awful Premier League it’ll be if Bristol City, Stoke and Hull all went up, the other 17 teams would be over the moon I’m sure.

I quite admire Bristol City’s moxy and out of the three of them I’d rather like them to do it, Stoke are Stoke and Hull make such a girly fuss about us it’d be brilliant to throw a spanner in the works on Saturday.

It won’t be easy but it’s great to be going into games like this knowing we’ve got as good a chance as ever to get something out of them. It’s even better not having to go into it crapping yourself about getting to fifty points though!

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More doubts have been cast over Luigi De Canio’s future this week and frankly I’m starting to get a bit worried that he isn’t that settled here. Getting mugged on Saturday night wont have helped none either.

He hinted in an Italian interview this week that he would consider his future in the summer. Maybe he’s playing hardball, I hope so but I also heard reports from Italy early this week that we were sounding out former Cagliari manager Marco Giampaolo. I dismissed that as rubbish at the time but who knows?

Hopefully this will all turn out to be nothing more than a poorly translated article as whilst there would be a queue of fantastic managers a mile long wanting to get into this club I don’t think another change would help us right now. On top of that I’ve grown quite fond of the little fella and would hate to see him go.

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When Adam Bolder joined Sheffield Wednesday on loan he had the following to say

“I am quite an attacking midfielder, hopefully I can get box to box, get some tackles in and hopefully come up with a few goals.”

I cracked up at the time, an attacking midfielder indeed! Well who’s laughing now eh! Two goals in the Steel City derby must have surely earned him a some sort of place in folklore and probably secured a permanent move in the summer for him too.

Bolder’s exit seems imminent and, like many of the players we’ve said goodbye to lately, he played his part at the time but the club rapidly moved past their abilities.

Normally it’s quite difficult to work out who will go and stay in the summer, this year things look pretty cut and dried, Bolder will surely be followed through the exit door by Rehman, Barker, Walton, Bailey and Nardiello and with doubts hovering over Jake Cole and Damion Stewart’s long term involvement it looks to be another summer of change in the offing.

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A massive congratulations to Martin Rowlands on his return to the Irish international set up, Gigi promised to have a word in Giovanni Trapattoni’s shell like if he kept up his good form and it looks like he’s been good to his word!

Rowly still has to make the cut from the initial 40 man squad down to the final 28 but looking down the list of the other midfielders picked he must stand a decent chance of that. He’s in the form of his life right now and it would be richly deserved.

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And finally, I spent some time last week upgrading the blog site to an improved software package and hopefully this will work out better than the old one. Comments are open once again and fingers crossed the spam should be controlled so please feel free to comment on all our posts below and I’ll be back next week with another Ron Around.

Rangers were in The Financial Times this week, the last time they mentioned us was because we’d gone into administration.

Yes the Lotto kit deal has really made waves and, at the risk of repeating myself every bloody week, isn’t it great to see us getting nothing but good press at the moment.

Briatore only seems to have to open his mouth and the media flock to him. Can you remember the last kit deal that was covered every half an hour on Sky Sports? Their twenty four hour rolling news thingy bellowed out that this was the biggest kit deal in Championship history, which probably isn’t so impressive considering The Championship is only three years old and not many teams have changed kit supplier in that time but still…

The figures quoted just sound crazy, twenty million over five years is a fantastic sound bite and, whilst it might not quite work out to that considering it’s performance related, it just goes to show how seriously this club can be taken with the right people in charge.

Flavio has been quick to shoot down any mega spending rumours though, and any chances of “doing a Chelsea” have been given short shrift by Briatore and De Canio this week.

As exciting as it is having all this wealth at Loftus Road I am really pleased with the level headed, baby steps approach our new owners seem to be taking.

Taking the steady and sensible route might not be the most pulse racing approach to running a club but surely it bodes much better for the future that we are keen to build slowly and surely rather than go for boom and possible bust.

Evening folks here we go with another “Ron around” the weeks news, see what I did there? Enough of the cheese, let’s blog…

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It has been a strange old week of transfer talk with Rangers starting the week being linked with the galactico, Luis Figo and ending it being linked with the less glamorous Peter Ramage. I know which one my money is on!

The Figo thing has been fascinating, he has brushed it off of course but it can’t hurt us to be linked with players like this.

My old mucker Mr Skinner likes to remind me that the Chelsea revolution kicked off when they signed Ruud Gullit and it will take us doing something similar to kick start the new Rangers era in earnest.

I have no idea how good Figo would have been, is he past his best? Yes. Would he have the heart for it? No idea, but Christ it would have been good fun finding out.

The number seven shirt wouldn’t have known what hit it, from Matthew Rose and Adam Bolder to bloody Figo!

I have little doubt Flavio made enquiries, and I expect the story got planted in the Daily Mail on purpose but why not, stories like this may or may not pan out but they make the football world sit up and take notice and if it’s not Figo that ends up being our Gullit it will be someone similar and soon.

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I floated the idea in last weeks Ron Around that we would be pretty high in the table if the season had started from the day De Canio took over. It perked up Simon’s interest and out of boredom he prepared a table for me to talk about this week.

However before I could write it up someone else on our message board did the same thing (although in much more detail!), then before you know it they are talking about it on Sky Sports. Does George Gavin read this site?

Anyway turns out we would be fifth which just goes to show what a turnaround Gigi has achieved in his short time here and it gives me a lot of hope for next season.

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Talking of next season, everyone is talking about next season! From De Canio to Blackstock the excitement is building already but with that comes the pressure.

We are already hot favourites to gain promotion next season and I even read that one bookie was quoting odds of 20-1 for us to qualify for the Champions League within the next four years. Staggering.

We have put up with years of bizarre stories and all for the wrong reasons, things don’t get anymore sensible on the Rangers news wires but at least the gossip it positive for a change.

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The day we leave Loftus Road might be a while off but it’s certainly on the cards, even De Canio has been talking about the possibility this week.

He told the official Rangers newspaper, The Daily Mail, “If QPR were to reach the goals which the directors have set, the idea of a more spacious and comfortable stadium would be guaranteed.”

It will be a sad day that we don’t play games at LR, it’s seems more and more inevitable though and I only hope that when it is done we are kept as local as possible and a ground is built that retains some of Loftus Road’s charm and character.

I wonder if Bernie switching the Grand Prix back to the BBC has anything to do with the soon to be available Television Centre?

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Finally a quick good luck to the Youth Team as they get ready for their Youth Association Cup semi final match against Colchester on Good Friday. It’s an away fixture that somehow we are playing at home which should help.

If you want to attend and cheer on the boys the game kicks off at Harlington at 2pm and we’ll have news of the game on the main site later in the day.